2019-10-02

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Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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Concerns rise as state experiences County tackles increase in reported cases of EEE opioid crisis, Outbreak of Eastern Equine Encephalitis prompts government response

addiction at WCC summit Government officials, community organizations address epidemic REMY FARKAS & ZAYNA SYED Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter

DESIGN BY JONATHAN WALSH

FRANCESCA DUONG Daily Staff Reporter

As the warm weather continues, areas of Michigan are increasingly at risk for Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This rare brain infection is spread through mosquitoes and approximately one third of people infected die

from the disease. There is no cure or vaccine for the virus.

Nine people have been infected in Michigan, including three fatalities. Thirty-three animal cases of EEE have also been confirmed in 15 Michigan counties, including Allegan, Barry, Berrien, Calhoun, Cass, Genesee, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Kent, Lapeer, Livingston, Montcalm, Newaygo, St. Joseph and Van Buren.

Katherine Spindler,

professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, explained that though EEE is not a particularly new virus, it has been more prominent this year.

“Is this going to become an epidemic?” Spindler questioned.

“I suspect that’s not the case …

We’re approaching winter, and a hard frost is going to kill off many, if not all, mosquitoes that are fostering this virus.”

LSA sophomore Nicole Lin

of Grand Rapids, a recently affected area in Kent County, said in light of the virus, she has growing concerns for her family and friends.

“It’s been pretty scary hearing about it,” Lin said. “I have a lot of friends and family there, and my mom is worried. I’ve talked to my friends to make sure they’re staying safe, especially since a lot of them get out late from work and school.”

See EEE, Page 3A

The Washtenaw Health Initiative Opioid Project hosted the Washtenaw County Opioid Summit on Tuesday, where various state and local stakeholders came together for the discussion focused on the county’s high, but declining, rate of opioid overdoses and the link between trauma and addiction. Participants learned about opioid use in the county, heard testimonials and attended breakout sessions relating to primary prevention, pain management, harm reduction, treatment and recovery.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., shared a few words on her personal

Two state Veronica Roth discusses latest bills seek novel, upcoming work at book talk to thwart ‘Divergent’ author, ‘U’ lecturer Alexander Weinstein read from new projects vape ban GOVERNMENT

GOP representatives introduce legislation to defy embargo on sales ALYSSA MCMURTRY Daily Staff Reporter

State Rep. Steven Johnson, R-Wayland, introduced a bill last week that would allow the sale of 20mg or less of flavored nicotine in the state, undercutting the ban Gov. Gretchen Whitmer placed on flavored e-cigarettes in early September.

Whitmer declared the ban after Joneigh Khaldun, Michigan’s chief medical executive and chief deputy director for health at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, determined youth vaping was a public health emergency.

However, critics of the ban believe this will only push children and those who are trying to quit smoking to start smoking cigarettes again. In an interview with The Daily, Johnson said he agrees this is a problem for young people, but explained that he does not think this ban properly addresses the issue.

“The governor identified a legitimate problem that there is a youth vaping problem,” Johnson said. “Now as far as how do we address that, I don’t believe that her unilateral ban on flavored vapes is the right solution.”

See VAPING, Page 3A

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JASMIN LEE For The Daily

Author of the New York Times best-selling trilog y “Divergent” Veronica Roth spoke at the Ann Arbor Public Library about her new book Tuesday night. Residential College lecturer and author

Alexander Weinstein led the conversation in front of a crowd of nearly 200 people.

Roth’s new book, “The End and Other Beginnings,” published Tuesday, is a collection of dystopian short stories. In addition to the “Divergent” trilog y, Roth has written other dystopian novels including

“Carve the Mark” and “The Fate Divides.”

The night began with a reading of a selection from Roth’s book and Weinstein’s new book, “Universal Love.” They then opened up a conversation surrounding the topics of writing and dystopian novels.

Roth and Weinstein both said growing up in the

Midwest had a significant impact on their writing.

“I feel like when I try to write about other places, I don’t feel like I know those places,” Roth said. “I’m always a visitor in those places. I’ve lived in the Chicago area since I was six years old and this is home.”

See AUTHOR, Page 3A

MILES MACKLIN/Daily Authors Alexander Weinstein and Veronica Roth talk about Roth’s new book “The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future” at the Ann Arbor District Library Tuesday evening.

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INDEX

Vol. CXXIX, No. 3 ©2019 The Michigan Daily

relationship to opioid addiction, discussing how her father suffered from prescription drug addiction, and her younger sister died from a drug overdose. Dingell stressed opioid addiction affects many people and said it is necessary to reduce the stigma associated with the illness.

“This is really real to me.

It’s not easy for me to talk about. I talk about it more than I did, because you look at me and think I’ve got this great life,” Dingell said. “And I am lucky, I’ve got a lot of friends, I’ve got a lot of family, they keep me going. But I do talk about it, because it happens in every family, it happens in every community, every neighborhood, and you cannot imagine the desperation.”

See SUMMIT, Page 3A

ANN ARBOR

Planning proposals divide A2 citizens

Residents speak out on change to building code at commission meeting EMMA STEIN

Daily Staff Reporter

The City of Ann Arbor Planning Commission convened Tuesday night to discuss several zoning projects for the city.

The first proposal brought to the table was the Hideaway Lane Planned Project, which asks the commission members to amend a previous site plan. Originally, the plan was to build an additional 17 single-family homes, but the designers of the complex want to convert them to two-family homes in order to make them more affordable for first-time owners.

This would increase the number of homes on this site from 29 to 45.

Community member Mike Gustafson asked the commission to reject the proposal. He cited safety hazards regarding narrow streets, traffic and a lack of sufficient room for fire trucks in the case of an emergency.

“As members of the community, as citizens of Ann Arbor, as your constituents, we urge you to reject this petition,” Gustafson said.

“Traffic per day is substantial given the very tight quarters there… Many of us are concerned about fire engines getting in there in the event of an emergency. We feel that, given those dimensions, this could be very irresponsible and very dangerous.”

See ZONING, Page 3A

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Gay rights advocates question ROTC ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ October 1, 1993 Big changes could be in store for campus attitudes and policies this fall, in ROTC as well as gay activist circles, as students face the first academic year under President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy.

As a branch of the U.S. military, ROTC, which is responsible for recruiting more than 70 percent of today’s military personnel, is subjected to the new rule affecting the armed forces. Under the new policy, students are no longer required to sign a form stating they are heterosexual in order to join ROTC. However, as in the military, the ban against homosexual activity is still in effect, and “if someone

is engaged in direct homosexual type of activity, that actually could result in their being removed from the service,” said Robert Shepherd, the public affairs officer for the U.S. Army ROTC Cadet Command.

Clinton’s policy - a compromise of his original campaign promise - is affecting ROTCs on college campuses nationwide for the first time, and gay rights groups are not satisfied. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is unhappy with the policy’s implications for ROTC, and it is prepared to fight.

