2019-02-06

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | FE B RUA RY 6 , 2019

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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love in color

statement RESEARCH

Prof. shares research on effects of love in color chemicals ASHA LEWS/Daily

Seminar focuses on impact of PFAS contamination on different populations

SAPAC hosts a Consent Outreach and Relatinship Education Program to talk about healthy relationships and queer identity on Tuesday in the League.

Activists discuss identity, LGBT inclusion at Love Beyond Bounds

SAPAC event examines relationships in anticipation of Valentine’s Day MADELINE MCLAUGHLIN Daily Staff Reporter

Tuesday night, the Consent, Outreach and Relationship Education program in the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center welcomed Jari Jones and Corey Kempster to the Michigan League on Tuesday for “Love Be-

yond Bounds,” a discussion about love and healthy relationships.

The event was also hosted by the University of Michigan Spectrum Center and the Center for Education of Women Plus.

Jones and Kempster not only work together as LGBTQ+ activists, but are in a relationship themselves.

After meeting in college, the two remained friends for years before eventually entering into a romantic relationship.

“We kind of met through activism,” Jones said. “She had just finished a show … and gay marriage had just passed in New York. She had a castmate who was opposing

of it. My lovely partner is an exFacebook warrior, so she was she was really digging into him, and I just had the urge to message her ‘I love you’ … That blossomed into this beautiful friendship we had for about five years until we started dating.”

See LOVE, Page 3A

ZAYNA SYED

Daily Staff Reporter

According to new research, the chemical pollutant PFAS — or polyfluorolalkyl substances — can cause different kinds of chemical mutations depending on a person’s race.

Sung Kyun Park, associate professor in the School of Public Health, presented this research in a seminar on Tuesday sponsored by the Integrated Health Sciences Core of Michigan Center on Lifestage Environmental Exposures and Disease, or M-LEEaD. PFAS have been used for decades in industrial and consumer products, such as

cookware, grease-proof food packaging and fire-retardant materials. Park’s research highlighted two different forms of PFAS, distinguished by their functional groups: PFOA and PFOS. PFOA and PFOS have different manufacturing processes and are used in different products.

PFOA is most often contracted when an individual’s food is contaminated by products that use PFOA, such as greaseproof takeout boxes or certain kinds of cookware.

PFOS is more commonly used in the auto industry and can contaminate drinking water.

See PFAS, Page 3A

LEAP volunteers talk experience Proposed Initiative legislation of Palestinian refugees in camps to explore

GOVERNMENT

looks to kill lame duck Minority Floor Leader Yousef Rabhi introduces bill to discontinue session BEN ROSENFELD Daily Staff Reporter

Following the swearing in of 48 new members of the Michigan Legislature last month, a bipartisan coalition of representatives has proposed a constitutional amendment to end the state’s controversial lame duck session.

In state legislatures, the lame duck session is a period between the election of new representatives and their swearing in procedures, during which outgoing politicians are able to craft legislation relatively easily, without the fear of public scrutiny. Michigan remains one of only a handful of states in which this session still exists.

According to state Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, who was a co-sponsor of the resolution, Michigan’s strict six-year term limits also makes the state particularly susceptible to facing faulty legislation during the lame duck period.

See LEGISLATION, Page 3A

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CAMPUS LIFE

Students review time spent preparing children in Lebanon for high school admissions test LIAT WEINSTEIN Daily Staff Reporter

In light of the continuing Palestinian refugee crisis, leaders from various Arab culture organizations convened for a teach-in Tuesday night about the reality of life in Lebanese refugee camps.

The information session was hosted by Learning for the Empowerment and Advancement of Palestinians, an educational enrichment program supporting Palestinian youth in Lebanon, along with the Lebanese Student Association, Arab Student Association and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality.

LSA sophomore Nada Eldawy, who is a copy editor and Michigan in Color editor for The Daily, and Jenna, a LEAP volunteer who asked to be identified by only her first name, led the presentation to a group of more than 30 students.

Since the adoption of United Nations Resolution 181, which partitioned the Palestinian territory into Jewish and Arab states in 1947, around 5 million refugees qualify for aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a UN program that assists Palestinians displaced by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Most of these displaced people settle in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hostilities between Israel and Palestine

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forced about one third of Palestinian refugees to live in camps in neighboring areas such as Lebanon and Jordan.

According to the UNRWA, there are currently more than 450,000 refugees living in Lebanon. Jenna said the UNRWA was established to provide necessary aid to Palestinian refugees. Despite this, she said the program often discriminates against Palestinians and fails to offer sustainable solutions to issues like power shortages and lack of health care.

“The classes are overpacked, that’s one of the

reasons that the UNRWA schools fail,” Jenna said. “A lot of the kids don’t want to go, a lot of them work in the middle of the day, and it’s one teacher with 50 students. They were recently criticized because the kids were not allowed to sing the national anthem, Fida’i, in the UNRWA schools.

UNRWA is trying to silence the Palestinian identity of the Palestinians.”

Last summer, Jenna and about 20 others participated in LEAP’s Project Shine, a program that sends volunteers to teach English and other recreational activities at the

Burj Shemali and Rashidieh refugee camps in Lebanon.

The program emphasizes full English immersion in its teaching in order to prepare Palestinian refugees for their high school admissions test, which is administered solely in English.

Jenna said the lack of English education hurts Palestinian refugees’ chance of attending high school and eventually university. She noted many refugees do not attend secondary schools because of the lack of resources and opportunity.

See LEBANON, Page 3A

DARBY STIPE/ DAILY

LSA student Jenna speaks to her experiences volunteering in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and the difficulties Palestinians face in East Quad Tuesday.

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INDEX

Vol. CXXVII, No. 67 ©2019 The Michigan Daily

Patagonia, linguistics

Interdisciplinary effort funds research into the humanities in Argentina SAMANTHA SMALL Daily Staff Reporter

Near an isolated desert in Patagonia, Argentina, a unique community which, in 1980, was classified as virtually “extinct,” still resides. These descendants of South African Boers immigrated to Patagonia at the start of the 20th century and are bilingual, speaking both Afrikaans and the current dominant language, Spanish.

Yet, it seems mostly the older generation — those who are in their 60s — speak Afrikaans, while their children and grandchildren have adapted to the prevailing language of Spanish as the community begins to consolidate into modern Argentine society.

The bulk of those who have mastered both of these languages have begun to dissipate.

However, for Nicholas Henriksen, associate professor of linguistics and principal investigator of the AfrikaansArgentine Collaboratory project, the distinct and relatively veteran community provides insight for a contemporary understanding of cultural identity.

See PATAGONIA, Page 3A

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

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

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2A — Wednesday, February 6, 2019

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: SNR STUDENTS RALLY ON SHAPIRO’S FRONT LAWN Feb. 4, 1983 School of Natural Resources students tied a green ribbon around the old oak tree in front of University President Harold Shapiro’s house yesterday to protest proposed budget cuts to the school.

More than 150 students marched from the Diag to Shapiro’s house and chanted “save SNR” while the ribbon their symbol of opposition to the University’s redirection was tied. A few students said the tree was actually an elm, but no one seemed

concerned.

After musicians played songs about SNR, speakers praised the school’s programs and criticized the University’s five-year financial redirection “Teaching is being sacrificed because teaching is not important to Dow Chemical,” said LSA senior Tom Marx. He urged students not to “sit back and watch” the redirection process. “Get involved,” Marx said. “Rallies are not enough.”

During the rally, organizers in the crowd tried to get more

people involved by soliciting donations to fund a full-page newspaper advertisement publicizing the school’s plight.

The students said they hoped publicity would cause the Regents to be sympathetic when the budget cut comes up at their Feb. 24 meeting and said they were pleased with the exposure yesterday’s rally provided.

“It graduate student Martha Tableman. “We filled the Diag.”

After the rally, one SNR student who asked not to

be identified complained that many people do not understand the present budget reviews. “It’s more than just cuts in SNR we’re upset about,” he said. “The money is not being cut because it’s not there. It’s still in the budget, but it’s being put into other programs.

Rally organizer Susan Denzer agreed, saying the reviews are “pitting schools against each other.” She criticized the lack of student input in the review process and said administrators should consider alternative

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DARBY STIPE/Daily Almost 30 years ago, Bob Sparrow and his wife started Sparrow Market in Kerrytown. Originally just a meat shop, it has since expanded to offer local and specialty goods. It also serves as a perfect study spot, as it is connected to Sweetwaters.

ON THE DAILY: DPSS ANNOUNCES UNIVERSITY TO GET ICED, AGAIN AMARA SHAIK Daily News Editor

Early Tuesday, the University of Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security released a winter weather advisory for freezing rain, expected from around 1 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Wednesday. The freezing

rain is expected to spread into Southeast Michigan late Tuesday night, but may shift from freezing to normal rain sometime Wednesday afternoon.

However, there are warnings about especially hazardous and slick travel conditions.

According to the National Weather Service, freezing

rain is liquid precipitation that freezes on contact with cold surfaces with cold surfaces within a small range of temperatures at or below 32 degrees. Often, a coating of ice is created on roads, walkways, trees and powerlines and has the potential to be dangerous.

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Recommendations include wearing shoes or boots with non-slip rubber soles, walking slowly with short steps and traveling along grassy edges for more traction.

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Institute for Humanities panel highlights history, development of neighborhoods Professors share expertise on changing landscape of suburban America CLAIRE HAO

minorities as external villains drew on her ethnographic work between city and suburb. were invading and in Penn Hills, a suburb outside “In the half square-mile that who innocent white On Tuesday afternoon, of Pittsburgh, to discuss the surrounded her (Pittsburgh) corrupting about 20 people gathered in the uniquely suburban ramifications neighborhood, there was a Americans from “good” families, Osterman Common Room for a of poverty. In particular, she Head Start, fourteen churches, especially females.

“In the 1950s, there was faculty panel on neighborhoods focused on how the physical an elementary school, a public and suburbs. Held by the landscape of suburbs, originally park, a senior center, a Salvation explicit, racist, constant coverage University of Michigan’s Institute designed for white middle- Army, four bars, a barbershop, of Mexican Americans as a for the Humanities as part of the class families, exacerbates the three beauty salons, a corner crime threat who were invading “Humanities and Environments” transportation and social needs convenience store and four white communities,” Lassiter series, the event featured three of the low-income people who different bus lines,” Murphy said. “African Americans in this University professors, each of now live there. said. “In Penn Hills, the only time period are actually not whom presented their current To illustrate her point, Murphy neighborhood amenities that constructed as dope-pushers research on topics such as used the example of Roslyn, were in the same half-mile radius crime threat, although they poverty, the war on drugs and a woman she interviewed. within her new (Penn Hills) would be later … And media often urban neighborhoods.

According to Murphy, Roslyn house was one church and one showed white females who start with marijuana in parked cars To begin the event, Alexandra moved from Pittsburgh to golf course.”

Murphy, assistant professor of Penn Hills to escape crime and According to Murphy, Roslyn with their boyfriends, and then Sociology and faculty affiliate of violence and immediately faced http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ could not afford a car. Because they end up getting wrapped up Sudoku Syndication the Population Studies Center, the stark physical differences Penn Hills had limited public in these pushers, and then they transportation and few become prostitutes and addicts sidewalks, Roslyn and others and they’ll never recover.”

In addition, Lassiter focused who did not own reliable cars found they had little on how attitudes and perceptions mobility, restricting their of drug use varied between access to resources such as different identities, leading to HARD stores, community centers, policy disparity.

“The war on drugs is in part employment opportunities and about the impossible public social service centers.

“Those with the greatest policy of criminalizing the social difficulty getting around in practices of tens of millions of Penn Hills, those I’m calling white, middle-class Americans homebound, are acutely who are otherwise seen as isolated,” Murphy said. “In law-abiding citizens,” Lassiter addition to mobility, the said. “And this of course affects physical mold of suburbs also what the war on drugs looked has important relations to like in the 1980s. In suburban people’s social networks in neighborhoods, (there’s) more this space. It shapes who they of a public health prevention and (there’s) know and what ties that they campaign, militarized interdiction in nonhave to draw on.”

Matthew Lassiter, professor white urban centers.”

To close, Harley Etienne, of history and urban and regional planning, spoke next assistant professor of urban on the war on drugs in the and regional planning, shared suburbia context from the his “big questions” about urban covering 1950s to 1980s. He discussed neighborhoods, how suburbs were idealized as topics from inner-ring suburbs safe utopias, which meant the to the relationship between influx of drugs into suburbias poor neighborhoods and their © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only.

PAPERS puzzle by sudokusyndication.com were seen as crises. According education systems. In his to Lassiter, mainstream discussion of neighborhood from the Great views characterized ethnic recovery Daily Staff Reporter

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

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Recession, Etienne highlighted Detroit’s housing vacancy issue.

“We can see that there is a massive problem with housing vacancy in Detroit,” Etienne said.

“Part of it is where Detroit started off, and then we have all these other factors like the bankruptcy and the tax foreclosure crisis that exacerbated the issue.”

According to Etienne, his “big questions” all ultimately centered on the empowering the use of the word “ghetto.”

“All this is actually leading to this implicit question, which is, ‘How do we put all this together to reassert the term ‘ghetto’?”

Etienne said. “The use of the word ‘ghetto’ could actually be a provocative way to draw attention to really oppressive conditions in particular neighborhoods. We’ve actually morphed into using euphemisms … Given declining property values, underfunded schools, police violence et. cetera — can we put all this together and come up with a new framework

and justification for using the term ‘ghetto’?”

LSA junior Charde MadoulaBey told The Daily after the event that Lassiter’s presentation struck a chord, as it addressed her own interests.

“I wrote a research paper in a previous class about how the war on drugs was a political agenda to eradicate the Black population through mass incarceration,” Madoula-Bey said.

“With Matthew’s point of view, it was really interesting how it kind of took away the criminalization of African Americans and put it on Mexican Americans, which was a perspective I was totally unaware of.”

However, Madoula-Bey expressed she wished the speakers could have presented more on possible solutions to the issues they discussed.

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LEGISLATION From Page 1A “You need experienced people around, but when you have a lame duck situation like this, (term limits) amplify the problem even more,” Rabhi said. “You have people who have only served for one or two terms that are already running for state Senate. There’s huge turnover. You’ll have a lame duck cycle where almost half the house is not going to be accountable to the positions they’ve been elected to.”

During the most recent lame duck session, Republicans in control of Michigan’s House of Representatives rejected a minimum wage raise and increased the difficulty of putting statewide initiatives on the ballot, complicating planned legislation for Democrats assuming office.

The House’s newly proposed resolution, House Joint Resolution C, would amend section 13, article IV of the Michigan Constitution, calling for the state legislature to adjourn before Election Day and resume work once new representatives have assumed office. Currently, Michigan has a full-time legislature, meaning representatives do not adjourn, even during transitions of power.

In light of this problem, Rabhi explains, Democrats and Republicans have begun to come to a consensus on the issue of lame duck sessions.

According to Rabhi, HJR-C

PFAS From Page 1A According to Park’s research, white women are more likely to contract PFOA, while Black women report the highest levels of PFOS. Park said PFOS is a broader societal issue that cannot be ameliorated through individual decisions.

“My two cents from my studies, we need to better understand the difference between PFOA and PFOS,” Park said. “… PFOS is more related to the environmental contamination, drinking water contamination — that’s why you cannot avoid. So individual recommendation doesn’t work. For PFOA it is more related to the consumerproduct use. That’s why you can recommend them, ‘Don’t use or a little less use your (container for) fast food’ can work. But for PFOS, that should be done at the population level and at the more regulatory level, lowering the standard is the critical one.”

PFAS are released into the environment from manufacturing plants and contaminate water supplies.

According to the city of Ann Arbor, samples collected from the city’s drinking water in the fall of 2018 showed a rise in PFAS levels since 2016, prompting responses from local elected representatives.

Public Health student

LEBANON From Page 1A “LEAP was initially founded in order to bridge the gap where there is not really a lot of English proficiency in Palestinian refugee camps,” Jenna said. “That is mainly because there is not a lot of English-focused education, and the funds for UNWRA do not provide a lot of English lessons.”

Jenna and Eldawy discussed a typical week in the life of a LEAP volunteer, which included English education, art classes, trips to Lebanese cultural sites and lesson planning. Jenna said while her students were passionate about their future careers, they knew Palestinian refugees are barred from working in about 20 professions and struggle to find jobs even if they hold advanced degrees.

