ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Ann Arbor, Michigan
michigandaily.com
CAMPUS LIFE
Spilling the Beans
Installation of art details healing after alleged assault
Union created after discrimination claim fights for severance pay following local coffee chain closure
Experience of man who accused prof. of misconduct unveiled in SMTD Soderquiest Atrium
LEAH GRAHAM
DESIGN BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
Daily News Editor
When the baristas at Mighty Good Coffee formed a union last fall, they intended to stop their employers from discriminating against workers. Now the members of the Washtenaw Area Coffee Workers’ Association are negotiating severance pay as the owners of the local specialty coffee chain prepare to shutter all of Mighty Good’s stores across the city by the end of August. The first location to close its doors will be the Main Street location in Kerrytown, which is slated to close Friday. An April 15 letter from Timothy Ryan, an attorney representing the chain’s owners, Nic Sims and David Myers, informed employees they were being terminated. “Nic and David have concluded that they are not well suited to operate a retail operation,” the letter states. “They have found the experience to be overly stressful. It has created an unworkable burden on their relationship and their family.” On Tuesday, baristas at Mighty Good Coffee protested the termination notice, which informed some workers they would be losing their jobs in less than a week. The employees demonstrated outside of Mighty Good’s location on South University Avenue, which will close on May 5. Mandy Gallegos, a barista at Mighty
Legislation would change guidelines for disinviting controversial speakers ALYSSA MCMURTRY Daily Staff Reporter
On April 9, legislators introduced two bills into the Michigan House of Representatives that could impact free speech on college campuses. The first of the two bills, called the “Campus Free Speech Act,” could affect the number of public areas for free speech. If a demonstration or exercise goes against the four justifiable reasons to limit free speech, which are demonstrators who are deemed a public threat, other platforms for expression, assembly and distribution of literature can still occur and the campus has no free speech zones. If all of these criteria are met, public universities will have the right to intervene. Currently, the University of Michigan is not legally allowed to ban speakers who use “hate speech” from their facilities unless they pose a threat to the community. In February, the University concluded that housing staff are not allowed to remove hate speech from student doors. See BILLS , Page 3
shops and laying off all of the employees.” An initial letter informing Mighty Good of the complaint against the company was sent on April 9, according to the NLRB case docket. One source close to WACWA, who asked to remain anonymous due to ongoing negotiations with Mighty Good, said the owners’ decision to close seemed to be related to the filing of the NLRB case. “It could seem that way definitely,” they said. “That’s one of those things that you can never be certain about but you’ll pretty much always suspect.” Gallegos said the union formed in the fall to bargain for better conditions and equal treatment after a fellow barista quit over accusations of racial discrimination, adding that Myers and Sims, the company’s owners, were not happy with the workers’ decision to form a union. “We unionized because of a racial allegation against our work where one of our coworkers — a Black co-worker — was being underpaid compared to all of our white co-workers, so we unionized so we could just have opportunity and equal treatment in our workplace — better working conditions — and unfortunately, they did not like that,” Gallegos said. “They thought it
was retaliation, and we’ve been working toward our union contract for the past few months with them, with the Mighty Good owners and their lawyer.” Nya Njee was the barista who quit. She worked at Mighty Good for two years, but said she left after she discovered she was being paid less than her white coworkers. In an interview with The Daily in August, Njee said her wages did not increase while she worked at Mighty Good despite receiving complementary performance reviews. Njee said she realized something was “kind of weird” when she mentioned not getting a pay raise to her owner and manager and they looked like “deer caught in headlights.” “It just kept staying with me and it was bothering me the whole time and so when I found that my coworkers, like junior coworkers, some of whom didn’t have any coffee experience, had gotten raises before me, I was immediately like, well, that’s interesting since I’m literally the only Black woman in the whole company, and it was just unfortunately pretty obvious as soon as I heard that my junior coworkers — non-Black coworkers — were receiving raises before me,” Njee said. See COFFEE, Page 3
CLAIRE HAO & SAMMY SUSSMAN Daily Staff Reporters
An interactive audio-visual installation aiming to bring attention to opera singer Samuel Schultz’s healing after an alleged assault by School of Music, Theatre & Dance professor David Daniels was unveiled in the SMTD Soderquist Atrium this morning. The installation is comprised of three speakers playing recordings of Schultz sharing his side of the story and a rolling counter projection estimating Daniels’s pay by the University of Michigan since he was placed on administrative leave in August 2018. Schultz’s allegations of rape against Daniels and his husband Scott Waltersin 2010 broke in a New York Daily News article published in August 2018. Daniels was placed on leave from the University later that month, shortly after the allegations became public. Further reporting by The Daily uncovered multiple attempts by Daniels to solicit sex from University students on Grindr, a dating app for gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. The Daily also found evidence the University was made aware of sexual misconduct allegations by University students against Daniels in March 2018, though they awarded him tenure in May. In an email to The Daily, University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen wrote that Daniels is on paid leave. See SMTD, Page 3