National ACLU spokesperson Alexander Robinson contends that ROTC should be removed from campuses because it violates many universities’ non-discrimination

policies. The nationalACLU is currently involved in a legal battle supporting several plaintiffs against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, citing the equal protection provision, First Amendment and right to free association under the Constitution.

The question of discrimination in ROTC is not a new one. A national debate escalated on campuses about five years ago, when student demonstrators called for the ban of ROTC based on discrimination against gays and lesbians. Several institutions, including Harvard University, Colby College and Rutgers University, abandoned their ROTC programs altogether. Bonnie Nix,

president of the University ACLU, is hesitant about calling for any drastic action.

“I really think that at this point we need some kind of small, slow, incremental-type change,” she said.

Local gay rights activists plan to focus on changing policies within the ROTC system, rather than banning the program. But neither the University Lesbian Gay Male Bisexual Program nor the University ACLU have immediate plans to challenge the policy.

Nix said she is opposed to Clinton’s policy, and said University policy that forbids discrimiation on the basis of sexual orientation “brings into question a lot of what ROTC is doing.”

University regent’s Bylaw 14.06 -- a non-discrimination policy -was amended at last Friday’s Board of Regents meeting to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

LSA senior Chad Beyer, an active member of Queer Action, said he is against ROTC’s presence on campus because “gays and lesbians share this community with them and they have an explicit rule that the discriminate against us.”

“I really think that if the University wants to prove that it is committed to fostering diversity, that it really has to hold the ROTC accountable to the same standards… that gays and lesbians are not discriminated against on

this campus.

David Schwartz, a campus ACLU officer, asked, “Is the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy a policy against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation? I think it is. But I don’t know what the University is going to be able to do about it.”

But University ROTC students said they are satisfied with the policy.

“If it doesn’t compromise what we’re trying to do here in the ROTC program, then I’m all for it. If (gay recruits) do what they’re supposed to do and do it right, and do it with honor and they work hard, I have no problem wuth it at all,” said a Navy ROTC member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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Ross’s Out for Business hosts talk focusing on support for members of LGBTQ community

Non-profit founder Nathan Manske gives keynote address, discusses personal experience ERIN GRANT

Daily Staff Reporter

With National Coming Out Day just over a week away, the Ross School of Business’s LGBTQ organization, Out for Business, hosted OUTx on Tuesday evening as part of Ross Coming Out Week. OFB sponsors Ross Coming Out Week annually, featuring events highlighting and supporting the LGBTQ community within the Business School. Michigan Business Women and the MBA Council cosponsored the TEDx-style event.

Business graduate students James Lee and Laura Malecky, the co-presidents of OFB, began the event with introductions.

Malecky

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said she wanted the event to bring together LGBTQ individuals and allies to normalize conversations about coming out and help promote LGBTQ culture.

“The goal of today’s event was for people to share their stories to help others better understand beyond the label of LGBTQ, and to help build solidarity and build inclusive communities,” Malecky said.

“And obviously this is the first step.”

The keynote speaker, Nathan Manske, discussed I’m From Driftwood, the non-profit he founded based on his experiences growing up as a queer individual in a small Texas town.

I’m From Driftwood, now in its 10th year, is an online archive of stories from the

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LGBTQ community and its allies. The website features both written accounts and video stories, some of which Manske highlighted during the event. Manske attributed the name of his non-profit to Harvey Milk’s sign featured in the 1978 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade.

Manske said he wants I’m From Driftwood to serve as a reminder to LGBTQ individuals everywhere they are not alone.

“One remarkable characteristic of spoken stories is that they actually synchronize the brains of the speaker and listener,” Manske said.

Manske also spoke about I’m From Driftwood’s 50 State Story tour, during which he traveled to all 50 states to collect stories from LGBTQ people. Manske believes the importance of I’m From Driftwood lies in the essence of the shared community that’s created through the telling and sharing of stories.

Following Manske’s presentation, three speakers took the stage to share their coming out stories.

Each story received a standing ovation from the audience of around 150 students, faculty members and local community members. These stories highlighted the diverse experiences of coming out as LGBTQ as well as the importance of having a network of support both during and after the coming out process.

Business graduate student Georgia Cassady told The Daily after the event that she came to OUTx as an ally of the

LGBTQ community and hoped to better understand some of the challenges LGBTQ individuals face when they decide to come out. “(It was great) to hear about the different ways that people came to terms with who they are, how they figured it out and then the different tactics and strategies they had for actually deciding it was time to come out and who to come out to,” Cassady said.

Much of the discussion during the panel focused on the importance of breaking down labels in order to make the Michigan community and society at large more inclusive. Steven Feder, vice president of events for OFB, also pointed to LGBTQ resources on the University of Michigan’s campus, such as the Spectrum Center, which seeks to promote a diverse, collaborative space on campus.

Feder told The Daily he wanted Ross Coming Out Week to include more events, such as conversation-based events like OUTx. Feder added that events focusing on sharing stories are a better way to bring together the LGBTQ community and its allies, especially within the business world.

“I think that the people in this room will be future CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, heads of non-profits,” Feder said.

“And for them to have a better understanding of the emotional intensities (of coming out) and what you deal with as a member of the LGBT community, I think that will make them better leaders.”

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News Fast Food for Thought event looks at sustainability, meal kits The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

VAPING From Page 1A

The initiative held its 6th annual forum for over 200 students MOLLY NORRIS Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan Sustainable Food Systems Initiative held its 6th annual Fast Food For Thought event Tuesday night. Nine speakers presented on a range of topics surrounding sustainable food to over 200 students.

The speakers each had five minutes to present their topic, creating a fast-paced series of lectures. Topics ranged from childhood obesity, presented by Assistant Professor Katherine Bauer, to Professor John Vandermeer’s discussion of sustainability in Puerto Rico during the current political climate.

Students in attendance appreciated the short format of the talks. LSA junior Mark Castaneda said he felt the talk was easier to absorb than other longer, more researchheavy events.

“When you’re talking about research, it gets really hard to keep people’s attention for a long time, so having [the presentations] be five

AUTHOR From Page 1A Weinstein shared how his first-hand experiences with Midwesterners helped him structure his stories.

“There is kind of that part of the safety that the way that people are very friendly in the Midwest, but also very distant internally,” Weinstein said. “And that creates this wonderful irony.”

Since Roth writes for an audience of primarilyteenagers and young adults, she has often been asked if she feels like she’s trying to teach a lesson through her readers. Roth said she doesn’t feel like her writing is supposed to teach — it’s meant to be an escape from the real world.

SUMMIT From Page 1A Dingell’s late husband, former U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., also used opioids to treat his pain from cancer. Dingell said it’s important not to stigmatize people with real pain and emphasized the need for alternative pain medication.