“Some days, the (students) come in and they’re having a

News

has sponsors and supporters from both sides of the aisle.

“It’s 100-percent bipartisan,” Rabhi said. “I think the co-sponsorship was 50-50 Dems and Republicans.

It’s one of those issues that a lot of us agree on, and it’s just a matter of making sure the house leadership on the Republican side sees this as a priority as well.”

Public Policy junior Katie Kelly, communications director for the University of Michigan’s chapter of College Democrats, stressed Michigan’s lame duck session has long been an outlet for lobbyists and interest groups to exert disproportionate inf luence on legislation.

“We saw from this last year how dangerous lame duck sessions can be,” Kelly said.

“The legislature this time around tried to end citizenled ballot initiatives as well as undermine the authority of an incoming governor. I think, and the College Dems think, that passing the lame duck legislation will help the state be more transparent in its legislature and help ease the passage of incoming leaders.”

Many on the other side of the aisle, including University’s chapter of College Republicans, echo this sentiment, emphasizing the harm lame duck sessions can assert on the democratic process.

LSA senior Dylan Berger, president of the College Republicans and a columnist for The Daily, said in an email interview the push to

eliminate lame duck sessions signifies a step in the right direction for Michigan.

“Lame duck sessions allow for legislation to be passed with unsavory amounts of inf luence from special interests and without proper debate of the issues,” Berger said. “Michiganders deserve better from their representatives.

Doing away with lame duck sessions here in Michigan would be a victory for good government.”

While a number of Republicans and Democrats appear to align on this issue, in order for the constitutional amendment to be passed, the resolution would have to be approved by the state legislature, placed on the ballot and be approved by the voters during the next state election in November 2020.

Despite the outward agreement on HJR-C, Rusty Hills, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy and campaign manager for former Attorney General Bill Schuette, contends getting the resolution through the state legislature could be a complicated task to achieve.

“It’s just unusual for anyone in public office to give up their powers, whether it’s the executive branch, the judicial branch or the legislative branch,” Hills said. “I think this is going to be a really tough road to hoe. If it did pass and get on the ballot, it would get widespread popular support, but I’m not so sure it’s going to get through the

legislature.”

Despite the public’s strong appetite for reform, according to Hills, a large percentage of representatives would be unlikely to sacrifice the session’s existence. Because the lame duck period is one in which legislation can be advanced en masse, the amendment would reshape the manner and periods in which representatives’ most valued bills can be approved.

“Lame duck is a time to get a lot of things done,” Hills said. “When I worked for Governor (John) Engler, it was a very productive time. We were able to get a lot of legislation passed — quite a lot of it bipartisan, in fact. The fact that some legislators were heading out the door did give us the opportunity to pick up some votes, particularly on long, festering issues that had defied resolution.”

Despite the possibility of opposition ahead, Rabhi, as well as the 13 Republican and 11 other Democratic co-sponsors of the resolution, remain confident HJR-C is a necessary measure for the people of Michigan.

“It’s something that comes up at all the coffee hours and constituent events that I have,” Rabhi said. “This is one of those issues that keeps on resurfacing. People don’t like lame duck; it’s not popular with the voters and I agree with them. It’s not really acceptable to have this period of time where accountability is at rock bottom.”

Andrea Winne, who attended Park’s talk, remarked to The Daily after the speech that she found the levels of PFAS in water supplies unsettling.

“It’s kind of scary how much PFAS is in our water, especially since we don’t know what it does,” Winne said.

Though Park’s research highlighted a correlation between race and the kind of PFAS contracted, it did not track the residential areas or neighborhoods in which women live specifically. He said this information is necessary to determine a reason why Black women contract PFOS more than white women, and why the opposite is true with PFOA. Park said Black and Latina women are disproportionately represented in lower socioeconomic classes, which likely contributes to the problem.

“I cannot say (for sure), because we don’t have information on where they live,” Park said. “We know the study is cities, but we do not know where they live, and so their residential location really close to any contaminate area, treatment plant or whatever, and that’s why we cannot comfortably say, ‘That’s the reason why we see Black women higher,’ but just in general, in environmental disparity study, but more social-economic data of populations, higher proportion in that group is African-

American and Hispanic population, so that’s why they could be at higher risk of this PFOS exposure.”

According to Park, PFOS is especially relevant in the state of Michigan. PFOS can be found in surfactants — substances that reduce surface tension — and are often used to protect workers and aid manufacturing processes.

This is particularly true to auto industries, ubiquitous in Michigan.

“Chrome plating industry, manufacturing companies all around, all this is Michigan, because Michigan is a Motown, an auto industry,” Park said.

“There’s many different plating companies and when they make this inside the car, and this chrome plating is very important to protect the worker, the surfactant is very important to protect the worker and the manufacturing process. They need some type of surfactant, but PFAS is the answer, well, we need to use different surfactant.

But the cost matters. That’s why they’re very resistant to change to something else, but in terms of health, we need to think about whether PFAS is a good option.”

Park said if the government were to mandate a phasing out of PFOS and PFOA, industries are able to develop something else that can serve the same function as PFAS. “One thing I want to point out is if you replace, now PFOS

and PFOA, they phase out ... the industry, they’ll develop something else,” Park said.

“Just forcing the industry to replace is something we need to think about. We need to find the right surfactant.

Otherwise, the health effect remains.”

Many of the effects of PFOS and PFOA remain unknown.

Public Health students and other attendees said they hope to use Park’s seminar to advance their own research and discover exactly how PFAS in its different forms affects people’s health.

Public Health student Jarrod Eaton is conducting a capstone project on PFAS’s relation to metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Eaton said the seminar presented by Park spurred ideas to apply to his own project.

“It definitely gave me a couple of different things to think about for my capstone project and how I approach things, so overall, I thought it was very helpful,” Eaton said.

“A couple of different topics came up about what could be confounding, some of the different results, which is something I definitely will take a look at in my own research.

One thing that I thought about today was the issue of exercise and maybe seeing how that confounds the results. I think that’s something interesting that I’ll definitely be taking a look at.”

bad day and their motivation is very low, because all they’re thinking is ‘Ok, say I do this, and then I take the entrance exams and I get a donor to pay for my college, I do all of that and I don’t even end up getting a job,’” Jenna said.

Eldawy said the decaying infrastructure in many Lebanese camps is discouraging for many refugees and makes it difficult for them to continue their education.

“Over half of the Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon live inside of the 12 camps,” Eldawy said. “This leads to a lot of issues like overcrowding, poor housing, sewage water issues and electric issues.

We were living outside of the camps, directly outside of Burj Shemali, and we experienced power shortages hourly almost. That was not even inside of the camps.”

Jenna said she hoped students understood that even though many Palestinians

in the Lebanese refugee camps were born in Lebanon and have never seen their homeland, they are proud of their Palestinian identities.

“There is a saying: ‘The old will die and the young will forget,’” Jenna said. “When it comes to Palestinian refugees, that has never been more untrue. A lot of the older people there hold on very strongly to their memories and very strongly to their roots and that translates. You see how they passed it down to their kids and their grandkids, because their grandkids were the same people in our classrooms drawing and talking about their homeland because they know and they fully believe they’re going to reclaim their homeland one day.”

LSA senior Ahmed Alabed said the mistreatment of Palestinian refugees was shocking, especially because both Palestinians and Lebanese identify as Arabs.

“To see inside of Lebanon is so different than inside of the West Bank,” Alabed said.

“It was really surprising to me to see how Palestinians were treated inside of Lebanon.

I thought that, ‘Oh, Arabs would be there for each other,’ but I feel like it’s just as bad as in the West Bank.”

LSA sophomore Maya Chamra said hearing about the Palestinian refugee crisis from volunteers who experienced life in the camps first-hand was more powerful than learning about it from the news or in class.

“The hopelessness that the Palestinians experience because they face so many barriers to get out of the camps,” Chamra said. “I think that’s really important. You hear about the struggles that they may face, you might read about it in the news, but when you hear personal experiences, you hear it directly and it hits a lot closer and you realize the gravity of the situation.”

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 — 3A

LOVE From Page 1A Kempster and Jones began their keynote presentation by discussing what a healthy relationship entails.

By reflecting on their own relationship, the two stressed how communication, trust, boundaries and understanding play into a productive and loving relationship.

They then discussed how their identities as trans women impacted their relationship and have forged how they see their individual roles within their relationship.

“Us as trans people is a huge part of our relationship,” Jones said. “I am very comfortable speaking outwardly in public, that’s just part of how I navigate my gender … Corey is a woman with a deeper voice.

When we’re in public, I know to step up in that moment … stepping up for our safety is super important to me.”

With Valentine’s Day coming up, Kempster discussed her conflicting views on the holiday. She often sees it as socially problematic, but also recognizes it as an opportunity to celebrate loved ones.

“So much of Valentine’s Day can occasionally be very hurtful,” Kempster said. “It ends up being very heteronormative. It implies that the relationships in your life aren’t important if you don’t have romantic relationships or your romantic dynamics are different than what is celebrated in our society, but I think we can build better views and practices under these days. Any day that gives space for us to celebrate each other and tell someone we love them and share how we’re feeling with them is a beautiful day.”

During a student panel portion of the event, when student couples engaged with Jones and Kempster on ideas surrounding relationships, LSA Junior Mike Zlonchevich discussed how his girlfriend encouraged him to expand who he celebrated on Valentine’s Day. “She asked me what I was doing for my family on Valentine’s Day...I had never thought of it that way

PATAGONIA From Page 1A “This community is surprisingly very relatable,” Henriksen said. “A lot of the topics they talk about are still very relevant to 21st century politics. We live in a country where identity is really important.

They have really interesting views about race; many people today can identify and relate to these stories from over a hundred years ago.”

Henriksen’s project is funded through a grant from the Humanities Collaboratory, a research initiative established at the University of Michigan in the summer of 2017 that provides resources for humanities-specific scholars to work on more researchbased projects. The grant gave him the opportunity to create the “From Africa to Patagonia: Voices of Displacement project. Due to the complicated nature of the community, he realized this was not just a linguistics centralized study, but one that incorporated a wide variety of different humanities fields.

“We needed to be able to research the community not in just linguistic terms but also in terms of their racial views, their historical views, their views on ethnicity in race — as they have a really long history with Apartheid,” Henriksen said. “So we realized as linguists, we weren’t really trained in ways that would allow us to approach these questions on the human experience.

So we knew we had to work with other collaborators.”

The project is composed of an interdisciplinary team of U-M faculty, post-doctoral students, graduate students and undergraduates, totaling about 40 members altogether. Each of these members stem from an array of different fields, including history, linguistics, literature, anthropology and much more. The team has visited Patagonia once in 2014 and again in 2017, conducting more than 100 interviews in both Afrikaans and Spanish.

Ryan Szpiech, associate professor of Spanish, looks more into the religious aspect of the relation between the Afrikaans’ identity, but because of the collaborative project, has begun to branch out within his own research. Szpiech noted how certain values in humanities fields tend to limit collaboration.

“In the humanities, we don’t tend to work together,” Szpiech said.

before. Up until that point, it had always been about the person you are with. Now, I’m planning something for my brother...It’s for everyone I love in my life.”

SAPAC volunteer Claire Volkert, an LSA sophomore, told The Daily after the talk that the event was purposefully held close to Valentine’s Day in an effort to open up new avenues of discussion surrounding healthy relationships.

“With the event being around Valentine’s Day, we wanted to escape the heteronormative narrative that normally surrounds the day, and talk about how all different kinds of relationships can be healthy,” Volkert said. “We want to open up conversations to be more inclusive and create an environment where everyone knows that they deserve to have a healthy relationship and can recognize the values that go into that kind of relationship.

Kempster concluded the event with a reflection on what it means to love another. She said to her, Valentine’s Day is about more than romantic love.

“With the falling in love trope, the only harm of it is that we close ourselves off to all the ways that we’re loving people,” Kempster said. “So often, we’re taught that there is one kind of love that must be elevated above all else. Love doesn’t always have to be hierarchical …

The more we can love, the better our lives will be.”

LSA sophomore Mikayla Kruse discussed how her women’s studies classes inspired her to learn more about couples that fall outside of heteronormative labels.

“I’ve only really seen heteronormative couples in day-to-day life, so I thought it would be interesting to learn what it’s like to be outside the gender binary and heterosexual assumptions,” Kruse said.

“I’ve taken a few women’s studies classes, and you learn that people are outside of the gender binary and most things related to couples are aimed at heterosexual couple …

It was interesting and I wanted to learn about what that’s like in real life, on a day-to-day basis.”

“We read and write by ourselves because of the emphasis in the humanities on originality and the form of an argument when writing and researching. In the humanities, there is a lot of stress on how elegant your rhetoric is and how original your ideas are, which really does limit itself in terms of collaboration.”

Szpiech said he appreciates how this project has allowed him to explore disciplines he was previously unfamiliar with.

“Co-writing, co-authoring pieces together is so stimulating, it has pushed us all too start talking about things we’re not fully comfortable with,” Szpiech said. “That is something interesting about the collaboratory; it’s not a whole bunch of experts that are fully informed of their subject. Everyone has their area, but we have all sort of branched out into new areas to try on new things. Because we are working together, we feel support for each other.”

Similarly, Myrna CintronValentin, a doctoral candidate in psychology, had to shift her view of a “traditional lab” and learn new skills like archiving, of which she had no previous knowledge.

“I’ve worked in a variety of different research labs — coming from psychology, I’ve had experience with interdisciplinary labs before where people from different areas breed together their knowledge into a project, but never quite as I’ve experienced here where I feel as if people’s different academic areas of experience really come together to generate new things,” Cintron-Valentin said.

“From the beginning, everyone was deeply involved. It was not just one person. All of the faculty members and even the student interest have been integrated into this one big project.”

One of the components of the lab is the incorporation of more than 25 undergraduate students. Henriksen’s aim is to combat some of the problems faced by the liberal arts in higher education, such as the decline in enrollment numbers in light of rising student debt, the 2008 financial crisis and the job market. He hopes to re-imagine humanities research and education within its place in 21st-century academia.

Read more online at

michigandaily.com

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, February 6, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

DANIEL GREENE AND LLOYD LYONS | OP-ED

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SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN

The case for public school advertising regulations

S

ince Michigan education business, taking many forms lobbyist Betsy Devos’ — online ads, newspaper ads, appointment as secretary billboards. Michigan public of the Department school districts of Education, and public school the sorry state of academies that set public education in advertising budgets Michigan has been play a role, with well documented. $6.25 million spent According to in the 2017-2018 the National school year. There Assessment of are a number of Education Progress, egregious examples Michigan students individual SOLOMON of have seen the lowest schools spending MEDINTZ excessive amounts. proficiency growth on standardized test scores of Michigan Connections any state in the country.

Academy spent about $750,000 Most education reformers on advertising in the 2015want to increase education 2016 school year alone, Detroit spending as a way to Public Schools spent $100,000 counteract these trends. on the “Students Rise. We All They point to the fact that Rise.” campaign and National Michigan ranks 29th in per- Heritage Academies spent pupil spending, that adjusted approximately $375,000 on for inf lation, we are spending one ad buy in 2014 in response less money per student today the Detroit Free Press’ report than we did in 2011, and that $4.5 billion directed for public schools has instead gone to higher education.

While proposals to increase spending are well-intentioned, convincing the Republicanled legislature to substantially increase education funding is difficult. I have seen this myself. Last year, I went to Lansing to talk to state legislators about increasing funding for community and junior colleges in Michigan. on charter schools. These Every Republican I spoke expenditures are harmful to to dismissed our proposal students and a gross misuse as soon as I explained that of public resources. Public it would require funding school advertising spending increases. They responded takes away money that could asking specifically what I be invested in students. would want to take away Michigan should not let public funding from and when I schools and public school offered my suggestions, they academies advertise without told me that if there were regulation. extra funds, fixing the roads The first reason to limit was their priority. school advertising is that Since state legislators when some schools increase were not willing to increase their advertising budgets, education funding, I started other schools are incentivized thinking about how the state to do so as well, and this makes government can invest more sense. If some schools are in students with the money getting their name out, other already appropriated and schools trying to compete for quickly arrived at public students will spend more on school advertising. advertising.