Panel discusses artificial intelligence in Writer talks daily life at Dissonance Event Series history of Speakers analyze social implications of digital innovation on humans, society
GOVERNMENT
Bills could affect free speech on campuses
Good’s Arbor Hills store, which is set to close Aug. 31, said the workers wanted to draw attention to what was happening at the company. “We’re trying to let people know that union-busting is a real thing,” Gallegos said. “The unfortunate part in all of this is that the Arbor Hills location will still be open, and so the unionized baristas will be working there, which will be very awkward for a lot of us.” Sims and Ryan did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Multiple Mighty Good employees told The Daily the owners were not responding to any press inquiries. The letter informing employees of Mighty Good’s intention to shut down all of its stores came exactly one week after the employees’ union filed an unfair labor practices complaint against the company with the National Labor Relations Board. Gallegos said the cause of the complaint was due to the fact that Mighty Good Coffee was “short staffing their workers.” “Recently, we filed a ULP — which is an unfair labor practice — against them due to short staffing us chronically for the past few months,” Gallegas said. “And after they got that ULP they sent us an email via the lawyer saying that they were closing up all four of the
CAMPUS LIFE
MELANIE TAYLOR Daily Staff Reporter
Wednesday night, more than 100 people attended a panel discussion titled “Understanding the Social Implications of AI.” The panel, part of the Dissonance Event Series, was held in the Michigan League. Organizing Committee Member Sol Bermann, chief privacy officer and interim chief information security officer for the University of Michigan, explained Dissonance lies at the intersection of many different areas of study. “Dissonance is what I like to call a grassroots faculty and student effort to take a multi-
disciplinary approach to issues at the confluence of technology, policy, privacy, security and law,” Bermann said. Bermann said Dissonance makes an effort to incorporate perspectives from many different schools and organizations housed at the University. He listed LSA, the College of Engineering, the School of Public Health, the School of Public Policy, the Medical School and the Law School as a few of the many past participants. “As we were putting the series together, we wanted to get a range of perspectives,” Bermann said. “We didn’t just want it to be coming from a pro perspective or a con perspec-
tive. When you put the pro and con together you get a sort of clash: dissonance.” Bermann said he believes the University provides the unique capacity as a worldclass research institution to pull in-house speakers together and provide informative panels such as the panel on Artificial Intelligence. He explained Dissonance focuses on issues that relate to current events, a category in which he believes AI falls. “AI is increasingly a known commodity in your daily life, but do you even think about it anymore?” Bermann said. “Do you think about the way you’re seeing the things you see on
Amazon, or on Facebook, or on the news? Do you think about who’s presenting those things to you? Do you think about what it means to have autonomous vehicles versus having the responsibility of driving a car? Do you think about the algorithms and how transparent they are or aren’t because those algorithms, again, are influencing our daily life.” Bermann said because college-age students are on the cusp of the “digital age,” never having known a time before cell phones or the Internet, they are less likely to question the merits of AI. See AI , Page 3
KEEMYA ESMAEL/Daily Information professor Kentaro Toyama speaks at the University Information and Technology Services-hosted event titled “Dissonance: Social Implications of Artificial Intelligence” at the Michigan League Wednesday evening.
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INDEX
Vol. CXXVIII, No. 105 ©2019 The Michigan Daily
educational integration
Ford School book talk series hosts UC Berkeley Professor Rucker Johnson ANGELINA LITTLE Daily Staff Reporter
Wednesday, Rucker C. Johnson, a ssociate professor at t he Goldma n School of Public Policy at t he Universit y of Ca lifornia , Berkeley, spoke to approximately 50 st udents about his new book, “Children of t he Drea m: Why School Integ ration Works.” The ta lk wa s held at t he Ford School of Public Policy a s a pa r t of t he Book Ta lks @ t he Ford School series. Johnson’s book, published Tuesday, advocates for school integ ration a s a policy critica l to promoting equa lit y. Public Policy Dea n Michael Ba rr int roduced Johnson, empha sizing t he releva nce of his book to current policies. “ We’re rea lly at a critica l moment in ma ny ways in our count r y ’s histor y a s policy ma kers a nd ot hers debate not only t he f ut ure of public education but rea lly t he kind of societ y we wa nt to live in,” Ba rr sa id. See EDUCATION , Page 3
NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS......................6
SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............5 SPORTS...................7