“We have to develop alternative pain pills, so that people get pain relief without becoming addicted, and we need to not stigmatize those who have real pain, or not give them the pills that they need, while at the same time, keeping our kids, keeping our neighbors, our families, from ever starting them,” Dingell said.

According to keynote speaker Adreanne Waller, an epidemiologist and author of the Washtenaw County Opioid Report, the first five months of 2019 have shown a decrease in opioid prescription and emergency overdose visits.

Waller detailed a number of factors that contributed to the epidemic, including untreated mental health, corporate greed, unemployment and disabilities.

“There’s a number of — and I keep adding to this list — big issues that have become much more crystal clear over the years within this epidemic,” Waller said. “The historic, unjust responses to the crack and cocaine epidemic and how that injured generations of families. We’ve learned so much about other substance abuse disorders… the incredible, high profit margins of marketing addictive substances,

minutes is really effective,” Castaneda said.

Some other topics covered included analysis of whether meal kit services can be environmentally friendly. Program in the Environment director Shelie Miller discussed her research surrounding meal kit services, and whether the excess packaging prevents sustainability. Miller found that, though grocery stores have less packaging, using meal kits is actually more sustainable than shopping at the grocery store due to the amount of waste emitted in each scenario.

Ultimately, Miller concluded the packaging wasn’t the deciding factor.

Instead, it was what was in the package that made something sustainable or not.

“It doesn’t matter how you get your food,” Miller said. “It matters what the protein is.”

Other speakers, such as School for Environment and Sustainability research fellow Martin Heller and School of Public Health research fellow Katerina

Stylianou, also focused on the issue of protein. They said beef was a huge outlier when it came to food consumption’s effect on the environment.

Stylianou attempted to answer the question “should we all become vegan?” and found replacing beef and processed meats with more sustainable foods such as nuts and fruits could lead to a 40-percent reduction in our carbon footprint, and add 50 minutes per day to that person’s life. Heller stressed the importance of institutional change when looking at food system’s effects on the environment, pointing out altering what kind of foods universities and other large institutions serve could have a huge impact on the way food consumption affects the environment.

LSA senior Caroline Hall told The Daily she thought the event was a great way to be introduced to numerous topics surrounding food systems.

Ultimately, Roth wants her writing to be a safe haven for young people.

“I think that it’s pretty clear now that the youths don’t really need me to teach them things.” Roth said. “They have access to a lot more information than I ever did. They are way more aware of the world. They’re starting climate strikes and marching for our lives and I think what they need is a safe place to go and I can create that and a quiet place to think, then that’s all I can do.”

When asked about her process of writing dystopian novels, Roth mentioned she is usually a pessimistic person, but that changes when she starts writing.

“I have a lot of pessimistic impulses, but when I write, I tend to challenge my own

thoughts about the world and about people,” Roth said. “I’m a little pessimistic about people too, but when I write I find myself by having hope instead and … that’s why I do it.”

LSA freshman Molly Duplaga attended the event and was excited to hear from a successful female author. She thought both Roth and Weinstein had a lot of valuable information to share about writing and their own life experiences.

“I really enjoyed listening to Roth and Weinstein speak and hearing both of their thoughts on the process of writing,” Duplaga said.

“They were fun to listen to and relatable. I liked how they both appreciated the Midwest and were able to put into words what it’s like to live here.”

untreated mental health, mental illness affects changes in healthcare delivery, deepen social ties, employment and disability challenges, as well as linked with lacking economic opportunity. This list gets longer and longer.”

Waller also said 2,100 of 300,000 emergency department visits from January 2011 to May 2019 in Washtenaw County were related to opioid poisoning, and those with Medicaid seem to exhibit higher rates of visits to the ER concerning repeat opioid overdoses.

Waller, along with others at the summit, said she believes treating childhood trauma may be key to preventing opioid addiction.

“I really feel that understanding more about the link between trauma and opiate overdoses might enable us to identify trauma as almost the preventative test — mammography, if you will — that will prevent ultimately an opiate overdose,” Waller said.

“It helps us to see things much earlier than we would otherwise. And if that pain, that that person has, is covered up with a chemical euphoria, like opioids, it can delay treatment until the cancer has spread.”

Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, is the terminology for measuring childhood trauma.

According to the World Health Organization, ACEs is the most important health discovery of the century.

Zaire Totty, project coordinator for the System for Opioid Overdose Surveillance at the University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center, said this event is a good opportunity

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to bring together people from different fields.

“I think it’s a good opportunity for a lot of the different stakeholders to get together as well, especially because this is an epidemic that comes from so many different parts of public health,” Totty said. “With prescribers and recreational use, I really think it’s a good time to get individuals from different disciplines that are working on this topic.”

Amy Rucker, project coordinator for the University of Michigan’s Injury Prevention Center, acknowledged the importance of bringing together the community to discuss the issue.

“I think it’s really important to bring different stakeholders and providers from across Washtenaw County and across the state … to an event to talk about something so important,” Rucker said. “Yet even within organizations within the University of Michigan, we have a lot of different projects and and a lot of different centers and institutes working on the opioid epidemic … So just bringing everyone together in one space, we get to learn what everyone’s doing.

We can collaborate, make meaningful connections.”

Sarah Khan, a student studying social work at Eastern Michigan University, emphasized the importance of the opioid crisis in relation to her career path.

“As somebody who’s majoring in social work, I think it’s really important to know different things that affect your community,” Khan said.

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Johnson said the ban ignores the true reason kids vape.

“What we found out is that kids aren’t really attracted to the f lavors, they’re not opposed,” Johnson said. “But what they’re attracted to is the buzz that they’re gonna get from these nicotine products, and they are usually buying the highest nicotine level out there — usually around five to seven percent.”

After speaking with small shop vape owners, Johnson said the largest sales come from those trying to quit smoking, who typically buy products that contain nicotine levels at 2 percent or lower.

“If you allow for the lowlevel nicotine products that are f lavored for e-cigarettes, the kids aren’t going to be gravitating towards them because they don’t get that same buzz,” Johnson said.

“The fact of the matter is that 65 percent of the kids are using mint-f lavor vaping products,” Johnson said.

“The reason they’re using mint is because that’s what the common f lavor for is for those high-nicotine-level products.”

Rep. Beau LaFave, R-District 108, also introduced a bill that would

EEE From Page 1A LSA junior Alyssa Cutter is from Battle Creek, where two wolves were infected with EEE. Cutter said she wonders if the emergence of EEE is a result of climate change.

“It will be interesting to see if this is something that emerges again next year and the year after that as we see the environment for mosquitos shifting with climate change,” Cutter said.

In addition, Cutter explained she has noticed the effects of EEE in her hometown, as Battle Creek has announced new safety measures. The measures have

ZONING From Page 1A After a discussion about potential water erosion from the creek nearby, traffic analysis, concerns about mushy land and fire safety hazards, the commission amended two aspects of the motion by changing the bike parking location and adding traffic calming mechanisms, and then approved the motion to council.