Education advertising Another reason to limit in the United States is big school advertising is that

Unregulated advertising hurts schools that invest in their students

parents should be deciding where to send their students based on school results, not advertising prowess.

Schools spend on advertising because it works, meaning it attracts students. But what decisions are made should be determined by school quality.

When schools advertise without regulation, parents are making decisions with the wrong data. The right data exists on the Parent Dashboard for School Transparency on the Michigan School Data website.

Additionally, unregulated advertising hurts schools that invest in their students.

According to a member of Education Trust Midwest, low-performing charter schools that spend more on advertising are able to attract more students than highperforming schools with low advertising budgets. Perhaps the schools that spend more on advertising are not investing in their students, which could lead to lower test scores.

School advertising does not help anyone. It encourages parents to make bad decisions, takes money away from classrooms and takes away from teacher pay. The solution is to set a yearly cap for the amount of public school district and public school academy advertising, based on the public school district with the lowest projected advertising budget. Setting a cap for public school spending on advertising would equalize the playing field, forcing schools to invest in students and compete for new students based on merit.

Instead of relentlessly advocating to a Republican legislature deaf to increases in public education appropriations, education advocates should look at how the state government can ensure that schools are investing their funds in students.

Solomon Medintz can be reached at smedintz@umich.edu.

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A message to our peers

O

ur campus has been a trying environment for many in the last year.

The divisive national dialogue, volatile campus climate and the University of Michigan’s shortcomings on the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center report have made it difficult to see the University as the symbiotic community we all hoped it would be. As we navigate these times together, we wanted to reach out to you, our fellow Wolverines, to remind you of what lies in the core of the University’s ethos: You belong here.

Whether you’re new to Ann Arbor or are toward the end of your Michigan experience, you have a right to a welcoming campus community where you feel safe, included and empowered. We at Central Student Government know the University has not always succeeded in providing that, especially to our students whose identities are underrepresented or underserved. CSG’s purpose is to act as the voice for all students, conveying their concerns and working to ensure the University upholds its commitment to enriching the future of all of our peers.

Recently, the concerns we’ve heard have centered around our campus’s inclusivity and safety, so we wanted to start an open discussion about our efforts to ensure this campus is a welcoming environment for all visible and invisible identities.

As we navigate the implementation of the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan, CSG seeks to expand the current administrative and academic focus and turn toward what many Wolverines consider to be the most critical element: everyday, peer-to-peer interactions. We recognize that large, institutional changes are critical to ridding ourselves of systemic injustice, but we feel our Michigan community has lost its focus on improving the Michigan experience in the short term as well. Our peer-topeer interactions impact current and soon-to-be Wolverines and illuminate the experiences and struggles of our peers, hopefully

allowing us to better understand our diverse environment.

By transforming campus buzzwords such as DEI, inclusivity and diversity into more digestible concepts, we can initiate a cultural shift that encourages ownership and accountability on campus.

Accordingly, the executive branch of CSG created two new positions this past summer: an executive diversity officer and an external relations officer. In addition to improving CSG’s internal inclusivity, representation and accessibility, these two officers are establishing a student organization liaison program that, among other initiatives, will help student organizations construct and pursue individual, self-created Diversity and Inclusivity plans.

You have a right to a welcoming community on campus

are proud to introduce our new initiative: the Narrative, Equity and Transformation plan.

The new NET plan will allow student organizations to benefit from reviewing their recruitment strategies, reflecting on their leadership and membership compositions and expanding inclusive social event programming. The NET plan will help organizations reconsider simple logistics like meeting times and increase general awareness within organizations. The CSG team will administer a demographic survey of the organization’s membership, work with current leaders to identify and reduce barriers for participation, offer inclusive programming and social event options and help create multi-year strategic plans.

Though the impact may not be immediately apparent, CSG believes its commitment to promoting inclusive practices within student organizations will be a worthy investment in shifting campus climate and culture toward one that is more accepting and welcoming of diverse identities. Our journey will inevitably have obstacles; we won’t always get it right, but all of us as student leaders must lead by example for the students in our organizations — and other leaders on campus.

We are asking you, our peers, to join us in confronting the issue of inclusivity within our communities at the University. Ensure the organizations you’re a part of opt into CSG’s new liaison program and NET plan, and hold your organization’s leadership accountable for pursuing inclusive change. It’s on all of us to help current and rising students commit to the cultural change. If we strive to be the Leaders and the Best, then it is time for a Michigan experience open to all.

CSG hopes to use the institutional and existing culture surrounding student organizations as a mechanism to improve campus inclusivity.

As we work to make the campus more welcoming and safe, we must remember that academic and administrative initiatives can only go so far. New students often join student organizations to create a more navigable community. It is a disservice to students, and to the ideals of the University, when students feels unwelcome because they do not see their identities ref lected in the organization’s membership.

The identity barrier serves to perpetuate a sense of exclusion. Daniel Greene is the Central Student We at CSG have seen our Government President and Lloyd Lyons is the Central Student Government organization suffer from a Executive Diversity Officer at the similar negative feedback loop, University of Michigan. They can be and as we address our own reached at lloydll@umich.edu and shortcomings, we hope to help greeneda@umich.edu. other student organizations do the same. Accordingly, we

JASON DEAN | OP-ED

“

Moving on from “you guys”

Are you guys ready to move on?” Looking back, it’s an odd thing for me to say to a mostly-female physics study group. But it wasn’t until it was pointed out to me at a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training seminar that I began to question the ubiquity of America’s favorite secondperson plural pronoun, “You guys.” A second-person plural pronoun is used to address or refer to a group of people you are talking to. Basically, it’s the plural form of “you.”

“You guys” has been criticized by a remarkably intersectional audience, from California tech startups to senior citizens. In 2002, Sherryl Kleinman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, described the term as, “a reinforcer of a system in which ‘man’ in the abstract and men in the flesh are privileged over women.” Defenders of “you guys” often justify its use by stating that it’s usually intended and understood to be genderneutral when used to address people. “Guys” in this case has been bleached.

In other words, because it is seen as gender-neutral in this usage, it has lost part of its original gendered meaning. But does bleaching “you guys” make it unproblematic?

When I was growing up, similar logic was used to explain, if not defend, the use of “gay” as a pejorative (e.g. “those shoes are gay”). In 2008, a compiler of a slang dictionary told the BBC that “gay” has “nothing at all to do with hostility to homosexuals,” and that it was “nearly always used in contexts where sexual orientation and sexuality are completely irrelevant.” This is a technically correct description of how the term is used as a pejorative, but the distinction did little to assuage my feelings of isolation

as a bisexual teenager. It was effectively impossible for me to separate the bleached meaning of “gay” from the non-bleached meaning, despite being told to explicitly and implicitly.

I think the same is true for “you guys.” Though “you guys” has become gender-neutral, “guys” is decidedly not genderneutral in all contexts. As one acerbic Twitter user points out: “If you think ‘guys’ is genderneutral, ask a straight man how many guys he’s slept with.”

So, at least for me, it’s hard to divorce the gender-neutral use of “you guys” from gendered uses of “guys” in general.

Nevertheless, replacing “you guys” is still quite difficult — after 20 years of saying it, it’s hard to avoid slipping it in, especially when I’m not specifically focusing on avoiding it. Part of the reason why “you guys” has so much staying power is a lack of alternatives.

English hasn’t had a universal second-person plural pronoun since we ditched the singular “thou,” and the originally plural “you” began to be used primarily as the singular second-person pronoun. Other terms are regionally popular in the U.S., such as “yins” in urban Pennsylvania, “yous/youse” in coastal New England, and of course, “y’all” in the South and elsewhere. Of course, we all have perceptions about regional dialects which may make it difficult to adopt a regional term. “You all” has become my preferred pronoun instead of my native “you guys,” as to me, it seems regionally neutral and sufficiently warm.

Of course, some may wonder why I’m picking this battle instead of focusing on more important subjects. “You guys” does seem pretty innocuous in the grand scheme of things.

But that innocuity is precisely what drives people like Sherryl

Kleinman to label “you guys” as the “most insidious” example of sexist language. There are certainly worse things to call women than a “guy,” but these worse terms are often policed and immediately called out.

“You guys” isn’t.

Some might also wonder why I don’t focus on “actual issues” rather than just words.

But changing the way we use language is one of the few things that anyone can do to combat those “actual issues.”

I can’t solve the gender wage gap by personally implementing sweeping policy changes, but I can, for instance, stop using “you guys” to address my mostlyfemale physics study group in order to combat attitudes that STEM is a male domain.

Changing “you guys” is ultimately not as difficult a task as it seems. “You guys” has been in existence for only 100 years, and has been popular for only about 50. Furthermore, there’s been some demand for more gender-inclusive language on the University of Michigan campus, as Central Student Government passed a resolution last year encouraging the use of more inclusive terms. And language change can happen in relatively short periods. Back when my parents were in college, “he” was prescribed by many sources as the most acceptable pronoun to use when referring to someone of indeterminate gender (“the male embraces the female,” don’t you know?). That’s changed.

Perhaps 30 years from now, the defenses of “you guys” will be seen as equally quaint, perhaps not. But, in any case, I’m ready to move on.

Jason Dean is a senior in LSA studying English and Ecology/ Evolutionary Biology and can be reached at jasdean@umich.edu.

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 — 5A

the overwhelming nature of trigger-happy, over-friendly film enthusiasts. Either way, it’s a reminder of how fun and strange the blurring between the industry and the public can be, especially in a setting as temporary as Sundance.

SUNDANCE COVERAGE

‘Hala’:

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Sundance Film Fest: Day 5 SAM ROSENBERG Daily Arts Writer

Much like seeing a groundhog on Groundhog Day, celebrity sightings at Sundance are often serendipitous. You have to be in the right place at the right time in order to even steal a quick glance, but the most obvious route to take in spotting some movie stars is going to a panel discussion. On day five of the festival, I had the pleasure of watching a loose, funny conversation between Jenny Slate (“Obvious Child”) and Ed Helms (“The Office”), moderated by New York Times pop culture commentator Kyle Buchanan. Some questions revolved around the Sundance premieres of their new films — Slate with “The Sunlit Night” and Helms with “Corporate

Animals” — but the two comedic actors also shared some lovely anecdotes about working in the same field of entertainment, being real-life friends, the world of stand-up vs. the world of acting, their past experiences at Sundance and overcoming stage fright.

After the chat, I ventured to Atticus, a nearby coffee shop/ bookstore hybrid on Main Street, where I spent a few hours writing reviews before heading to my only screening of the day, Minhal Baig’s “Hala.”

At one point, in walked Tobey Maguire (“Spider-Man”), who produced this year’s Audience Award winner “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” as did the rest of the main cast: Jillian Bell (“22 Jump Street”), Lil’ Rel Howery (“Get Out”) and Utkarsh Ambudkar (“Pitch Perfect”).

The timing couldn’t have been

more perfect. And yet, even with this pleasant surprise, there’s a sense of unease that comes with finding some famous folk floating around Park City.

By having to juggle their status with the films they’re promoting at the festival, celebrities are probably already well aware of the fact that their presence is on full blast.

This is not to say that every filmmaker or actor at Sundance is closed off from interacting with their fans — flocks of movie-goers, for example, went to congratulate and talk with a receptive Baig about “Hala” following the post-screening Q&A — but there’s a certain distance that comes with which celebs you see. Perhaps it’s just my own insecurity with treating celebrities like they’re on a pedestal — they’re normal people, too! — and

For a film that should’ve been groundbreaking in de-homogenizing the comingof-age genre, “Hala” is oddly formulaic and dry. Based on the acclaimed 2016 short of the same name, writer-director Minhal Baig’s underwhelming bildungsroman centers on a Muslim-American girl named Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan, “Blockers”), who finds herself struggling to reconcile the contradictory nature of her hyphenated identity.

Hala is a gifted, studious writer, often waxing poetic through narration and receiving encouragement from her attorney father Zahid (newcomer Hatta Azad Khan) and English teacher Mr. Lawrence (Gabriel Luna, “Temple Grandin”). Her biggest obstacle, however, lies within the tense relationship with her strict, devout mother Eram (Purbi Joshi, “Damadamm!”), who criticizes Hala for her lack of enthusiasm over practicing Islam and spending more quality time with Zahid.

Despite a promising setup, “Hala” hits many of the predictable dramatic beats and universal conflicts that one could find a typical film about high school — a fractured home life, an uncertain future, first crushes, feeling like the

end of the world could happen at any moment. The only difference is that the story is positioned through the lens of a Muslim-American teenager, which certainly helps “Hala” distinguish itself among the many coming-of-age flicks revolving around white boys that have dominated young adult cinema for quite some time. “Hala” even includes a few thematic echoes of Greta Gerwig’s transcendent “Lady Bird,” mirroring that film’s dysfunctional mother-daughter dynamics, unabashed display of burgeoning female sexuality and spiritual emphasis on the meaning of its protagonist’s name (Hala means “halo” in Arabic).

Unfortunately, “Hala” is nowhere near as nuanced, well-written and honest as “Lady Bird,” stumbling through its tried-and-true plot with aggressively on-the-nose dialogue and uninteresting, dimensionless characters.

Eram is a particularly egregious example of a rigid immigrant mother stereotype, a depiction reminiscent of Kumail Nanjiani’s character’s mother in “The Big Sick.” Additionally, Hala’s love interest Jesse (Jack Kilmer, “Palo Alto”) is vastly underwritten, his main traits only being that he shares the same love for literature and skateboarding as Hala. But above everything, Hala’s own motivations for what she wants to do with her life remain unclear, despite Viswanathan’s versatile, sensitive portrayal.

Her desire for sexual and personal agency in a restrictive home environment invites slivers of inspired,

BOOK REVIEW

FILM REVIEW

‘White Book’ is unfocused EMILY YANG

Daily Arts Writer

Han Kang opens “The White Book” with a list that could have been a collection of chapter headings: Swaddling bands Newborn gown

fiction offers, but it doesn’t really commit to a narrative arc or any of the novelistic infrastructure.

The work is instead structured into fragments resembling prose poems, with varying levels of narrative involvement — a sort of an incomplete photo album.

By the time Kang gets going with her elliptical task, she’s already juggling themes and motifs. The brutal history of Warsaw is placed next to her mother’s miscarriage

Salt Snow Ice Moon Rice The book is about the color white and the objects that embody it, but from the beginning we are to understand that white is a way into an oblique or repressed feeling — she writes of “sifting” the white words through herself, drawing sentences out “like the strange, sad shriek the bow draws from a metal string.” For the purposes of this book, the color white is somewhere between a tool and a door. Her narrative and thematic goals are clear from the start — the book is, in part, an extended rumination on a miscarriage her mother had two years before she was born, the child’s face “as white as a crescentmoon rice cake.”

The book resists classification: it’s told in third person, but for the most part it seems as though the events in the book mirror Kang’s life. Kang’s mother had the miscarriage described in the book, and large parts of it are set in snowed-in Warsaw, where Kang went after finishing her second novel, “Human Acts.”

This heavily autobiographical work thus assumes some of the characteristics of a novel (third person, assumption that anything can be fictional) for the distance

‘The White Book’ Han Kang Hogarth Books Feb. 19, 2019

and her own second-hand trauma from the event. White seems like it could be a sinew between these disparate concerns, or as Kang writes, white could be “something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound.”

It’s unclear what Kang sees in the color white that makes her want to combine it with trauma and death. White appears in the book fairly invariably as a symbol of cleanliness, order, blankness. Fog “scrubs” the boundary between the sky and the ground, a white bird alights on her head and continues flying, people killed in the Warsaw uprising are reincarnated as white butterflies. A few entries in the book point to a white-hot zenith of pain, but for the most part, white is a one-dimensional other for suffering and ugliness. At one point she writes of a slushy snow quickly disappearing, a “whiteness that seemed too perfect to be real, showing up the shabby figures that moved against its canvas.”

A typical entry will be a brief burst of anecdote, or else a scene set and interwoven with rumination.

“On cold mornings, that first white cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies warmth.” For Kang, the natural world and the human body are co-expressive, and she rarely finds any contrivance at all to link them. “There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality.

Sleet falls as she walks these streets, holding this knowledge inside her. Sleet that leaves cheeks and eyebrows heavy with moisture. Everything passes.”

Sleet is right next to fate, clouds are right next to bodies. It has a pleasingly disjunct haiku-esque effect at times, but more often than not the adjacencies don’t quite stick.