The commission then moved on to discuss two new companion projects: a multi-family residential six-story building next to the Michigan Theatre and a 19-story high rise next door on East Washington that will feature 240 residential units.

Ann Arbor resident Ethel Potts attended the meeting and spoke out against the projects due to the fact they won’t have parking.

Potts said she already struggles to find parking in the State Street area, and adding large housing complexes will only make it more difficult.

“We have before us all the State Street character overlay zoning district with a 6-story building and no parking,” Potts said. “Major problems will result since the adjacent public parking structure is full with very limited hours open to the public. I try to use it regularly and can’t.”

However, seven community members spoke in favor of the State Street building. Doug Kelbaugh, professor at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, addressed the environmental benefits of Ann Arbor residents living further downtown.

“The more people that live downtown, the more that walk and bike, and the less that commute by car,” Kelbaugh said.

“They also live in smaller spaces which take less energy to heat and to cool, and there are just lots of advantages for urban living.”

According to the presenters,

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 — 3A overturn the ban. He spoke to The Daily about what his bill would do, primarily restricting Whitmer’s abilities to declare this as a health emergency.

“House Bill 4996 removes the governor’s ability to ban e-f lavored nicotine products for adults in the state of Michigan and would remove her ability (to do so) under the emergency health crisis act,” LaFave said.

He said the emergency health crisis act was meant to address highly contagious illnesses.

“When we drafted the statute that gave the governor the ability to declare a state of emergency for emerging health crises, we were thinking about things such as bird flu or HIV or any other communicable disease that could theoretically spread as an epidemic,” LaFave said. “What (it’s) not designed for is things that the governor doesn’t like.”

LaFave said the ban does not even address the actual issues, which he says are marijuana vaping products that contain vitamin E. “The governor’s ban does not affect the actual substances that are causing these illnesses,” LaFave said. “A study out of one of our sister states found that over 85 percent of those who reported illnesses using vaping products were using black market marijuana vaping products.”

LaFave told The Daily about

a vape shop owner in Hope, Michigan, who has an 87-yearold customer who quit smoking cigarettes by vaping. He said her favorite flavor is Fruity Pebbles and believes she is an example of how flavored products are not geared toward children.

“That’s what got her to quit after 50 years of smoking,” LaFave said.

LSA junior Caroline Nelson said she supports Whitmer’s ban because she feels it is clearly aimed toward protecting the younger generations.

“I agree with it,” Nelson said.

“I don’t think people should be selling things or smoking that are so fruity. It’s clearly targeted towards younger kids.”

Nelson said she used to vape, but after recent reports of vaping-related illnesses, she has tried to stop using the product.

“I started Juuling probably two years ago and I’m now starting to wean off,” Nelson said. “It’s so bad for you and all these articles are coming out and people are having seizures, it’s really scary.”

Nelson does not think Whitmer’s ban should be undercut in any way.

“It makes me think, ‘Who do these e-cigarette companies and Juul have in Congress that they’re paying to overturn (this ban)?’” Nelson said. “There’s no reason people should be pushing to allow people to smoke.”

received some pushback, though, Cutter said.

“Public health officials have put out information in the last few days that they’ll be doing aerial sprays with organic pesticide, and there’s actually been a lot of push back from those counties to get aerial spray taken off the agenda,” Cutter said. “People are worried about what it will do to their pets, inhaling the residue and the effects it will have on pollinators.”

According to their website as of Sept. 26, Washtenaw County Health Department will also participate in the aerial spraying of a small portion of Washtenaw County to combat the spread of the virus. It notes residents can

opt out via email, but affirms aerial spraying does not carry any significant risks to human health, pets or the environment.

Since climate generally refers to a long period of time and this has been the only large occurrence of EEE, Spindler suspects weather is the source of the spread and reaffirms the importance of staying informed.

“People can always inform themselves by going to the CDC site, and there’s a really nice EEE virus page that has things about prevention, symptoms, transmission, statistics, links and references,” Spindler said.

“For any infectious disease that you hear about, go to some reputable source.

the East Washington high rise requires the demolition of five current buildings, it will meet LEED silver standards and it will have onsite parking.

Commission members voiced concerns regarding room for Amazon deliveries, rideshares and food delivery services, solar energy and the amount of affordable housing, but ultimately the commission voted to approve both buildings.

The last item of business on the agenda was an amendment to create a new zoning designation called a T1 Transit Support district. The designation will allow for more mixed-use development further outside of downtown Ann Arbor, creating space for a transit corridor.

City planner Alexis DiLeo said the T1 district will be the first Ann Arbor district to require both residential and commercial areas.

It is designed to lower energy costs and needs for residents.

She said there is a mixed-use requirement, and half of the floor area in all buildings, but no more than 66 percent of it must be used for household living.

DiLeo added the current target area for the district is between Washtenaw Avenue, South State Street and East/West Eisenhower Boulevard.

Meeting attendee Joan Lowenstein spoke for the board of the Washtenaw Housing Alliance.

She said she is strongly in favor of the T1 district because it could help the environment and, in turn, create affordable housing options.

“I think we have two primary crises that are going on right now that affect local government: the first is climate change and the other is affordable housing,” Lowenstein said. “If we can reduce the need to use cars, that will go a long way towards helping us with climate change… I think this T1 district has great potential to increase affordability, not the least of which is making sure someone doesn’t need to have a car.”

Community member Adam Goodman said he “enthusiastically supports” the new zoning district. He echoed what Lowenstein said and discussed how allowing people to live close to where they work eliminates the need for driving everywhere .

“Simply put, we have to find ways to get people to be able to live closer to where they work, where they go to school and so on,” Goodman said. “What I see here is the beginning of a recognition that we need to work on housing for people and not for cars. This has more of an effect than you might think because if you remove the requirement for developers to build space for cars, that makes their costs go down, which means that the cost of the housing also goes down.”

Audience member Julie Ritter was not as enthusiastic about the T1 district. Ritter is on the committee for the Master Plan project, which sets Ann Arbor’s long term goals for growth and development, and has consulted nationally recognized groups for this work. She said if a T1 zone was a good idea, these groups would have suggested it.

“Every single consultant group that we have interviewed has been a nationally recognized group,” Ritter said.“They are professionals, they have wide experience. Do you think they have not heard of T1 transit support districts?

Do you think they would not recommend them? My other concern is the transit piece.

Ann Arbor has no transit. We have a bus system that struggles mightily to provide service… to get into Ann Arbor you have to drive a car. Where are those cars going to go? The University is proposing a new hospital and a college of pharmacy with no new parking spaces. Where are these cars going to go? Until we get transit, why have a transit corridor?”

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, October 2, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MARISA WRIGHT | COLUMN

On impeachment: It was all this, or a woman

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FROM THE DAILY

Trudeau and progressive white hypocrisy

O

n Sep. 18, photos surfaced of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wearing brownface, followed by the news of two more instances in blackface. Trudeau, the Leader of the Liberal Party, immediately apologized for his past actions, stating he did not consider them racist at the time but should have known better.

These photographs come at a crucial point for Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada, as they are currently less than one month away from Parliamentary elections.

Considering Trudeau has portrayed himself and his Parliament as a beacon of progressive politics, these harmful acts exhibit a profound level of hypocrisy.

This is not limited to past offenses but shows itself in many of his behaviors and policies during his time as prime minister. Though he has championed himself as enlightened, the privileges he holds as a wealthy, white man make him blind to the truly damaging effects of his transgressions. If re-elected this fall, Trudeau has a responsibility to support policies and focus on communities he has previously neglected.

In order to uphold his own and his country’s reputation as progressive leaders, he must demonstrate his commitment to equality through actions, not just through words.

To many, revelations about Trudeau’s racist past have shaken an idealized view of the prime minister.

However, these are not the only instances in which he has contradicted his purported ideals. He has long held a contentious relationship with Canada’s indigenous persons, demonstrated by his approval of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that threatens native lands. Trudeau has also been criticized for sarcastic comments he made toward an indigenous activist advocating for mercury poisoning compensation.

Beyond his poor track record with Canada’s First Nations population, Trudeau has faced accusations of violating ethics laws by trying to pressure his former justice minister and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to drop charges against a company

based in Quebec. As Canada’s first Indigenous Justice Minister, Wilson-Raybould’s resignation was viewed as a setback in the reconciliation process by many Indigenous leaders. The damages of Trudeau’s ignorance are not limited to Canada; during an official visit to India in February 2018, Trudeau and his family drew criticism for overdoing their traditional attire, entering “costume territory” and appropriating Indian culture. These offenses while in office indicate his past racist behaviors are part of a larger pattern of his privilege and ignorance.

World leaders must be held to the ideals they promote, and Trudeau is no exception.

It’s true that Trudeau has taken some actions ref lective of his liberal ideals while in office. Upon entering office in 2015, he named Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet. He has been a vocal advocate for refugees, though amid recent pressures from Canada’s right wing, he has supported a far less welcoming policy regarding asylum seekers at the U.S.-Canada border. Under his leadership, his parliament has made a concerted effort to fix the environmental laws implemented by the previous Conservative administration.

However, in order to continue promoting himself as a forward-looking frontrunner, he must adhere to these ideals consistently in his policies and his personal life. A mere image of progressiveness is not enough; this progressiveness must be ref lected in Trudeau’s actions. Like any leader, he has a duty to stick to his promises.

As students at an elite university, we are being primed to become leaders in our respective fields. For many, this includes politics and business. Trudeau’s racist wrongdoings demonstrate that we have a responsibility to thoroughly educate ourselves on other cultures

and communities.

It is imperative to acknowledge how our privilege and actions impact others. Otherwise, we are contributing further harm to our environment as well as depriving ourselves of a wellrounded education. As future members of the workforce, we must understand the histories of harm and violence inf licted upon other cultures.

This includes understanding why blackface still causes damage. Progress cannot be made when we don’t do the necessary work of confronting our biases and the impact of our privilege.

However, broadening cultural understanding and appreciation does not mean adopting cultures as our own. Even when wellintentioned, the racist fashions of appropriation further violate communities.

Cultural appropriation erases histories, distorts diversity and promotes stereotypes. It is the very mistake Trudeau made when he intentionally chose to wear brownface and blackface. However, this does not mean Trudeau should be immediately dismissed.

Instead, his actions can serve as a reminder for self-ref lection and change.

Especially as students, we should embrace expanding diversity and inclusivity, not in fear of being caught but because of our inherent eagerness to learn.

It is clearly disheartening when a beloved politician’s racist past is revealed. Justin Trudeau has been commonly viewed as a champion of progressivism, but with each racist act our trust in him continues to falter. Trudeau faces a long road of re-earning respect and trust, especially from Canadians. Yet, it is important we do not demonize Trudeau, but rather take time to ref lect and educate ourselves. We cannot change Trudeau’s past, but we can learn from him and strive for improvement.

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L

isten, I really don’t want to relitigate the 2016 election.

It was heart-wrenching, frightening and all-around anxiety-inducing. The most vivid memory I have from the day after the election is walking into school and collapsing into the arms of friends, all of us weeping and disillusioned. But it is important to examine the outcome of the 2016 election through the lens of what we know now.

On Tuesday Sep. 24, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Pelosi, who has previously expressed hesitation on the topic of impeachment, cited a recent whistleblower account of Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden as a “favor” for U.S. defense support.

In the announcement, Pelosi stressed Trump must be held accountable for soliciting foreign governments to investigate his political opponents in an attempt to gain an advantage in the 2020 election.

Though impeachment investigations are ramping up, this is certainly not the first controversy of Trump’s presidency, nor is it the first potentially impeachable investigation into his administration. There was a Department of Justice investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump and his campaign conspired with the Russian government in the 2016 election. In this investigation, the former FBI director and his team indicted, convicted or received guilty pleas from 34 individuals and three companies involving top Trump advisers, Russian actors and hackers associated with the Kremlin, which can be found in the full report. There are also several ongoing congressional investigations of Trump, including obstruction of justice and his tax returns.

Of course, the Trump administration is also involved in almost-daily scandals that are not explicitly illegal. A noncomprehensive list includes

separating children from their parents at the border, calling majority-people of color countries “shitholes,” nominating a man credibly accused of sexual assault to the Supreme Court, being credibly accused of sexual assault himself, attempting to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., calling white supremacists “very fine people” and denying the existence of climate change.

It was all this and more, or a woman.

And not just any woman. If not the most, she was one of the most qualified people to run for president ever. She was a Yale-trained lawyer, first lady of the United States, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

Yes, she was connected with controversy throughout her public life. And yes, she was slightly more moderate than my own personal politics. But running against a man so unqualified and immoral, she undoubtedly should have been president of the United States.

While Trump and his Republican supporters may believe Democrats are frothing with delight at the thought of impeaching Trump, it does not feel good to be reminded of what could have been. Sure, I’m comforted by the fact that our efforts in the 2018 midterms will not be all for nothing, but I’m certainly not thrilled at the fact that we have to go to such extreme lengths to stop Trump from committing crimes and trying to use foreign assistance to win the next election. Really though, it feels terrible that had we elected her we may have extended health insurance to millions more Americans, passed laws to stop gun violence and began appropriately responding to the crisis of climate change among several other issues.

As much as we all have the right to be angry on her behalf and on behalf of every single person who has been hurt by Trump’s policies, there is no justice for 2016. There is only redemption in 2020, but impeaching Trump for his crimes will ensure he goes down in history with a scarlett asterisk next to his name, forever indicative of his illegitimacy.