“Where the thin sheet of ice meets still water, the ducks float side by side on its grayish-blue surface, necks bowed to drink.

Before turning back from them, she asks herself: Do you want to go on? To push forward? Is it worth it?” There isn’t a clear association between what Kang is describing and her emotional state — something there that is hidden just below the language, that isn’t quite being conveyed, the gap widening into one that can’t be effectively bridged by free association.

This discontinuous style is baked into the form of the work itself. It’s hard to say whether there’s any real linearity to the book at all, any sense of progression. Kang’s thirdperson persona simply wanders around in the same white space for the duration of the book. This might be honest to the experience of emotional pain, but it also means that Kang’s book combines nonprogression with non-specificity — the book frequently feels like it’s not really communicating anything in particular about the color white, or about grief.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

HOGARTH BOOKS

soulful introspection. This contrast becomes immediately transparent in the first two scenes of the film, where Hala intones an Islamic prayer off-screen before the camera cuts to her masturbating in a bathtub. Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” also presents a neat juxtaposition between Hala’s inner turmoil and external circumstances, acting as both a reading assignment for her English class and an intriguing, if somewhat lazy form of exploring the film’s theme of self-sufficiency. But during the messy third act, that desire reaches an unsettling low involving her English teacher, which provokes a surprising but unearned reversal between her parents.

Considering how the story is based loosely on Baig’s own life experience, it’s somewhat exasperating that “Hala” fails to convey any new, insightful truths about the rocky tidal wave of growing up. The respectable and quite welcome normalization of Hala’s storyline is unquestionably a start. There’s no mention or showcase of Islamophobia, allowing the audience to recognize Hala’s problems beyond the preconceived expectations of what it’s like to live as an oppressed minority in America. In fact, the specificity of Hala’s identity might resonate much more with those who see this film as an achievement in fighting the underrepresentation of Muslim-American women.

And while “Hala” should be celebrated as such, audiences deserve a much better fleshedout story.

PLAYMOUNT PRODUCTIONS

Why ‘Who Will Write Our History’ is as special as it is BECKY PORTMAN Daily Arts Wrtier

This past Sunday, on a bitterly cold Holocaust Memorial Day, Roberta Grossman’s (“Seeing Allred”) documentary, “Who Will Write Our History” screened in 350 venues in 55 countries across the world. The State Theater was one of those participating establishments.

“Who Will Write Our History” details the brave endeavors of Emanuel Ringelblum — a PolishJewish historian — and his collaborators who worked to compile an historical archive in real time of the experiences of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Together with over 60 others, Ringelblum created the Oyneg Shabes Archive. The name comes from the Yiddish “The joy of the Sabbath,” a way to keep the operation under wraps and maintain the group’s secrecy.

The goal of Oyneg Shabes was to ensure that the Jews would be able to tell their own stories and take ownership of their narratives. Many of the archival material is seemingly ordinary; from simple accounts of daily life in the ghetto to newspaper clippings and photographs. Yet, this is exactly what Oyneg Shabes wanted to capture: the everyday lives of Jews living in the ghetto, what they ate, what they felt, what they endured.

The documentary takes an unconventional form, using a combination of archival material,

talking heads footage and re-enacted scenes. The wealth of archival footage is astounding and disturbing. Much of the footage from the Warsaw Ghetto depicts starving bodies piled like logs along the streets, shells of human beings deprived of the most basic of human needs. The scenes portrayed by the actors flow seamlessly into the archival footage, but the talking heads feel somewhat jarring. Occasionally,

‘Who Will Write Our History’ Playmount Productions

the documentary feels more like an historical drama than a documentary. Nevertheless, the film is a powerful one, educating the masses about crucial players in history who have long been overlooked.

The film is filled with an abundance of poetic narration of accounts from the archive.

For example, Rachel Auerbach, a writer and contributor to Oyneg Shabes, recalled the pain and longing she felt seeing the abandoned belongings of those deported after the liquidation of the ghetto. It is worth noting Auerbach, a Jew and a woman, faced double the discrimination and exclusion from writing. Her beautiful prose still drips with emotion even in its translation.

Ringelblum describes the streets of the ghetto as looking like Hollywood — everywhere you looked was covered with stars (referring to the armbands emblazoned with the Star of David that Jews were forced to wear). In another entry from Ringelblum, embodied by the voice of Adrian Brody (“The Pianist”), he asks, does the world know our suffering, and if they do, why are they silent?

Auerbach was one of the three survivors of the 60 members of Oyneg Shabes.

She, together with Hersh and Bluma Wasser, uncovered two out of three of the buried caches of the archive.

Ringelblum, who was hiding in a bunker underneath a Polish gardener’s green house was discovered and sent to a death camp along with his wife and twelve-year-old son.

Hersh Wasser was the only one who knew where the archives were located. The third cache is believed to be buried beneath the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw. As one young contributor, Dawid Graber, noted in his last will and testament, “What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world, we buried in the ground.”

The film ends by informing the audience that in 1999 Poland added three works to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register; the scientific work of Copernnicus, Chopin’s masterpieces and the Oyneg Shabes archives.

“Who Will Write Our History” asks us to question the perspective of history and reminds us that political resistance comes in a number of ways.

Arts

6A — Wednesday, February 6, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

DAILY ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN

ALBUM REVIEW

Boogie’s latest is the future The fury of Fyre Festival JIM WILSON

Daily Arts Writer

Prior to the release of Boogie’s Shady Records debut album, it was unclear how the label’s backing would assist him. After all, Shady Records is not exactly known for promoting its newly signed artists or giving them creative freedom; just look at the label debuts from Conway and Yelawolf. It’s clear that Yelawolf had little creative control over his own project, and Conway’s mixtape, while good, received virtually no promotion and generated no buzz.

However, this was not the case for Boogie.

Right out of the gate, it was clear that the album came out exactly how Boogie imagined.

“Tired/Reflection,” the opening track of Everythings for Sale, is highlighted by lush, soulful productions littered with vocal samples. On the song, Boogie questions his critics and, in turn, himself. He ponders their critique and if it’s even worth trying to change himself as he continues to make mistakes. As he reflects, a gunshot rings out and the beat becomes more intense.

On the chorus, Boogie raps, “(C)ome and save me, I feel threatened / Think I ran into a dead end, uh / Ain’t no point in using weapons, no / I’m at war with my reflection, uh,” fully explaining his predicament that will carry across the entire album.

Boogie is at his best as he reflects on his relationships, his shortcomings in them and his attempts to get better.

“Swap Meet” is an appreciation

the lifestyle that others expect from him. He wants to live his own life without having to deal with the industry expects from him. These songs, as great as they are, stick out like a sore thumb in an album reliant on somber, introspective tracks.

The main problem with this album is its pacing. It jumps from slow, laidback cuts to high tempo songs, even though each track delves into similar themes. It is a little jarring to listen to “Rainy Days” and then, two songs later, hear the heartbreaking, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuahassisted “Whose Fault.” The lack of sonic cohesion between songs hurts the album a little, but by no means does it ruin it.

On Everythings for Sale, Boogie manages to find his sound and his place in the rap scene. Given that he has a great ear for beats, all he needs to do is fine-tune the synergy between his sound and his subject matter. With this in mind, it is clear that Boogie has an incredible album within him, but it is a matter of him taking his time and realizing exactly what it is that he wants to accomplish.

Everythings for Sale Boogie Shady Records

of Boogie’s girlfriend, stating that he is willing to bargain everything he has, no matter how little he brings to the table, in exchange for her love. Album highlight “Skydive” finds the Compton rapper pleading with his partner to be sure of their relationship before they both find themselves jumping into it too quickly.

Even the more uptempo songs on the album, like “Soho” featuring JID and “Rainy Days” featuring Eminem, are mostly contemplative. “Soho” outlines Boogie’s discontent for

NEW MEDIA NOTEBOOK

GAFFEN RECORDS

On loving earnestly, in full ASIF BECHER Daily Arts Writer

Robert Smith said that after he wrote “Friday I’m In Love,” he slipped into a kind of “drugfueled paranoia” in which he found himself calling everyone he knew in the music business, panicked because he was sure that he had somehow plagiarized the chord progression. There was an effusive quality to the melody that felt too familiar, too easy, too obvious to be real, as if the song had always existed.

I don’t blame him for being paranoid — it’s a perfect song.

Like really, fully, honest to God perfect — the kind of classic I can imagine playing softly on the last radio on earth after plural apocalypses. The world could burn, but “Friday I’m In Love” would remain and the aliens would at least have something beautiful to remember us by.

It’s built out of the sort of joy that lifts you from your feet, but is still suffused with a sweet, sad urgency in Smith’s voice that pierces through the warmth the song’s scaffolding is built on.

You’ve never once had to think about the lyrics to understand perfectly what the song is about, but if you do think about them you’re pulled into a swirling rush of love and longing. With every verse another week has passed, and when you reach the bridge, “sleek as a shriek / spinning round and round,” you’re brought to a new place entirely.

Smith, who was probably best known at the time for writing moody, gothic pieces notorious for their brooding complexity, told Spin Magazine in an interview that he went through hundreds of drafts for “Friday’s” lyrics, trying to, “...hit something that’s not cringing — a simplicity and naiveté that communicates.

There’s a dumbness that sort of cracks.”

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately — about art that doesn’t exactly articulate

anything complicated or particularly specific but cracks you open anyway, not with a blunt force punch of drama or pathos, but with the sweet and awful earnestness of witnessing something unbearably true. It’s like this time, a few winters ago, I was in the dining hall, freezing cold, panicking about something that was probably dumb and looking over at the table next to me where there was a couple.

They were holding hands and staring at each other with an open-hearted tenderness all over their faces. I had to look away almost immediately because it was way too intimate, too embarrassing to watch people feeling so deeply and so openly.

There’s a reason we say “I feel so attacked right now” — when a feeling is precisely rendered, its intimacy feels like violent intrusion.

I think the art that depicts joy the best has a similar effect. It’s rare, but I’m finding myself less and less interested in anything that doesn’t hit this hard, mostly because the medium through which I discover 99% of the art I love — the internet — makes me numb. Not in the sense that it bores me, but that I think it’s done something to me on a psychological level that’s difficult to define, but feels real anyway.

There’s that scene in “Eighth Grade” where Kayla is lying in bed, scrolling through her phone and we see the changing colored lights flashing across her face along with a montage of all the things she’s seeing — a Jimmy Fallon clip, a Tumblr post about the bees, a picture of the cool girl in class on Instagram, a catty tweet, a Trump tweet, a steady IV drip of information — and it feels so familiar. I’ve been Kayla so many times, sitting for hours experiencing content with nothing really reaching me. My attention is captured but my heart isn’t and the result is a feeling of relentless sameness in the art and media I’m consuming day in and day out.

Some days just feel like an unending feed of content that flits by in a listless haze, everything blurring together and humming at the same frequency, an inescapable low drone. It leaves me uneasy when I look up from my computer, like I’m in this liminal space between thinking and not thinking, feeling and not feeling.

Bo Burnham said in an interview with Rookie: “(The internet) is everything. It’s overstimulating, it’s numbing. We’re hyperconnected, we’re super lonely ... the problem with the internet is indescribably subtle and I just go to bed at the end of the night and I have a nervous stomach for no reason and I don’t know why.”

It’s not that “Friday I’m In Love” is the cure (see what I did there) to this problem — and besides, “problem” is the wrong word. I don’t think the Internet is a discrete positive or negative thing at this point in the culture so much so as it operates like a lysogenic virus, embedding itself into the DNA and growing as the host, the user, does. It’s only lately I’ve noticed a shift. It makes me feel, like Burnham, sick to my stomach for reasons I find really difficult to explain. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if it can be fixed, or if it’s all in my head, or if something completely inscrutable and terrifying really has happened to my brain.

But I know I feel a sense of relief when I listen to that song, or read a book that feels essential in that similar feverish way. I feel, at this point, so allergic to anything ironic or numb in art, whether that’s how it’s made or how I engage with it. So I’m on the hunt for a dumbness that cracks me right open, past all the bullshit and the soundbites and the endless humming monotone that fills up my internet, and cuts to the feeling. I don’t know how often I’ll encounter it, or if I’ll be able to tune out the noise long enough to pay attention to the things that matter. In the meantime, I’ll be listening — tentatively, carefully.

Last Tuesday, I was awakened from my mid-afternoon nap to what sounded like a party happening on the second floor.

When I came down from the frigid attic I call my bedroom, I was greeted by the most wonderful of news: For only the third time in 40 years, the University had cancelled school, and not just for one day, but for two. With my schedule already perfectly aligned to give me Fridays off, I was now looking at an early spring break.

How did I spend it? Did I catch up on all of the work I had? Did I finally get around to applying to all those internships I had been talking about? Well actually, yes I did. But before I got around to doing all the important things, I woke up on Wednesday and spent the first four hours watching two documentaries I had been hearing about that both happened to be on the same subject.

Fyre Festival. It has become a meme twice over now, once when the event originally took place and again now that Netflix and Hulu have brought it back to the forefront of public scrutiny. For my part, I had no idea what the festival was until I started hearing about the Netflix documentary last week — maybe that’s just how out of touch with social media I am. I happened to watch the Hulu documentary first because the friend I was watching with had already seen the Netflix one, and I was introduced to Billy McFarland, the Fyre Festival, and a whole host of con artists, shady businessman, unfortunate victims and rich Instagram models. As the hours went by and I slowly became an expert on the biggest concert turned train crash in modern history, I found myself more and more fascinated and simultaneously more and more confused.

Almost every facet of the Fyre Festival boggles my mind. It was absurd that people were willing to pay tens of thousands (or in some cases hundreds of thousands) of dollars to go to a concert that didn’t exist. Billy McFarland’s entire gimmick of using a bigger scheme to pay off his last scheme. The bizarre timing of both Hulu and Netflix releasing documentaries about the Fyre Festival within days of each other and the strange way in which the documentaries almost feel like two halves of a single whole. All of this stuns me.

I’m just waiting for some third party to come along and tell us the meta-story of Hulu and Netflix’s competing desire to cover this purely 21st century debacle. How could both companies possibly be making a movie about the exact same thing and then release them at the exact same time? Did they plan that? Is this some new kind of corporate synergy? And what are we to make of the fact that Hulu paid McFarland for his

IAN HARRIS

appearance, but Netflix’s doc was produced by Jerry Media, the same company that promoted the Fyre Fest to begin with?

One of my roommates became annoyed with the Hulu documentary because he thought it was attacking millennials unnecessarily. The Hulu doc does argue that millennial culture and the pretend world of Instagram are things that make possible a world where something like the Fyre Festival can exist. But the Hulu doc also went to a place that I found even harder to understand: It argued that in today’s society anyone who isn’t on twitter or Instagram in essence does not exist. The film actually doesn’t argue this so much as it states it as a fact of the digital age. At first I found this to be a preposterous assumption. I hardly ever tweet and surely I exist. Surely even if no one in my house so much as exited the front door on that frostbite inducing day we would still exist. To think otherwise would be to give ourselves over entirely to a digital world where all that matters is perception and reality is meaningless. Or in this digital framework, has perception become reality? We do, after all, live in a world where it is increasingly obvious that politicians do not have to say

Classifieds

anything resembling the truth in order to get elected and where our executive branch treats the truth with such a lack of regard as to render it almost meaningless. If I do not post a picture on a beach, did I really go on vacation? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound?

Although my roommate was disturbed by the notion that millennial culture caused the Fyre Festival and that he didn’t exist because he wasn’t on Instagram, a few days later I brought up the subject at a club meeting and half the room agreed that if you are not a prevalent person on social media you basically do not exist. This shocked me. Again I reiterated that I was sitting right in front of them, I was speaking in the room, they were hearing me, and this alone was proof that I exist.

They assured me that, no, in fact, I did not exist. They admitted that they probably didn’t exist either and that even if they posted on Instagram right than and there if the algorithm didn’t push their post to the front of people’s feeds it wouldn’t functionally be in existence, for how can the post exist if no one has liked it? This line of reasoning seems dangerous to me. Every person is the center of their own universe, the key factor in their own continued existence.