While I am content with

watching this administration explode in its own incompetence and criminality, it is worth considering how our failure in 2016 has the potential to fail us again in 2020. And to be clear, coming back from as low as we’ve gone will take an incredible amount of individual and collective self-reflection. With 2020 in full swing as the Democratic caucuses and primaries are mere months away, the impeachment inquiry serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of 2016 and our inability to stop Trump’s ascendancy.

Right now, the leading contender for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden, campaigns heavily on his electability — that he has a unique ability to beat Trump in the general election because he can appeal to the white working class and moderate independent voters, two essential demographic groups to Trump’s win in 2016. One can think he is the best person for the job, but one should choose him for that reason and not some biased notion of electability, which often favors the most privileged among us and marginalizes candidates who don’t look like 44 of the 45 total former U.S. presidents.

To make an electability argument, we have to rely on our instincts about what a president looks like, sounds like and feels like — who inspires us, who we can relate to, who we can imagine as the most powerful leader in the world. But our instincts failed in 2016. We were wrong; all of us, despite who we voted for, are implicated in the election of Donald Trump. Some of us — specifically, about 43 percent of the country — may not want to admit it, but we’ll all look back at this grave error in history with consternation and shame, just as we do with Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon. The only question left is whether we will continue to vote with the same impulses that gave us an impeachable president in the first place — fear, bigotry and nationalism — or we will redeem ourselves by voting with courage and aspiration.

Marisa Wright can be reached at marisadw@umich.edu.

DIPRA DEBNATH | COLUMN

Michael Jackson’s complicated legacy

E

very semester, after my last final exam, I have a ritual: tidy up my living space and pack my bags for a trip home while Michael Jackson’s 1979 Off the Wall album plays in the background. I like to pull up the album’s YouTube playlist so that its music videos display on my laptop screen. The opening track, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” is the perfect endof-term song. “Lovely, is the feelin’ now,” belts Jackson, as his tuxedoed figure dances superimposed over a series of abstract shapes and colors.

This song was Jackson’s leap into independence as an adult recording artist — he penned its lyrics and composed its driving groove himself, and the single was released just after his 21st birthday. The tune creates an aura of exuberance — it feels good to listen to.

Off the Wall has a shimmering airiness that masks the power with which it propelled Jackson’s career forward. Over the next decade, Jackson would moonwalk, zombiedance and “hee-hee” his way into a superstardom that seemed to transcend reality. The album also masked a concerning development: the descent of a deeply troubled mind whose owner would come to destroy the personal lives of young boys and their families.

In January 2019, HBO released “Leaving Neverland,” a two-part documentary covering the stories of two men who made startling claims about sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Jackson as children in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Their allegations were the biggest brought against Jackson since his child molestation lawsuits in 1993 and 2003, neither of which he faced charges for. Their depictions of abuse and the way Jackson used his celebrity to manipulate families make one’s stomach turn. Unlike previous cases against Jackson, the details in this documentary are cohesive, compelling and hard to ignore. Its release created shockwaves that threatened to finally defame the King of Pop’s legacy and banish his body of work into oblivion.

These threats, however, are illusory. Michael Jackson cannot be erased from society. His cultural mark is too deep. Since his death in 2009, Thriller (1982) has sold millions of copies, and despite the initial backlash against Jackson, online streaming traffic for his music increased following the release of “Leaving Neverland”. In the past month alone, I have heard his songs played at Maizie’s in the League and Computer Showcase at the Shapiro Undergraduate Library. Michael Jackson isn’t going anywhere.

How, then, do we deal with the legacy of someone whose work is so invaluable but whose deeds are so unforgivable?

Legacies are built on what we know – concrete facts and memorable events. Impressive feats associated with Michael Jackson as a professional entertainer are innumerable. He won an unprecedented eight awards at the 1984 Grammys and broke MTV racial barriers with Thriller, one of the best-selling albums of all time. In 1993, he became the first major musical star to headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show. His live performances of “Billie Jean” were clinics in solo excellence: a man with a microphone and an empty stage, working song and dance magic.

Jackson’s public life as an artist was captivating. His precocious talent and demanding father forced him into the recording industry as a young child, depriving him of a normal childhood. He was aware of his immeasurable gifts as an entertainer and worked tirelessly at perfecting his craft. He had ambition and lofty professional expectations for himself. From his mind came timeless musical hits and groundbreaking music video concepts. In his prime, he was one of the most famous and beloved figures in the world, taking stages globally with charm, authority and electrifying energy. This is the side of Jackson the public knew and adored.

Yet behind every spin, every glide, every “cha-mone,” was a man who seemed to be facing internal turmoil.

The most obvious manifestation was

written on his very face – Jackson was never satisfied with his appearance and consequently destroyed it with dozens of misguided plastic surgeries, looking like a different person every decade. His behaviors became more eccentric and unusual as his career arc descended in the late ’90s and early 2000s. He identified with Peter Pan and shared his bed with young boys even after his first child molestation lawsuit, calling his practice “the most loving thing to do.” He was, in short, a very sick man.

Because of the stark contrast between Jackson’s famous stage persona and the reclusive, troubled human behind it, the public has never had a strong grasp of who Michael Jackson truly is. His personality, lifestyle and the numerous child abuse allegations against him are all subjects of mystery. It is challenging to attribute aspects of Jackson’s backstage life to a physical person because we don’t feel we know who that person is. As a consequence, what is forever associated with Jackson are things we do feel we understand – his music, videos and live performances. This, ultimately, is what keeps Jackson immortal.

His artistry was phenomenal and therefore will withstand the test of time.

If we will not erase Jackson from our culture, then it is important for us to make sure that nobody with power like Jackson’s is able to use it to cause the kind of harm that he did in the future. Jackson’s legacy is saved from further harm partly because he is deceased – he cannot be put in jail and suffer the reputational injury that comes with a sentencing.

The #MeToo movement has been instrumental in bringing awareness to and increasing reporting of sexual misconduct. Its trajectory should continue so that everybody is held accountable for their actions regardless of status. This will help ensure that moving forward, those who use their power for harm are not idolized by future generations.

Dipra Debnath can be reached at dipra@umich.edu.

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

FILM REVIEW

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 — 5A

MIDWESTERN COLUMN

‘Judy’ is simply phenomenal Michigan Lefts, or taking some beauty for yourself ANDREW WARRICK For the Daily

If “Judy” doesn’t rocket Renée Zellweger (“Bridget Jones’s Diar y”) to the top of the Oscar shortlist, there’s no point in even holding the ceremony. Her performance as Judy Garland is a triumph and the towering foundation upon which the movie rests. It’s no simple impersonation or prosthetic g uise. Zellweger’s work is a mar vel of research, empathy and braver y. This is the performance of the year, one worth all the hype surrounding it.

Though now considered a screen legend for her role as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” Garland and her career were in trouble in 1968, when “Judy” beg ins. Garland and her young kids are living in hotel rooms as she plays any venue that will take her — Garland’s unreliable reputation has blacklisted her in Holly wood.

Substance abuse is also evident; there’s a particularly cutting moment when Garland’s daughter begs her not to “go to sleep” as she takes pills af ter a show. When Garland’s ex-husband, played by Ruf us Sewell (“The Man in The High Castle”), takes her to court for custody of their children, she goes to London to perform dinner theatre so she can pay her debts.

While intrig uing, the plot isn’t what makes the movie so phenomenal. It’s who personif ies it. Zellweger elevates ever y scene she’s in with her unbelievable dedication and craf t. She f ully inhabits Judy Garland in a way few actors ever do. From the accent to the physicalit y to the classic contralto, she nails it. Her Garland is arresting, and never lets the viewer go until the f inal cut to black. It is a character both iconic and sympathetic, both exalting and trag ic.

The cinematog raphy is bracingly intimate and perfectly captures the polarities of Garland’s life, from sunny Holly wood parties to a cold bathroom f loor af ter a bender. Most recent musical biopics like “Bohemian R hapsody” and “Rocketman” have been nostalg ia trips, glossing over issues or complications in favor of sparkling musical numbers and heart warming epiphanies. While “Judy” sublimely channels Judy Garland’s beaut y and talent, it never shies away from what made her so complex.

MAXWELL SCHWARZ

Garland was an icon, but also suffered from severe psychological issues

Daily Midwestern Columnist

The nostalg ia, mostly present in the lavish costumes, music and production desig n, never overshadows the complicated realit y of Zellweger’s life. “Judy” veers away from my tholog izing, presenting the star’s troubles with brutal, unf linching honest y. Garland was an icon, but also suffered from severe psycholog ical issues. Exploring this idea, the f ilm ingeniously blends together moments from Garland’s past during the production of “The Wizard of Oz,” with the main stor y. These f lashbacks aren’t a g immick — they carr y vital narrative weight. Throughout, Garland’s childhood traumas parallel their consequences in her later years, to crushing effect.

Because Zellweger’s Garland is so utterly fantastic, the other characters can’t help but be dimmed by her g igantic star. Certain plot threads, especially concerning Garland’s f inal husband, played by Finn Wittrock (“American Horror Stor y”), either fall f lat or end without resolution. Michael Gambon (“Harr y Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”) appears, but the legendar y actor never has much to do. A plotline with t wo gay fans who take Garland in for a night does tread the line with sentimentalit y, seeming a little too sweet, but is tied up in a way that doesn’t threaten the realism of the main stor y. None of this really matters, though —not when Zellweger is on screen. Judy Garland was a star for the ages, and Zellweger has g iven her an immortalization to match.

Judy Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor 20 IMAX LD Entertainment

The sprawling gray highways will attempt to convince you that the most direct route is the best one. These concrete trails are hypnotic, tiring, blending into each other.

You think you’re making progress, getting closer. But somehow you’re still so far away.

You keep driving. This is how they get you.

Please don’t fall for it.

Roads seem like they’ll lead you anywhere.

You can take I-94 eastbound from Chicago to Canada. Detroit has roads spitting off directly in every direction. Roads named after the towns they pass through. Roads named after people. Roads to turn you back around.

“I’ll be taking any beauty I see / And I’ll try to give it to ya.” So shouts Max Kerman on the titular track of Arkells’ 2011 album, Michigan Left. These lovely Canadians from Hamilton may have written a song about Detroit, but these words don’t lead me there.

Not yet, at least.

To make a left turn, you have to go right.

Then you make a u-turn at a median. This is the Michigan Left. It’s Detroit’s own special concrete conundrum. It takes a little longer. It’s not a direct route. It’s managed to infuriate Michigan consistently since one popped up in 1960. (It’s universally despised, I promise.) But we’ve gotten really good at it.

I don’t mean that we’ve gotten good only at taking Michigan Lefts. I mean we’ve gotten good at taking the long way home.

The Midwest is slow. Our towns are small.

Most of it is covered by trees. A good chunk of it borders Canada. The chunk that doesn’t is surrounded by golden walls of corn. This is all to say, we have a lot of time on our hands.

A good thing, too, because it’ll take you seven hours to get from Detroit to Marquette. But

even if you take the most direct route there — I-75, to M-123, to M-28 — what will you pass through? Through Flint and around Saginaw. Though Grayling and Wolverine.

That’s all before you crest the Mighty Mac over the Straits of Mackinac. If miss any of it, all you’ve seen is distant white pine and worn highway.

Wherever you go, you may make a Michigan Left or ten. Stopping to get gas, being robbed of your sense of direction or chasing a bear through the woods in your Jeep because you want to hang out with him (highly discouraged, leave bears alone — I had fun, the bear did not). Without these things, a journey isn’t a journey at all. It’s you, stuck in a box for hours while the world revolves past you. Just because you arrive somewhere doesn’t mean how you got there didn’t matter. That time’s lost if it’s not cherished.

There’s a combined total of over 425 miles of Michigan Lefts stretching across each of these pleasant peninsulas. Their purpose is safety. But their function is humility.

Taking a Michigan Left isn’t an impediment.

It’s an opportunity to slow down, to ease the highway’s beating on your temples and patience. Every Michigan Left and diversion is the prospect to take in the beauty of a Michigan that’s sprawled out in front of you.

We are all going somewhere. There’s a trail we’ve each been following. Maybe you need to go see your father because he really does love you, even if he has trouble showing it.

Maybe you need to meet up for coffee with a friend who’s a little more like a stranger now.

Maybe you’re trying to remember how to love someone who’s hurt you. Maybe you’re just trying to get better. Wherever you’re going, you’ll get there. I only hope you’ll remember your Michigan Lefts. Take all the beauty you see and try to give it to yourself — for real this time. Please remember to take the long way home.

Every Michigan Left and diversion is the prospect to take in the beauty of a Michigan that’s sprawled out in front of you

MUSIC: WHAT I’M LISTENING TO

What I’m Listening To: ‘OIL’ is an audioscape odyssey DYLAN YONO Daily Arts Writer

OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES is an audioscape odyssey. Whether it’s the oppressive, raunchy noise of “Ponyboy” or the syrupy, electric buildup of “Is It Cold In The Water?,” SOPHIE weaves a unique sound on OIL drawn from so many different ideas that it nearly renders her music labelless. Nebulous titles like “avant-garde” or “experimental” don’t do justice to the respect SOPHIE pays to art pop, glitch, industrial and ambient music. Fans of any or all of the above can find beauty in how they culminate in OIL. OIL doesn’t hesitate to draw out raw emotion.