There are people on this campus I have never spoken to. To me, perhaps they do not exist. But that does not mean they are not there. Collectively, the anonymous figures I walk past on campus have an impact on me, but more importantly they have an impact on themselves. You do not need the outside world to tell you your life is worthwhile. Is the support and love of your friends and family not enough? Is it not enough to sit inside on a snow day and text no one, post nowhere, call not a soul, and enjoy a calm peaceful day with your roommates and a Netflix documentary? Maybe not. But if watching four hours of footage about the Fyre Fest has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t need to pay $250,000 to attend a concert and you don’t need to post on Instagram in order to prove you exist. Just take a look in the mirror and sing a song in the shower. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” In this age of Hulu and Instagram, I think I’m still inclined to agree with him.

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

Release Date: Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

FOR RENT

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Area with pews 5 It’s saved for a rainy day 9 Monster party 13 Constrain 14 Singer Adams 15 Spanish “this” 16 In first place 17 Does really well, for a weekend golfer 19 Sophs, come Sep. 20 “Who Dat Girl” rapper __ Rida 21 Corkscrew pasta 22 “Next time’s for real” 26 Hurry, old-style 27 Leaf-clearing tool 28 Hairy spider 33 It stings 36 Cardiologist 40 Energy unit 41 Looks through, as a keyhole 42 Tennis immortal 45 Spanish “that” 46 Jewish deli meat 53 Learn from A to Z 54 Little newt 55 Bloke 56 “America’s Got Talent” judges’ concern 58 With 62-Across, handyman’s assortment, and a hint to what’s in each set of circles 60 Latvian seaport 61 De __: again 62 See 58-Across 63 Cocktail garnish 64 Gets the picture 65 Keep up (with) DOWN 1 ’60s jacket style 2 “What __!”: “Ick!” 3 By way of 4 See 28-Down 5 Musk’s electric car brand 6 Limited in scope, as a committee 7 Grande opening

8 Illinois city that symbolizes mainstream America 9 Lifelong pal 10 Clinton’s first Defense secretary 11 Sporty Ford, to devotees 12 Big name in spydom 13 Pilgrimage to Mecca 18 Clock sound 20 Guitar neck features 23 Whaling direction 24 Pub order 25 Copy on a transparent sheet 28 With 4-Down, fairy tale’s last words 29 Fizzy prefix 30 Tattered cloth 31 Word with class or case 32 Blues legend John __ Hooker 33 Storage container 34 Approximate fig.

35 WWII arena 37 “__ my case” 38 Exec’s hire, perhaps 39 “Tell the truth!”

42 Starlike 43 Fox News anchor Smith 44 Wading birds 46 Five-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ledecky

47 Missouri river 48 “Pet” irritation 49 High dos 50 Greek marketplace 51 Smelling of mold 52 Lithographer James 53 No. on a new car window 57 Misery 58 CD predecessors 59 Breakfast grain

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

By Jerry Edelstein ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

02/06/19

02/06/19

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Heart of Ann Arbor, 5 min walk to UM. Available for fall. $2400. Please contact 734 769 8555 or 734 277 3700.

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 — 7A

After two weeks of relief, Mann staying ready for when his number called BAILEY JOHNSON Daily Sports Writer

One goaltender — the starter — leads the team onto the ice.

The other — his backup — comes in the middle of the pack, faces half as many shots in warmups and spends the whole game on the bench.

While that’s the standard routine for a starting netminder and the backup, the Michigan hockey team hasn’t been doing things quite like that lately.

In the early part of the season, junior goaltender Hayden Lavigne and freshman goaltender Strauss Mann split time in net. One would start on the first night of a series, and the other would start the second night.

But since the beginning of January, Lavigne has been the go-to man in goal, starting all but a mid-week matchup against Merrimack. Against the Warriors, Mann got the start, largely to allow Lavigne to rest as the week was bookended by three important Big Ten games.

However, in the Wolverines’ last two series, Lavigne hasn’t finished the second game of either weekend.

On Jan. 26, Lavigne played just over 30 minutes and allowed five goals to Penn State before getting pulled.

Last Saturday, he played barely more than a single period at Minnesota, giving up three goals in an eventual 4-3 loss, before Michigan coach Mel Pearson elected to switch to Mann.

“I think it’s just a gut thing,” Pearson said of making a goaltender change. “I talk to the other coaches about it.

Sometimes, it’s not that the goalie’s playing poorly. Like,

in Saturday’s case, it wasn’t Hayden, but we needed to give our team a little bit of a wakeup call.”

Pearson is right. It isn’t completely Lavigne’s fault that he’s been taken out of two straight Saturday night games early. The Wolverines’ defenders haven’t done their job to help Lavigne, especially against the Nittany Lions where they gave up four one-on-zero breakaways.

And when the defenders aren’t doing their job, Pearson turns to Mann to provide a spark and wake up his team.

“It’s a little bit of a wakeup call to the other players when you pull the goalie out because Hayden’s played extremely well for our team,” Pearson said on Monday. “They know it. Players are smart and they understand that, ‘Hey, maybe we left Hayden out to dry a little bit.

(Mann’s) getting in, we better pick it up.’ Your goalie going in, he has to be ready to provide you that spark, too. Strauss has done that.”

Mann has played about 70 minutes across those two games. In those 70 minutes, he’s allowed only one goal and has a save percentage of .966 — well above his season average of .896.

“He’s come in in tough situations but given us chances to come back in games,” Pearson said. “Especially Minnesota, we were down three to nothing.

Really nothing on Hayden, nothing against Hayden, we left him out to dry.

“But Strauss came in and made some key saves to at least get us back tied. He’s looked really good. Good for him, because it’s hard. It’s hard when you’re not playing, but he’s

(Mann has) given us chances to come back.

ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily

Freshman goaltender Strauss Mann has been called in to relieve Hayden Lavigne on two straight Saturday games, both of which the Michigan hockey team lost.

stayed in it mentally, which is huge.”

Perhaps it’s that wakeup call to the defense that has allowed Mann such success in his appearances. Perhaps it’s Michigan recognizing that its back is against the wall when it gets into a situation where a goaltender change is warranted.

In those two Saturday night appearances, Lavigne allowed a combined eight goals before getting pulled — each time leaving the game with the Wolverines in a deep deficit.

Or perhaps it’s Mann’s dedication to staying mentally prepared, even when his playing time is inconsistent.

“Obviously, at any point, whether the guy gets hurt or pulled, you can get in, so you always have to be ready,” Mann said. “I think you just kinda go through the game, keep the bench energy up and help

Down but not out, ‘M’ retains hope BENNETT BRAMSON Daily Sports Writer

When the Michigan women’s basketball team lost at home to No. 23 Michigan State on Jan. 27 — and fell to 3-6 in the Big Ten — it seemed like it was time to look toward next season.

With a home matchup against No. 13 Iowa — which throttled the Wolverines, 75-61, just two weeks earlier — looming next on its schedule, things were not looking good for Michigan. The Wolverines could not afford to concede a second straight home loss and miss another opportunity to beat a ranked team if they were to maintain any sliver of hope at making the NCAA Tournament.

Considering that Michigan was winless on the road in the Big Ten and was headed to Madison to take on Wisconsin following Friday’s game against the Hawkeyes, the odds of winning one game, let alone both, were slim.

But what followed was a high scoring, hard fought 90-81 victory over Iowa and a 76-70 win over the Badgers in what was far more lopsided than the final score shows.

“I think it’s important for us not to lose our confidence,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said following the victory against Iowa. “We’ve been in every single game, we’ve lost some incredibly

difficult games. For the most part, they’ve all been on the road. So we know we’ve had a tough start to our Big Ten schedule. We really believe in our team. Our losses are to some of the top teams in the country. We don’t really have a bad loss on our schedule, so it’s really important to keep our confidence.”

And Barnes Arico is right: Six of Michigan’s nine losses have come against teams currently ranked in the AP Top 25. The other three losses? All on the road.

“I think the next step in our growth of this team is getting wins on the road,” said senior guard Nicole Munger. “So that’s what we’re focused on moving forward.”

Currently sitting at 57 in the latest Ratings Percentage Index, and as just the fourth team out in ESPN.com’s Charlie Creme’s latest bracket projection, the Wolverines finds themselves in a position that just 10 days ago was inconceivable.

Even though things are trending upwards for Michigan, it does not mean in the slightest that the Wolverines are a shoo-in to make the Tournament.

With seven games remaining — including home matchups against Indiana and No. 20 Rutgers as well as a road contest against the Spartans — Michigan will face steep competition in this final

stretch of the season.

But with the challenging matchups comes the opportunity for the Wolverines to leave their final mark on the selection committee.

Luckily for Michigan, four of its remaining games will take place at the Crisler Center and the other two road games are against two of the Big Ten’s bottom feeders: Penn State and Illinois.

“I think it’s our fans,” said junior guard Akienreh Johnson when asked why she thought Michigan played better at home than on the road. “Just knowing that when we’re away and we have a bad loss or a bad game and knowing we can come home (to them), it just makes us happy.”

For the Wolverines to feel comfortable with their tournament chances, they will have to come out of this stretch with, at most, one loss. If it loses two games, Michigan will be on the bubble sweating it out come selection time.

Anything more than two losses and the Wolverines’ only hope at making the NCAA Tournament will likely be by accomplishing the daunting challenge of winning the Big Ten Tournament — something they have never done in program history.

So while Michigan still has its work cut out, it’s not yet time to count the Wolverines out.

MILES MACKLIN/Daily

Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico needs her team to win most of its remaining games to make the tournament.

your teammates, and when you realize there’s maybe a chance you might get in, then you start kind of moving your legs a little bit and start getting your mind in the right place in case you get in.”

Added Pearson: “Mentally, he’s handled it really good. He’s been ready. That’s what you have to do as a goalie, is you have to be ready to go in at any time because the goalie could get hurt or the coach could call upon you to go in and play just to change the momentum.”

And change the momentum Mann has, particularly against the Golden Gophers. He entered the game 15 seconds into the second period with the Wolverines trailing three goals to none. By the time the period ended, the game was tied at three apiece.

But despite that comeback, the game ended in a loss and

became Michigan’s fourth straight split series.

The Wolverines know that it’s crunch time. They are out of the conversation for the NCAA Tournament based on regular season record — their only path is to win the Big Ten Tournament.

There are just seven regular season games left before the Big Ten Tournament starts and getting homeice advantage for the first round is still in play.

But Michigan hasn’t swept a series since late October, and the Saturday night difficulties certainly aren’t helping that.

In eight of the nine series the Wolverines have split this

season, they’ve won on Friday night and dropped the Saturday night matchup.

“I gotta look at that,” Pearson said Saturday night in Minneapolis. “Hayden’s played well, but as a team, we’ve won the first game mostly and then the second night we just can’t complete the deal. I don’t know what it is.”

The issue of why Michigan can’t win on Saturday nights doesn’t completely come down to the goaltender situation. But given Mann’s mental preparation and his performance in relief of Lavigne, he may be the key to the Wolverines sweeping a series or two down the stretch.

It’s a little bit of a wakeup call ... when you pull the goalie.

SOFTBALL

Three takeaways from fall ball LILY FRIEDMAN Daily Sports Writer

Michigan softball is back.

After a No. 19 preseason ranking, a second straight firstround loss to Michigan State in the NCAA Tournament and the graduation of key power hitter Tera Blanco, the Michigan softball program seems to be at a crux. But stirrings of changes haven’t fazed the Wolverines, who already hit the ground running in the fall — fast.

Michigan competed in two exhibition series this fall: the annual Traverse City College Tournament Sept. 29-30 and the home-and-home fall series in October against the Spartans.

In Traverse City, the Wolverines played Central Michigan, Detroit Mercy and Western Michigan in a round-robin tournament with a championship and consolation game. The team also scrimmaged Detroit Mercy on Oct. 18 in Ann Arbor.

Though the exhibitions, by nature, didn’t yield reported scores or statistics, fall ball provided key insights into Michigan’s coming season.

These three main takeaways from fall ball may be pivotal in defining the team’s potential this season.

1. The team will bring in a third pitcher this season.

Last year, sophomore pitcher Meghan Beaubien emerged as a star, pitching three individual no-hitters and leading the nation in wins.

Beaubien shared primary pitching time with Blanco, a then-senior. By the end of the season, with only two main pitching options, Beaubien was gassed. She held a 3.99 ERA in the last four games compared to an overall season ERA of 1.16.

Michigan coach Carol Hutchins’ solution? Add a third primary pitcher into the rotation.

“We need a really good, confident pitcher,” Hutchins said Tuesday at the team’s media day. “If we don’t have to give Meghan the ball as many

innings, and you give it to somebody else, it forces teams to prepare for more than one look and it helps keep her fresher longer.”

Adding a third viable pitching option to supplement Beaubien and sophomore pitcher Sara Schaefer does just that. And freshman Alex Storako, a two-time Illinois All-State First Team player, seems to fit the role. Storako specializes in spin-pitching, in contrast to Beaubien’s more powerdriven pitching. Splitting time between Beaubien and Storako, in addition to Schaefer’s contributions, will force teams to prepare for diverse pitching styles. “(Beaubien) throws it hard and she can bend it, but she doesn’t really spin it,” Hutchins said. “I like the fact that they’re so different.”

After Beaubien sat out of fall ball with an injury, Storako got time in the circle at the college level and is poised to be a strong step-up pitcher going into the regular season.

“We have our sights set on Alex Storako,” Hutchins said.

“We think she’s going to come in and give us some innings — some really good innings.”

2. A veteran infield will set the team chemistry for younger talent.

The Wolverines’ pitching situation may be in flux, but the Michigan infield is locked in.

With junior Madison Uden at third base, sophomore Natalia Rodriguez at shortstop, senior Faith Canfield at second base and multiple strong first base contenders, infield chemistry shouldn’t be a problem.

“It’s really nice having Natalia and Faith there cause, you know, you already know how they play, what their range is, and how they honestly play, to the nittygritty of how they throw the ball to you,” Uden said. “It’s huge because it’s consistent and you know what to expect and it just makes you that much tighter in your defense and that much better.”

That chemistry will set an example for younger players as they integrate into the program.

Additionally, players hope the success and team chemistry from fall ball will set a pace for the entire team to follow during the regular season.

The games this fall solidified the upperclassmen, and subsequently, the team’s, tempo heading into the season.

“I think you look to your upperclassmen always to set the tone and what kind of team they’re going to have and what kind of standards they’re going to hold,” Hutchins said. “My upperclassmen and particularly my seniors have been really rock solid all year, holding high standards and showing up to work hard every day.”

3. Rankings, former losses and impressions won’t affect the Wolverines’ play.

Among pitching changes, established team chemistry and freshman integration, the biggest takeaway from fall ball is that Michigan softball is fighting. The Wolverines may have received a No. 19 preseason ranking. They may bat with a traditional consistency style that some teams deem dated.

They may have suffered early tournament exits at the hands of in-state rivals. But Michigan has built a culture — one that has sustained.

“We came out tough against Michigan State even though it’s just fall ball, and I think we really handed it to them,” Uden said. “The past few years, it’s been a grind for us against them in the postseason, but I think we came out hot this year and that’s how it’s going to continue to be.”

Beaubien agrees, saying that rankings don’t affect the team, whose focus is on its performance and play — a Hutchins philosophy.

“I expect the same thing every year,” Hutchins said. “In every aspect of our program, we are gearing toward a chance to be a World Series contender.

That’s the expectation of our program.”

8A — Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Michigan gets back on track, tops Rutgers 77-65 “At this time” Chris

Evans not with team ETHAN WOLFE Daily Sports Writer

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily

Sophomore guard Jordan Poole scored 15 points, shaking a shooting slump by going 3-for-6 from 3-point range in Michigan’s win over Rutgers.

ARIA GERSON

Daily Sports Writer

PISCATAWAY — Geo Baker stood dead center, well beyond the arc, and fired for three.

The shot landed to cap off an 8-0 run, and with just over three minutes left in the first half, Michigan’s lead was down to single digits for the first time since the under-16 timeout.

It was the first of several times Rutgers tried to make things interesting. But this time, the magic wasn’t there. A minute later, sophomore guard Jordan Poole returned the favor with a three of his own, then after a block on the defensive end, freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis drove into the paint for a layup. And despite a few similar moments in the second half — where the Scarlet Knights got the deficit under 10 four separate times — the No. 5 Michigan men’s basketball team (21-2 overall, 10-2 Big Ten) ultimately scored too

much, too quick, leaving Rutgers (11-11 overall, 4-8 Big Ten) unable to keep up in the Wolverines’ 77-65 win.

“They got off to a great start,” said Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell.

“And we kind of went digging, digging, digging and I told them they could’ve made it interesting. … But we needed some timely stops defensively or some timely offensive possessions and you just can’t play that way. Every time we made a mistake, they made us pay on the offensive end.”

Michigan started the game 5-for-5 from the field and, for much of the first half, got whatever it wanted on offense. Seven minutes into the period, redshirt junior wing Charles Matthews scored seven consecutive points for the Wolverines on two free throws, a 3-pointer and a turnaround jumper — part of a 19-4 run that put Michigan up 17 not even 10 minutes into the half.

The lead was so large that despite

no fouls from anyone on the team, freshman forward Brandon Johns subbed in with 13:37 remaining.

Unlike most of his previous appearances — like one last Friday at Iowa when other options at the ‘5’ were in foul trouble — this one was not out of desperation, but luxury.

Other than the 8-0 run at the end, the rest of the period proceeded similarly, with Brazdeikis especially taking advantage of every Scarlet Knights defensive breakdown. He finished with 23 points — his seventh 20-point game of the season — while leading the team with five 3-pointers.

“They definitely didn’t prepare for my 3-point shot, I feel like,” Brazdeikis said. “They didn’t close out as hard and left me open so it was an advantage for us.”

But in the second half, the brand of junkball that the Scarlet Knights have ridden to four conference wins came out. The field goals that had dropped so effortlessly

for the Wolverines early on couldn’t find the net. But whenever Rutgers started to inch within the possibility of an upset, Michigan answered back. After a thunderous dunk by Shaquille Doorson cut the lead to seven five minutes in, the Scarlet Knights turned the ball over and fouled junior guard Zavier Simpson, leading to two free throws and then back-to-back threes from Poole — who shook off a shooting slump by scoring 15 points and going 3-for-6 from deep — and Brazdeikis.

Rutgers fought as hard as it could, but in a second-half defensive battle, it was unable to cut into the Wolverines’ lead enough to make anything happen.

It wasn’t a pretty win by any means, but in the end it got the job done. And on the road in the Big Ten — with a first half that provided hope the Wolverines would find their way out of their recent offensive struggles — sometimes that’s all you can ask for.

Junior running back Chris Evans is no longer a member of the Michigan football team.

“Chris Evans is not a member of the football team at this time,” said associate athletic director for football communications Dave Ablauf in a statement on Tuesday.

Ablauf would not specify the reason for Evans’ dismissal, citing privacy laws.

Sources told The Daily that Evans’ departure is a result of academic misconduct, and he was disenrolled from one of his classes this week. It is unclear whether he is still enrolled at the University.

Evans explained his situation on Twitter following news breaking of his status on the team.

“I am going through some academic issues right now,” Evans tweeted. “I’m working through it now. I will still continue my career at the University of Michigan!”

It remains to be seen whether Evans’ dismissal is permanent, though Evans writing that he will still continue his career at the University, as well as the statement from Ablauf, seem

to imply it is not.

“I suppose there’s a chance,” a source told the Daily of his chances to return. “Basically it wasn’t the football team that kicked him off it was the school. No bad blood between Chris and the team.”

Evans totaled 423 yards and four rushing touchdowns off of 81 carries in his junior campaign as the No. 2 back behind Karan Higdon. With Higdon graduating and declaring for the NFL Draft, Evans was the presumed starter for the 2019 season.

With Evans no longer on the team, as well as the dismissal of O’Maury Samuels in early December, the running back position is murky. Returning players with game experience include former walk-on Tru Wilson, who tallied 62 carries, 364 yards and a touchdown as the No. 3 back, and redshirt freshman Christian Turner.

Incoming freshman Zach Charbonnet, who rushed for 1,770 yards and 13 touchdowns, while averaging 8.2 yards per carry in his final high school season, also appears slated to make an impact in his first year.

Additional reporting by Max Marcovitch

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Chris Evans was dismissed from the Michigan football team on Tuesday.

Ball movement, 3-point shooting spark ‘M’ McDaniels will coach

QBs, Pep Hamilton out

THEO MACKIE

Daily Sports Writer

PISCATAWAY — Despite his team’s 21-2 record and top10 national ranking, Michigan coach John Beilein has cast a frustrated figure for much of the last month. Wins and losses alike have been met with an unsatisfied air — a feeling that the Wolverines have failed to maximize the potential displayed in their 19-0 start.

So when Beilein entered the Rutgers Athletic Center media room 20 minutes after Michigan’s bland 77-65 win against the Big Ten’s perennial doormat Tuesday night, the expectation was for more of the same. But before the questions even began, Beilein sat down and offered a different assessment.

“We were really good today,” he said. “I really loved just about everything about our game.”

The reason for his change in tune? One simple line in the box score that read, 11-of-23.

That, of course, was the Wolverines’ stat line from 3-point range Tuesday night.

Just last year — when Michigan ranked 4th in the Big Ten with a 37.3 shooting percentage from deep — that would have been impressive, but nothing out of the ordinary. This season, it’s a revelation — just the second time in 10 tries since the New Year that the Wolverines have shot 40 percent from three.

For a Michigan team that now ranks 10th in the conference with a 31.5 shooting percentage from deep, Friday’s 8-for-33 performance in a loss at Iowa was rock bottom, as it couldn’t move the ball into open looks.

Instead, it repeatedly forced up contested shots in a desperate attempt to claw back into the game before falling to a 15-point defeat.

“Just keep practicing… and

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Pep Hamilton left the Michigan football team on Tuesday.

MIKE PERSAK

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily

Freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis opened the game with a 3-pointer as Michigan beat Rutgers 77-65.

hopefully, we’ll make some shots,” Beilein said after that game. “We’ve seen some of our guys go out there and really have good shooting days. Today, we didn’t have great shooting days.”

Rather than spending the three days between games preparing for Rutgers as they typically would, the Wolverines did exactly that, turning introspective in hopes of solving their 3-point woes.

Against the Scarlet Knights, it was immediately clear that the approach had paid off.

Freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis opened the game with a three on Michigan’s first possession. A few minutes later, junior guard Zavier Simpson found the freshman forward again wide open in the corner.

The next time the Wolverines tried from deep, it was redshirt junior wing Charles Matthews springing sophomore Jordan Poole open at the top of the arc.

By the time Michigan finally

At the very beginning, the ball movement was great.

missed a 3-pointer, 7:22 into the game, it led 18-6.

“I think at the very beginning, the ball movement was great,” Beilein said. “We just moved it really well.”

Each time Rutgers threatened to put a serious dent in that lead, Michigan’s ball movement provided it with a much-needed buffer. When the Scarlet Knights made their biggest run of the night — an 8-0 stretch to cut it to single digits with two minutes to play in the first half — it was again Matthews assisting Poole to snap Michigan’s dry spell.

“We’re definitely all unselfish players and we play for the team,” Brazdeikis said. “We put the team first. Definitely today, that was an emphasis and we were moving the ball really well.”

Five minutes into the second half — the next time the lead shrunk to single digits — Simpson drove into the lane, dishing it to Poole beyond the arc. Again, he found bottom.

Ten feet away, Beilein looked on emotionless — the best in-game approval he will ever offer. Two possessions later, when Poole’s isolation tendency returned, the coach reverted to the emotions that he displayed so often last week in Iowa City, dropping his head into his hands before turning to assistant coach DeAndre Haynes with a befuddled look.

“It still stuck a few times and we’re working on that,” Beilein said. “Because we do have some talent that can get their own shot.

But sometimes, the more you dribble it, the more everybody gets into the gap and you’re not gonna be able to get your stuff.”

Tuesday night, though, that look was rarely on display. And when a Rutgers’ miss with 1:39 left sent the crowd toward the exit and drew chants of, “Let’s Go Blue,” Beilein finally cracked a smile.

For the first time in weeks, it came because of his offense.

Definitely today, (ball movement) was an emphasis.

Daily Sports Writer

After two seasons as the associate head coach and passing game coordinator, Pep Hamilton is leaving the Michigan football team, according to multiple outlets.

There was speculation this move was coming after the Wolverines hired Josh Gattis to be their new offensive coordinator earlier this offseason. Since Michigan didn’t have a specified coordinator last season, Gattis’ hiring and presumed responsibilities — Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said Gattis will have full control of the offense — seemed to overlap with Hamilton’s role.

Now, with Hamilton’s departure, that picture is clear.

In addition to the Hamilton news, Sam Webb of 247Sports reported that Ben McDaniels will be taking over as the Wolverines’ quarterbacks coach for 2019.

McDaniels is the brother of New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, and he has spent his career bouncing around various NFL and college coaching staffs, including spending the last two seasons with the Chicago Bears.

Harbaugh mentioned in

December that he anticipated giving McDaniels a full-time role on the coaching staff, but at the time it was thought to mean he would take over as receivers coach for the departing Jim McElwain.

McDaniels coached receivers in the Peach Bowl in an interim role after McElwain was hired at Central Michigan.

After the hiring of Gattis, however, McDaniels’ upcoming role was unclear, as Gattis has extensive experience coaching wide receivers.

With Hamilton gone, McDaniels seems like a natural fit with the quarterbacks, since he has coached the position in stops with Rutgers and the Denver Broncos.

What all this means for Michigan is that the 10 members of its coaching staff, which had been in flux all offseason, are finally settled.

Hamilton, McElwain, defensive line coach Greg Mattison and VIPER coach Al Washington are out. Gattis, McDaniels, former Boston College defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile and former Arizona State defensive line coach Shaun Nua are in.

Now the staff is complete, and there are only 207 days until the Wolverines kick off against Middle Tennessee State.

statement

ILLUSTRATION BY GRACE CHO

T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | FE B RUA RY 6 , 2019

love in color

2B

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 // The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | FE B RUA RY 6 , 2019

Managing Statement Editor Andrea Pérez Balderrama Deputy Editors Matthew Harmon Shannon Ors

Designers Liz Bigham Kate Glad

Photo Editor Annie Klusendorf

Copy Editors Miriam Francisco Madeline Turner

Editor in Chief Maya Goldman Managing Editor Finntan Storer

Dear Reader,

M

ichigan in Color was created five years ago in order to uplift the voices of people of color by offering a platform dedicated to every aspect of identities of color -– the heartbreaking stories, the calls to action, the feelgood moments and the frustrations. Throughout the years we have expanded from a column to a full-fledged section of The Michigan Daily, producing creative content, written narratives, a podcast, and now, as a part of an annual tradition, a collaboration with the Statement magazine.

In this special edition Statement and Michigan in Color collaboration, you will find testimonies on what it means to love as a person of color — whether the recipient of that love is a mother, a significant other or even yourself. The complexity of love is often magnified by complex identities, and we are so grateful to The Statement for extending a platform for students of color to explore love’s intricacies. Enjoy the issue!

In solidarity,

Carly and Na’kia

A flaw in my parents’ plan to keep me from dating boys

BY ADITI MAHAJAN MiC COLUMNIST

D

ating. A word that is thrown around casually at home in America is a word that, if uttered in an Indian household, causes the television’s volume to be lowered, the newspaper to be slowly folded, and the hustle and bustle to come to a standstill.

In my household, dating is frowned upon to an unnatural extent. Since high school started, if a celebrity couple was brought up when we discussed pop culture, the only reaction would be my dad looking over his glasses, asking if I also was in a relationship. The answer always stayed at a constant “no” regardless of my true relationship status. Lying was never the intention, but it seemed easier to lie than to get engaged in an argument that would more often than not last longer than the relationship itself. As I got older, the lies got more and more elaborate. I had to mask not only crushes, but entire relationships from start to finish.

Growing up as a brown girl in suburbia, the amount of teenage heartbreak you have to face with no familial support is intense. You have to cry over boys silently in your room, and then when your mom calls you down for dinner, you wipe away your tears and face your family as if nothing happened. I understand the cultural differences between the time and place my parents were raised and the time and place I was, but these secrets damage you more than Indian parents know.

Even when I successfully pulled off a guise of happiness following a rough

breakup or emotional moment, I tended to be more snappier around my parents and played the victim whenever they said anything. Moments like these turned into bigger fights and I, already overcome with my own emotions, tended to break down faster, which confused my parents and led to more reprimanding for being too emotional. As a result, I, and so many of my brown female friends, found ourselves becoming caught in a vicious cycle of a lack of familial trust.

We felt that our parents didn’t trust us, and we also couldn’t confide in them. We hid more secrets and our parents, as parents usually do, found out and trusted us even less. Every secret relationship we had led to more and more secrets being kept from our parents and the bar we set for ourselves in terms of honesty plummeted.

As I grew up and entered college, I fostered the connection and trust I had with my parents, but never to the extent it was before. My parents and so many other Indian parents believe that not allowing their kids to date will protect them from relationships and the negatives that come with them, but it never does. All it does is teach their kids to lie better and causes them to grow apart from their parents.

While I will always appreciate the effort my parents have put in to make me as happy as possible, I will also always regret that I’ve lied to them so many times. But at the same time, I never felt that I had a chance not to lie.

A love letter to Denise

BY NA’KIA CHANNEY, MiC MANAGING EDITOR

D

ear Mom,

First, I love you for everything about you, and I think that you are one of the most beautiful people that I’ve ever seen. I love the way that the sun illuminates your skin — the natural glow that gleams effortlessly among the pigmentation of your melanin. It is the most beautiful shade of brown and earth, and when I feel overwhelmed and insecure in a sea of white, it is the first thing I want to see to wrap me in its embrace.

Undoubtedly, you are my biggest and best supporter. I will never be able to

put into words how thankful I am for everything that you’ve done for me.

Whenever I am sad or low in energy, a phone call from you is all that I need to uplift my spirit. Your kindness and humor is medicine for my ever-racing mind, and I know for a fact that I would not be whole without your butter voice helping me hold it together.

I thank you so much for wearing your hair natural, instilling in me a love for my roots. You were, and continue to be, my hair inspiration. When I felt lost in my pursuit to reclaim agency over my own self-esteem and appearance, I was able to look no further than your crown

Not A your asian manic pixie dream girl

BY ANGELA ZHANG MiC COLUMNIST

s a Chinese-American bisexual girl, my love and sex life have been a mess from the start. Long before I knew I was also into girls, I was super into boys, and not afraid to be upfront about it. I think I was something of a feminist in middle school before I really learned about or knew what feminism actually was because I thought that girls waiting for boys to ask them out all because of social and gender norms was dumb. I’d ask boys out.

But growing up as a kid in the 2000s, I didn’t feel very attractive. I didn’t look like Barbie and have long blonde hair, big blue eyes, freckles, or the tiny, upturned nose I wanted to have so badly. All of these, of course, were Eurocentric beauty standards. In the romance movies I watched as a kid, all the female protagonists were white — there was very little Asian representation in the media. When I was younger, I didn’t think I was attractive at all because I wasn’t white. And of course, as a kid, I went through the whole “only attracted to white boys” phase — something that’s very common among young Asian girls, but deeply rooted in internalized racism and societal norms about what the West deems beauty and desirability to look like. I dreamed of being the good-looking, average American girl next door and I so badly wanted a white boyfriend. I used to think that if I could just have a white dude named Jake to love me, I would somehow feel validated and more beautiful because someone like that could be attracted to someone like me.

Looking back ten years later, I realize how wrong I was. It took me a while to accept myself as Asian. In my early teen years, I tried to play myself off by being the most non-stereotypical Asian girl: I was super outgoing and not afraid to say what was on my mind, wasn’t afraid to make the first move with boys I was interested in, listened to a lot of Green Day and wore a lot of black. I was trying to send out the message that I was “not like other

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 // The Statement

of coils for assurance and ease. I thank you for accepting me for who I am, in all of my flaws, errors, messy rooms and dirty laundry baskets. You give me so much grace, more than I deserve, because you always try your best to be compassionate to my young adult struggles. I strive to always pay you back the same love, and I hope that one day I can grow into a heart that is as big and forgiving as yours.

Your blood runs pertinent and sure in my veins and, along with that, from our elders and ancestors, is the essence through which I strive to ground my strengths in. It is through generational

resilience and perseverance that I am made, and I give honor to the example of unwavering solidity that you have set for me.

This letter will never be enough to fully capture how much love I have for you, but I hope that this dedication will give you even the slightest sense of the admiration that I have for you. I love you dearly.

Asian girls.” In my mind, I imagined Asian girls to be unattractive nerds complicit in our own dehumanization and oppression (Chinese culture places importance in society on older men, and most older Chinese families have a preference for sons over daughters).

But with social media now, I see a lot more faces in my feed that look like mine — Asian girls on Instagram being fashionable and looking cute. But with the rebranding of Asian girls from being the undesirable nerd with bangs to being the sexy, long-haired tattooed party girl with eyelash extensions, it still didn’t quite fit with what I was.

And, for better or worse, my experience with boys changed from “you’re not attractive because you’re Asian” to the “you’re attractive because you’re Asian” sort of fetishization by white men — which I soon learned, did not put me in a better place at all (both above statements are gross and racist).

A number of guys I’ve hooked up with have told me, “I just think Asian women are the hottest,” or “You would make so much money if you did porn.” In pop culture and porn especially, Asian women are fetishized and portrayed as submissive sexual objects or “Dragon ladies,” a stereotype of Asian women as mysterious, deceiving, and domineering (much like a sexy ninja). It’s hard for me as a girl who enjoys asserting and owning my sexuality to not fit into these sorts of stereotypes — and what’s more, I hate it when men try to play it off like I’m doing this for them like no, stop, my sexual prowess is my own.

Even after coming to college at the University of Michigan, I still encounter such ignorance and fetishization of my race. Someone I met at a tailgate said to me, “You’re the sexiest Asian I’ve ever seen,” and someone from my economics discussion told me, “I’ve never had Asian pussy before.” I told him to stop fetishizing my race, to which he replied, “If anything, I thought it would be more of an incentive for you.”

Excuse me, “Chad,” I’m not eight anymore and I don’t need a white boy’s

attention to feel accepted and wanted.

Now: women. Being bisexual is hard enough as it is. But being Asian and bisexual is where it gets even more complicated. When I tentatively came out at age 14, people were shocked that I was attracted to women and were shocked that someone who grew up in a strict Asian household could be bisexual. Again, I was haunted by stereotypes of being the perfect docile Chinese daughter who never did anything wrong (although my peers knew perfectly well what I was up to behind my parents’ backs). Additionally, being fetishized for my race was already annoying enough — I now had to deal with guys fetishizing my sexuality and asking me if I would have a threesome. It’s hard to be a sexual person by nature and not fall into these racist, sexist stereotypes of being merely a sexual object for men’s pleasure. I wanted to be able to enjoy sex and relationships without being overly sexualized and objectified just for my identity.

I’ve even been referred to as an Asian “manic pixie dream girl.” Manic pixie dream girls are a trope in film and television for a quirky and alternative sort of female character who “isn’t like other girls,” and exist only to help the male protagonist rediscover or better himself. But that’s not me in relationships or sex at all. I — like every other woman — am complicated and smart and angry and confused and happy. I have interests outside of the bedroom. I have goals of my own that don’t include fixing broken men and being the mysterious dark-haired lover with black combat boots and big eyeliner-rimmed eyes. I — like other bisexual women of color — am so much more than that.

And I sure as hell don’t need society or “Chad” telling me how I should act based on a shitty pop culture reference.

My bisexuality is not for men to sexualize. My Chinese heritage is not for people to fetishize and make assumptions about — and most of all, I am not your Asian manic pixie dream girl.

Love, Na’kia

3B

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Wednesday, February 6, 2019 // The Statement

Wednesday, February 6. 2019 // The Statement

Get Get Get to to to know know know your your your lovely lovely lovely contributors: contributors: contributors: contributors:

Alfredo Delarosa, also known as Freddie, is a MexicanAmerican and a pillar within the Latinx community. Not only does he devote his time to various outreach, advocacy, and activism opportunities, but he is also dedicated to organizing and creating many on campus. His empathetic nature impacts nearly everyone he encounters which is what makes him such a powerful leader. He is majoring in Biopsychology, Cognition and Neuroscience, and fitingly minoring in Community Action and Social change.

Cydney Gardner-Brown, largely known as CGB or Cyd, is a black, westside Detroit native. She is studying public policy on a pre-law track hoping to play a major role in contributing to social and educational reform.

This work has already begun as Cyd is currently researching literacy rates in Detroit Public Schools to bring to light inequities in resource allocation.

She also hosts a brilliant podcast that explores these topics and more called “The Sit Down” (you can find it on iTunes <3).

Jose Naut,

Summer Eubank,

Charles Harris Jr.,

is an Afro-Latino male who grew up in the Dominican Republic before living most of his teenage life in Chicago.

Staying active is extremely important to him which has incited his interest in sports, most importantly soccer. As a first-generation student he has made the most of his time at U-M majoring in Anthropology with aspiring goals to be a detective.

is a Tejana-America pre-med student whose optimistic and warm energy aligns perfectly with her dream be able to save lives. Majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in sustainability her course load is hectic, therefore she can often be found in Hatcher plowing through copious sticky-note to-do lists.

Summer has also committed herself to numerous volunteer opportunities locally and even abroad, recently working in a health clinic serving an under resourced community in the Dominican Republic.

a black rapper and an arguable poet.

Along with his MiC columnist contributions, he expresses himself through lyrics that embody empowerment as they fluidly carrying his reflections and experiences on soulful beats. Look up C-Note on just about every platform and show him some love. Charles studies Communications and is also extremely engaged in campus as a member of many organizations within the U-M black community.

Navigating Navigating Navigating Navigating SELFluv SELFluv SELFluv SELFluv as as as a a POC POC asa aPOC POC

BY ANA MARÍA SÁNCHEZ-CASTILLO SENIOR MiC EDITOR

How would you personally define self-love?

Freddie: Self-love is being ok even in the case of your setbacks and failures you can still be a good person even when making mistakes.

Cyd: Self-love is the necessity of actively seeking out the beauty in all of your individual flaws, taking time to work on making your strengths stronger, and then actually believing your own voice when you hear it say, “I love me”.

Jose: Self-love is accepting yourself for who you are mentally and physically, and that includes your flaws. It means not trying to change or adapt to the expectations of others.

Summer: Self-love is the act of putting your physical, emotional, social and mental health as a priority. Also, just the basic care and compassion towards your body, mind and spirit.

Charles: Self-love is being content with who you are every morning. Doing things that make you happy, not just your physical well-being, but also your mental.

In what ways do your identities play into your concept of self-love?

Freddie: In the Mexican community, self-love often means your family is doing well. It’s like a cultivated focus. So that can occasionally be very

counterintuitive because if you’re always focusing on other people, you don’t have much time to develop as an individual.

Cyd: The world works very hard to convince me, as a Black woman, that I am not destined to be as beautiful or as successful as someone else. It tells me every single day that if I don’t play dumb, that if I don’t release some level of my ambition, that if I just let men take advantage of my complacency, I’ll spend my life alone.

I am told daily that my body is not ideal. That if I want to be liked, I need to change the way I look and dress. Under all of that scrutiny, it is important to me to spend time with myself.

I like to reassure Cydney of her undeniable self-worth and recognize that the things that make Cydney who she is, are the reasons why she is beautiful, capable and strong.

Jose: In contrast to how many Dominicans are raised machismo pride and lack of emotion, I was raised on pride in loving myself as a man.

I guess like not being afraid of showing emotion and embracing emotion in a way that allowed me to self-reflect.

Summer: Because I value my identity as a mixed, cis woman, I practice self-love in ways that are accustomed to those identities. For example, my femininity screams for different types of physical love than other genders. Also, being mixed, I know mentally what differences I have between the general populous (good and bad). I use that knowledge to constantly motivate positive thinking and good spirits wherever I go.

Charles: As a dark skinned Black man especially, I’ve come to have to learn how to love myself even when the world doesn’t. I realized that I have had to try even harder to understand my worth and to ensure to maintain it. I love the skin I’m in and I use that confidence to my ability whenever I can. I’m much quicker to accept myself for who I am, whether it be positive or negative.

Has your concept of self-love ever recognizably shifted? Explain.

Freddie: I always felt very grounded in my morals and the things that I saw as being central to my sense of self before coming to college. Then I got to UMich, and like my sense of identity changed a lot and I wasn’t okay with that at first because I was like, “Oh fuck, this is what people appreciated about me before, who am I now?” Because that’s not what I was doing anymore. Pretty much it took me a minute to change my mindset to recognize that even though those things are important to me, those things aren’t me.

Cyd: Hell yeah! Self-love for me used to very superficial. It was not until recently I added emotional support for myself into the mix. Also recognizing that sometimes self-care is finding help when you need it and saying “no” if you cannot commit to all of the things people are expecting your commitment for. There is no inherent value in spreading yourself too thin

NIGHT SHIFT for the sake of pleasing other people’s agendas. If the thought of being a part of something brings me dread, I decommit. And you know what? I’ve stopped feeling guilty about it.

Jose: In high school, I didn’t pay that much attention to understanding self-love, but after coming to Michigan I was definitely forced to pay more attention to it. As I faced more hardships and struggles, I realized I had to be grounded in taking care of myself in order to overcome them.

Summer: My transition from high school to college changed how I envisioned selflove for myself. In high school, I loved others before myself in fear of being ridiculed (usually because of my difference in beliefs/identities).

As a college student, I now know that I am what deserves love and I know how to balance caring for others and myself in HEALTHY ways!

Charles: The most it has shifted in the last couple years is my relationship with God. The closer I’ve gotten to him the more I’ve realized what love is truly, and have been able to apply to not only others but myself as well.

What do you do when you realize you haven’t been “self-caring”?

Freddie: The biggest thing that has helped me is mindfulness, being aware of my own actions and how my actions are reflected onto other people. Also recognizing what habits and qualities in myself are causing me to regress to those places of not taking care of myself. This usually looks like focusing on what helped me have a better day like, “Did I drink coffee in the morning? Did I hang out with my friends and study by myself at night?” Also like learning to be ok with being comfortable with ambiguity because many things aren’t in our control and accepting that helps you move forward.

Cyd: It usually takes me a minute to notice, but I’ll stop working out, stop eating, and I get moody. That’s when I realize like, “Oh...I need to spend some time for introspection.” I try to do small things every day for myself. Like my end of the day skin/body routine is my safe place. I like to go through the whole nine yards slowly with music in the background. Last night was ’90s hip hop while I did a face mask, I exfoliated to Adele and I moisturized to smooth jazz.

Coming back to that consistent routine can usually ground me after a day that felt *off * for whatever reason.

Jose: In these times, I usually try to devote my time to interesting new hobbies, as well as hanging out with friends and doing just other simple things I enjoy. These things help take my mind away from those negative things and anchors me in the positive aspects of my life.

Summer: When I realize I haven’t been “selfloving,” I like to see what event happened that may have thrown off my routine. Then after reflection, I do something that notoriously makes me feel better (hang with friends, eat pickles, with Princess Mononoke, etc.). Engag-

ing in happy actions after reflection can soothe pent up-emotions. After, I like to plan my days out and find at least one or two things I can do that will incorporate more “self-love” in my routine!

Charles: I personally realize when I haven’t been doing my self-care routine, is when I haven’t been writing or taking enough time to do what I enjoy doing.

What’s your current self- love routine?

Freddie: As I mentioned previously, it focuses on mindfulness, like really paying attention to things surrounding myself. I enjoy being around people that motivate me and give me energy. Mentoring other people also helps a lot, as making sure people are on a good path means that I have to make sure I’m taking care of myself.

Cyd: Recently I have been doing self-care in the form of taking long periods of time without speaking to anyone. I like quietly walking across campus and thinking about my day and what I need to do. Another thing that calms me down is completely decluttering my space.

Every day, when my academic day is over, I get elated with the thought of coming back to my room and “putting on my cozies” haha. I end my day by cleaning (organizing) my room. I recently hung up my 2019 vision board and I will also admit that manifestation is the truth and the way. It’s as powerful as praying! I love waking up and having my goals be the first thing I see.

Jose: I definitely seek the company of friends along with talking to my parents, which replenishes my motivation to keep going so I can be able to contribute to motivate family back home. I also really like doing yoga too because it allows (me) to physically take care of myself in relaxing myself both physically and mentally.

Summer: My current self-love routine is very simple! I start my day with a nice skin and hair care routine. Then I plan out my day so that I can save any anxiety later and manage my time better. During the day, I try to find time to do stuff other than homework or work like read an article, watch a video or draw. This is a nice practice to clear your mind throughout the day.

As the day ends, I try to squeeze in a workout, a shower, and then use essential oils and crystal energy to ensure a nice sound sleep to restart my routine.

Charles: For me, my self-care routine is making sure that I take the time out to write music and also eating right. I’ll make sure that I have something to eat and a smoothie especially, going to the park is something that brings me peace, too. Just being in nature helps me realize that I’m a part of something much bigger than me. Hearing the birds chirp and the sun glowing on my face always brings a smile to my face.

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Wednesday, February 6, 2019// The Statement

this is not a mother’s day poem

BY MONICA KIM MiC COLUMNIST

I. it’s past midnight and i start thinking about my umma[1] dying again. she’s not dead, but as my head starts to spin i think— well what if she gets into a car accident tomorrow morning on her way to work, you know anything can happen on the new jersey turnpike, wait she doesn’t take the new jersey turnpike anymore since we’ve moved, but what if she gets into a car accident anyway, they happen pretty frequently, and then she’ll be gone forever, and i didn’t even hug her goodbye when she dropped me off for an interview on move-in day — and my chest heaves up and down, so i text my umma and tell her that i love her, and i miss her. just in case. (my umma is alive, by the way.)

II. the first time i had anxiety about my umma dying was sometime between preschool and kindergarten. i had a nightmare my umma never came back from her ESL classes at bergen community college. i don’t remember if this was before or after the car accident we were in. (it wasn’t on the new jersey turnpike.) she took me to community college with her. she took me to the laundromat with her. she took me to the grocery store with her. she took me to the nail salon with her, where she worked seven days a week, nonstop. we didn’t have a babysitter then. the day the patriots played the giants in the super bowl and lost, my umma stayed out at work for a long time, and to this day i still remember calling her and her not picking up the phone and wondering if she was okay, wishing she was home with me and appa[2] on sunday nights. (she was okay, but driving back, so couldn’t pick up the phone.)

III. at my new elementary school i would see kids being picked up by their mothers, in their minivans, off to play soccer or go on a playdate or to violin lessons. and just once, just once, i wished i could be picked up by her. i have a friend from high school who tells her mother everything, and i wish this were true of my umma and i. but there is too much to catch up on what she missed.

IV. i tell all my friends, my umma is the best, too good for this world. she still works seven days a week, non-stop, juggling two jobs, cooking all the food, cleaning the apartment; she says she loves to work.

even when she’s angry or sad or frustrated she makes the effort to understand others. even when she says things that are rooted in bias, like when she said my bisexuality was just a phase, i know she tries to understand me. she still loves me. and that feels quite rare in the asian queer community. i resented her for never being there for me when i was younger. but now i know she was only trying to help us climb the impossible ladder of the nonexistent american dream. my umma crossed an ocean with her only child and her husband so that my appa could pursue his dream of getting an MBA in the USA. she told me she majored in german when she was in college, because that was where her favorite pianists, bach and beethoven, were from. she wanted to go to germany. she went to america instead. she still hasn’t been to germany. my umma lost her umma when i was seven to cancer. she takes care of her mother-in-law, my halumni[3], like she’s her own mother. maybe that’s why i’m afraid of her dying even though she only turned fifty just a few years ago.

[1] mom [2] dad [3] grandma

Why your relationship with yourself is important

BY CRISTINA GUYTINGCO MiC COLUMNIST

H

ow often do you put yourself down? Talk to yourself in negative way? Tell yourself that you’re not good enough?

Really think about how often you do this to yourself.

I’ve been there, and I am constantly critical of myself and what I achieve. Keyword: achieve. I measure myself by my successes, and when I fail, I take it as a self-reflection of my whole being — that I’m not good enough and I don’t have what it takes.

I realized that learning to accept yourself is crucial to self-love. Because at the end of the day, you have to spend a lot of time with yourself and your thoughts, and you should probably learn how to like yourself. Now, this sounds obvious, but if you take a step back and really analyze how you talk to yourself, you might be surprised.

While definitely a journey, self-acceptance is like building any other skill. You constantly have to work on it deliberately.

At times, you are your own worst enemy, comparing yourself to others, especially in a society of production and consumption, you are thought to be only as good as

what you produce or what you achieve. But rarely, you are judged by who you are, your emotional capacity and intelligence, your ability to love and be loved.

Furthermore, you constantly have to keep yourself in check about promoting positive and action-oriented feedback so you can do better. It’s not about having a fixed mindset, but rather having a growth mindset. Allow yourself to make mistakes and fail — which is really scary — but necessary in order for us to grow. Having a growth mindset allows us to be critical of our weaknesses and shortcomings, but also allows us to recognize our strengths and assets, and that everything is a process. While we tend to be oriented around big aspirations, being present in the period we are at in our journey and seeing how far we’ve come is encouraging and essential to fully accepting our process of selfacceptance and self-love.

How can we expect others to like and love us if we can’t even do it ourselves?

Once you find that inner harmony within yourself, others will recognize it and give you the respect of who you are because you respect yourself. They recognize that you treat and talk to yourself with value and worth, and will give the same to you — and maybe subconsciously recognize that and try to do it for themselves. Because of all the noise within society today, and so many external forces, it’s hard to differentiate your self-worth compared to others — but you have to find that silence and peace within yourself.

Once you do find a balance between selfacceptance and self-love, you can spread that to others. This is key, because finding that inner harmony allows us to become more empathetic and giving of the “feels,” love and so much more. This in turn, helps us infuse that spirit to other people. To help them if they are beating themselves up, or feeling down.

If self-love may seem too far-fetched for you, start by liking yourself maybe even just a little. How can you do this? Treat yo’self. Stop putting energy into degrading yourself and confining yourself, because you’re only limiting your full potential.

Stop that voice in the back of your head that you’re not good enough, and actively work on telling yourself that you are, and you are trying your best. Recognize the talents you have and compliment yourself, laugh at your own jokes, meditate, breath, go to that dance class, buy that piece of pizza, or break out into random song and dance like you’re in a musical. Whatever that looks like for you, do it!

My journey for self-acceptance and selflove has been a process. Don’t quantify your love through capitalizing it this Valentine’s season, and focus on the energy you give to yourself, which you can then give to others. Take the time to assess yourself so you can give to others all the feels, emotions, and love that you have.

You are a unique human being with the ability and capacity to feel and love and

connect. So I challenge you to learn how to fully accept yourself, because your relationship with yourself is one of the most important in your life, isn’t it?

French Kiss

BY DIERRA BARLOW ASSISTANT MiC EDITOR

She touched my lips on the first day in May Her lips made the cold go away My heart was iced over Frozen solid, stone cold I thought I’d die Before I had the chance to grow old Her lips brought me back to life Their sweet peppermint taste made everything seem right Her lips were everything that meant peace Her lips were everything that meant me She touched my lips on the first day in May Her lips made the sun shine its rays Dare I say Her lips were made for me Dare I say Her lips had sailed the high seas to get to me Dare I say Her lips were everything they would always be And she touched my lips on a warm day in July To say goodbye Dare I say She loved my lie

Loving is not easy

BY DEVAK NANUA MiC COLUMNIST

I

’ve had very little experience with love. But I have seen enough romantic comedies starring Ryan Gosling and have listened enough songs by Rex Orange County and Frank Ocean to at least know that Love is a complicated emotion. It’s not an emotion like happiness or anger, where most of the time, we know how and when to register these emotions. Love, on the other hand, is something that we’re still trying to figure out as young adults. But before I start trying to talk about something I am very unqualified to talk about, I’m going to take us back to a time when Love was nothing but a complete mess.

Middle school is an interesting time for love, and yes, in case you were wondering, I could hear everyone who’s reading this article groan as they start to recall their awkward middle school relationships. But here’s how I see it. In elementary school, girls and boys are constantly at war and trying to torture each other on playgrounds. But as soon as the sixth grade rolled around and Bruno Mars came out with “Just the way you are,” every 12-year-old guy was trying to find a girl to sing it to. And while every girl in middle school dreamed of serenade from Justin Bieber, the boy who had his haircut and wore too much Axe body spray in her Spanish class seemed to come in a close second.

When I was about to start middle school, my parents and I moved to Bangalore, India from Ann Arbor.

Around the same time, my parents started to view themselves as the more “modern” and “cool” version of Asian parents. Therefore, when it came to girls, my mother made it explicitly known to me that girls who were “friends” were completely fine with her, but girlfriends were strictly off limits. And just like that, by allowing me to interact with people of the opposite gender, my mother had thought she had made some incredible progress to the Asian parenting model. Nevertheless, whenever my mother would see me hanging out with a girl from school, she continued to insist that I told her everything about her just so that she could go on Facebook a couple of hours later and continue her investigation.

Therefore, when I had finally gotten a Facebook account in order to “keep up with my friends from Ann Arbor,” it turned out to be a godsend for my middle school social life.

Because whatever game I had lacked

Wednesday, January February16, 6, 2019 2019 // // The The Statement Statement Wednesday,

in class, I fully compensated for on Facebook messenger. As a somewhat shy and awkward kid in middle school, it was quite nerve-racking to talk to girls without some sort of third party judgement from my friends or my mother. Therefore, whatever I wanted to say to people of Facebook seemed to be limitless. In fact, whenever I go back and read those messages, I still blush a little bit at my attempts to flirt with girls in the most corny and tragic way possible. Therefore, it was an actual nightmare when one morning, my mother had conveniently found that I had forgot to log out of my Facebook account and decided to read every message I had. I came back from school that day and was forced to listen in horror as my mother analyzed every message I wrote and asked to me to explain what I meant by them.

To this day, I will never understand the motivation behind why of parents forbid middle school relationships.

Like honestly, what’s the worst thing that could’ve happened? I don’t know a single person that looks back at their middle school relationships with anything but a grain of salt because of how cringe-worthy they were. Also, I will never understand my own mother’s motivation for trying to find as much information as possible about my peers through Facebook. You’re not going to learn anything about a girl in middle school by looking at her Facebook profile, beside the fact that she went to Disney World over the summer through her profile picture and maybe her Farmville score.

Despite this traumatic event, that wasn’t the last time I flirted with a girl on social media because social media has kept growing. A large number of our interactions with people are carried out through our phones. When I had gotten my first iPhone in high school, my limited use of social media started to grow as I joined other social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. At this point, I remember my mother feeling a little anxious because she just couldn’t keep up with all of these different mediums. Therefore, after a day of scouring the internet for information about these different apps, she aggressively started to preach against the use of social media. At the time, I would simply roll my eyes and came to the conclusion that my mother was insane.

But it wasn’t until I was in college that I really started to value interacting with people in person, and I started to realize that my mother’s frequent tirades against social media were for a good reason. There have been a countless number of recent studies that link social media with teenage anxiety and depression. People care too much about how many likes their Instagram photo gets or why their crush on Snapchat has left them on “opened” and the hourglass emoji has appeared (which signifies the

end of a “streak”). All of these aspects of social media just add on an unnecessary amount of stress to one’s life.

But let’s unpack that. What does it mean when a person likes your photo on Instagram or Facebook? A “like” would probably be the equivalent of a person coming up to you in person and saying, “Hey, I like that photo you took,” or “Hey, you look really good in that photo,” and so on. But Instagram has replaced a meaningful human interaction with the simple and convenient tap of a finger on a screen. Snapchat isn’t any better. While one may argue that having a “streak” of 100 days shows dedication, it really doesn’t. Let’s be honest — out of the 100, 10 days might be actual substance and the rest are just Snapchats of your forehead, random out-of-context selfies or even better yet, Snapchats of the wall or the ceiling. One of my best friends has been Snapchatting a girl for almost a year now, went to high school with her and has a class with her now in college, but has still yet to have a single conversation with her in person.

And look, I can’t completely attack social media, because I do frequently scroll through my Facebook timeline and occasionally post photos on Instagram. And yes, there are good uses for it. I’ll probably be sharing this article on Facebook in order to get my friends to read it. However, what I do find disturbing is that our use of social media is giving us an excuse to not interact with each other in person and is trying to replace a very healthy social interaction.

So this Valentine’s Day, be bold and go take a risk. Go talk to that person that you’ve been crushing on from afar or have been Snapchatting for a year now. Don’t scroll through this person’s Instagram or enviously look at photos that your friends are posting with their significant others. If you’re watching a romantic comedy, don’t do it alone with a quart of ice cream. Instead, do it with friends and surround yourself with people who care about you. And last but not least, don’t be me from middle school and flirt with people on Facebook messenger. If anything, go out there and have these experiences first hand, in real time. I do realize that this does have the potential of going terribly wrong, but at least you’ll have a good story to tell at the end of it.

Poems for the loved and lonely

BY RAHIMA JAMAL MiC COLUMNIST Where Love is Real

There is a place where love is real, And after hate is concealed, And there the sky is kind and blue, And there the grass is jade dew, And there the robin has a soft coo To warm in the tomato sun.

Let us leave the place where the ash grows white And the dull sidewalks are steel.

Past the ditch where the tar roses bloom We shall stride with a stride that is leisured with doom, And gaze where the gray-rust needles zoom To the place where love is real.

Yes, we’ll stride with a stride that is leisured with doom, And we’ll go where the gray-rust needles zoom, For the youngsters, they spot, and the youngsters, they loom The place where love is real.

Empty A heart Easy to break Pick yourself up they said Days dragged on, everyone moved on No more Read more online at

michigandaily.com

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Wednesday, February 6, 2019 // The Statement

How a relationship (and a breakup) taught me to accept my body

BY ELIZABETH HO MiC COLUMNIST “Comparison robs you of joy.” It is an old adage that I shouldn’t have forgotten when I walked away from myself for a boy.

As funny and charming as I eventually found my first boyfriend, I wasn’t all that interested in him when we met over dinner with other interns. The music was too loud to hear even those across the table from me, and I was at the very end, only able to speak to a guy whose name I couldn’t quite remember or pronounce.

As a nervous talker, I had a compulsion to try anyways. I don’t remember much about that first conversation, but I do know that at one point, I commented on his fast metabolism. He was almost impossibly skinny, weighing 127 pounds even at a height of 5-foot-9-inches. I envied that he could eat anything and still stay thin because my metabolism was completely the opposite: slow and seemingly incompatible with being slender.

For most of my life, I’ve struggled with my weight. After the tender age of three, my BMI often left me solidly in the overweight range. I wasn’t the only fat one in the family, but I was the only fat girl and the only one in my generation to remain fat. Though I heard from others that Asians were supposedly so lucky to be so skinny, I knew that did not apply to me. I felt un-Chinese, and ironically, my shame was only compounded because I had a Chinese family.

Chinese families can be very direct to children about their flaws, and my family was no different. My father complained about the tightness of the shirt I was wearing to church — not because it would attract unwanted attention to me, but because it would draw notice to my belly. The most mortifying of these memories took place on one Thanksgiving, when my entire extended family was gathered in my grandparents’ living room. My grandmother brought out a scale and had me stand on it in front of my aunt. She read the results out loud and commented on how much weight I’d gained —in the same room as the whole family.

My father once referred to my figure as manly. I’m stocky, made to be wider than I’d ever like to be, and it used to make me uncomfortable. Through middle school and even into the beginning of high school, hearing others use female pronouns to describe me made me feel anxious and strange. I didn’t feel feminine, especially as one of the fattest in my grade and far from the thin bodies of K-pop idols. I didn’t expect to ever look like them, but I hoped to at least have a

shot at being pretty like other Asian girls.

With a mindset like this, being with my boyfriend was both comforting and horrifying. Though I was often at the apartment he shared with a roommate and ate the same food that they did, I assumed that perhaps he was somehow working off the unhealthy portions after I had gone home. When I moved in with them for a month, I realized that this was patently untrue. When his roommate — an incredible, somewhat health-oriented chef — wasn’t cooking, my boyfriend ate like a typical college student, with plenty of delivery pizza and always a carton of ice cream in the freezer. I tried to keep up with him, perhaps out of a misguided notion that this would somehow allow us to spend more time together, but I eventually and ruefully came to terms with the fact that I could never eat like he did.

When we broke up, I lost my confidence. It made me feel like I had never been good enough for him. There were many things he could do that I couldn’t: He spoke more languages, programmed in more languages, and was so smart that he easily got A+s, even with his trademark laziness. But those didn’t really bother me all that much. I could easily resolve them all with hard work, and that’s something that I’m glad I took the time to work on. What wouldn’t leave my mind was that perhaps he hadn’t wanted to continue our long-distance relationship because I wasn’t enough of what he wanted. I thought, “If only I were thinner, perhaps he would have been willing to persist.” Maybe he had grown embarrassed of being with me.

As time passed and our communication dwindled (for the record, I made every attempt to begin a friendship, but he chose to ghost me), I grew. After I began to counter my feelings with logic, I developed a stronger sense of self. From my various weight loss attempts, I know that looking how I want will take a while, but for the first time, I’m happy with who I am right now. When I look at the mirror, I see someone who is imperfect, but beautiful, capable and loved. And despite all that this relationship has put me through, I’m truthful when I quote Ariana Grande and say, “I’m so grateful

Confessions of a of a middle school romantic

BY DANYEL THARAKAN SENIOR MiC EDITOR As long as I can remember, and perhaps even before, I have been a hopeless romantic. I had my first crush on a girl when I was three; when I was eight, I still had a crush on her and reflected this by giving her a pair of earrings that my mom helped me make. Her family moved away a year later and I was crushed.

By middle school my romanticism had reached its peak cringe, a borderline emo phase on which I look back and try to laugh. In fifth grade, when I was ten, I started having a crush on a new girl, and being who I am, I wanted to let her know in a romantic way. I wrote her a long poem and on Valentine’s Day in the year two-thousand and nine, ten years ago, I snuck the poem into her locker at recess.

I don’t remember what the poem I wrote said, but I do remember the rejection poem she put in my locker later that day.

It read: Roses are red Violets are Blue I’m too young And so are you P.S. another time I think my poem was better. To add to my humiliation, I came across her teacher in the hallway the following day, who congratulated me on writing such a good poem.

Despite this rough start to poetry, I continued using it as an emotional outlet through middle school, and my poems were exceptionally bad and cringingly melodramatic. In honor of Valentine’s Day and for your entertainment, I have included an annotated selection of some of my middle school poems that related to romance. I hope you will enjoy.

Glow A golden glow Flows through my body Warms my heart And opens my mind I don’t remember who I wrote this about, but it definitely reflects much more positive emotion and probably is peak Danyel.

Rumor A terrible infection That spreads like wildfire A secret, divulged A trust, violated A malignant rumor Destroying me inside I’m pretty sure I wrote this poem after one of my ‘friends’ told everyone who I had a crush on.

Desire My heart’s desire Lies in the arms Of another man And accounts me every detail Little does she know She is eating away At my soul At this time, I had a crush on one of my best friends, who was ‘dating’ (whatever that means in middle school) another one of our friends; evidently I was not super happy about this.

These are just three of the worst (or best entertainment value) from several small notebooks’ worth that I wrote between 5th-8th grade. To pick these out, I went through all of them, and was cringing at my past self the entire time.

Though they make good stories to laugh at, as we reflect on the past this Valentine’s Day, I am definitely glad not to be in middle school anymore.

To my 4c curls

BY EFE OSAGIE SENIOR MiC EDITOR Dear hair, Thank you for sticking with me throughout all the years.

From the hair frying days of high school to the box braids that were worn way too long.

This is a love letter to you.

I know we’ve had our rough patches, but I just didn’t understand your beauty, your uniqueness and your power.

The way your 4c curls make you stand apart from any other head of limp strands.

The way you absorb coconut oil and cantu to make raw power.

The way you continue to grow and shine no matter how much relaxer or chemicals you get hit with.

Your flexibility and ability to change at the drop of the hat. If I wanna try braids, you say let’s do it. If I want to wear crochet you say girl I’m ready and you make those work.

I didn’t appreciate it before but I do now.

I used to think I was treating you well, by using the hair products I found in my house, using the treatments my mom taught me. But then I discovered what sulfates and parabens are, and that products for white hair are significantly different than products for Black hair. And that just because something cleans your hair, it doesn’t mean the product is good for your hair.

Now I treat you the way you deserve and you show your appreciation through beautifully coiling and growing, the way you know how.

I’ve spent too much time not appreciating you, but I love you hair.

So thank you for sticking through it, and always being there.

Love, Efe