It begins with a call for vulnerability on “It’s Okay To Cry.” SOPHIE’s heartfelt whispers speak to the soul. She introduces a motif she carries throughout the album, a ‘world inside.’ The concept climaxes on “Whole New World/Pretend World,” a nine-

A meditation on the relationship between physicality and identity, SOPHIE challenges her listeners to contemplate divorcing the two

minute monster of a finale that evolves and deepens with every passing minute. On this track she builds the world inside, but she chases that gap between physical expression and inner being all across OIL, like on “Infatuation” and especially “Immaterial.”

“Immaterial” is a powerhouse pop cut embedded in a project full of eccentric industrial compositions and swanky ambient soundscapes, but it’s no less evocative. The lyrics are provoking: A meditation on the relationship between physicality and identity, SOPHIE challenges her listeners to contemplate divorcing the two. Cowriter Cecile Believe sings with visceral emotion, “I was just a lonely girl / In the eyes of my inner child … I don’t even have to explain / Just leave me alone now.”

The lyrics speak to a criticism levied at SOPHIE earlier in her career, encapsulated by a 2014 article in The Fader that argued she was intentionally obscuring a male identity and appropriating femininity in her artistry. SOPHIE would later come out as transgender. The position she takes on “Immaterial” is reminiscent of a groundbreaking essay published on Medium challenging the idea that the only real transwoman is an out transwoman. The song’s ultimate declaration?

SOPHIE owes her listeners nothing. It’s a message that resonates.

“Faceshopping” is a similar exploration of personal expression and invention. The percussion screeches and sputters, clanks and clatters, drilling and drumming and whirring and humming a cacophony of facial construction. Over two minutes are spent manufacturing, the tools voiced in a low rumble: “Artificial bloom / Hydroponic skin / Chemical release.” Then the beat switches and for a moment, all the faceshopping culminates in dazzling brilliance, twinkling keys and a stunning falsetto. Only 45 seconds later it’s gone, the shimmer of radiance is scrapped, the factory returns. The face is back in the shop.

A theme of formed and constructed expression draws an interesting parallel to SOPHIE’s production style. It might be more accurate to call her a sound designer than a record producer. For much of her production, the gloss and polish isn’t made of instrumental samples, but literally built from waveforms.

OIL is in-your-face artificial, and expertly

The lyrics speak to a criticism levied at SOPHIE earlier in her career, encapsulated by a 2014 article in The Fader that argued she was intentionally obscuring a male identity and appropriating femininity in her artistry

sculpted to sound like it. She embraces her style on the ambient track “Pretending,” building an awe-inspiring and ear-embracing resonance full of richness and lucidity. Sandwiched between the spine-chilling synths of “Not Okay” and the bubblegum pop of “Immaterial,” SOPHIE throws in twist after twist for listeners on OIL. Records composed at such a high

calibre don’t come around often — OIL is positioned to be inspiring the producers of the next decade. SOPHIE is glitzy, SOPHIE is glamorous, and her masterpiece OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES is consistently unpredictable, organically artificial. It’s a landmark in music production and it’s heart-heavy with agony and ecstasy.

FUTURE CLASSIC

Arts

6A — Wednesday, October 2, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

TV REVIEW

Peg Alford Pursell chats ‘Bluff City Law’ gets off to about her process & prose a very disappointing start ELI RALLO

Daily Arts Writer

My 2019 New Year’s resolution was to only purchase books written by women. Given the beyond-scary statistics of male authors being published around eight and a half times more frequently than their female counterparts, I recognized the only way to beat the statistic is to support female authors and share their books. Ironically, I’d read Peg Alford Pursell’s debut collection “Show Her A Flower, A Bird, A Shadow” in 2017, prior to realizing she was joining us at Literati to celebrate her newest collection of fables and stories, titled “A Girl Goes into The Forest.”

Pursell is known for her lyrical prose and imaginative world building. Although she’s an advanced, published writer, she did not think of becoming a writer as a young person.

“I grew up in a small town in the Allegheny Mountains where there was no bookstore, not even in the two closest cities, and I’d never met a writer and was unaware of anyone who wrote — practical occupations were encouraged. Yet, I always wrote,” Pursell said in an interview with The Daily. Pursell’s prose writing is extremely visceral and poetic — it builds worlds around you as you read. As a young person, she won awards for her poetry, and in her adult writing career, she’s honed her poetic expertise in her prose.

Despite her recent success, Pursell wasn’t always confident in herself as a writer. Even after her MFA graduation from the Warren Wilson College program for writers, she claims she suffered a “crisis of confidence.” Her first book was featured by Poets & Writers magazine and was also named the INDIES “Book of the Year for Literary Fiction.” Though she had a few slow moments in her early career, she has since thrived in the literary world. Her most recent collection was published in July of 2019, and she just finished putting the final touches on the manuscript for a novel. Despite the nontraditional trajectory of her career and notstraightforward, she hit a stride within the vein of story collections and magical, mysterious world building.

She specifically hones this craft in “A Girl Goes into the Forest,” which features 78 imaginative stories broken down into nine sections. The sections each introduce a line from “The Snow Queen,” a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, a favorite of hers.

“His fairy tale is significant to me because it’s one of the few in which the girl has agency — Gerta rescues the boy, little Kaye, whose been corrupted and who everyone else has given up on. The stories in “A Girl Goes” were written over a number of years and collected for their shared thematic investigations into the mythos of the American girl, nature of consciousness and human connections to wildernesses without and within,” Pursell said. The book grapples with the complexity of female agency and feminine protagonists.

“It’s essential that female and femaleidentifying writers tell our stories and share our perspectives, for though most readers are female, the largest number of authors continue

to be male. This continues to make no sense, though it does reflect the reality of patriarchal capitalism, a system that hurts everyone, regardless of gender,” Pursell said. As a woman writing female characters into mainstream published literature, Pursell is aware of her place as a female writer and uses her status to tell stories about this narrative and experience.

“The book endeavors to offer readers new ways for seeing the familiar American metaphoric landscape, in ways that I hope speak to each reader, in their own unique way,” Pursell said.

It is not an easy feat to accomplish — rewriting and rediscovering the American landscape in a metaphoric and inventive way. However, Purcell takes on and executes this feat with a descriptive prose voice and stunning imagery.

As a young woman aspiring to go into a similar field as Pursell and hoping to meet similar success, I asked her what her advice would be to her 20-year-old self regarding her career path.

Her advice was poignant, and something I will personally remember as I begin to understand my desire to be a writer.

“The most important thing I’d want any young self to know is there’s no one pathway, especially when it comes to writing and publication readership. It’s a twisting and turning route, with surprises and luck and disappointments to navigate. That it’s important to protect the writing self, especially from the publishing author self (two very different selves, oftentimes at odds), and to cultivate that solitude from which one writes and creates,” Pursell said.

As a woman writing female characters into mainstream published literature, Pursell is aware of her place as a female writer and uses her status to tell stories about this narrative and experience

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

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9 Early PC platform 10 Above, to a bard 11 Elevate 12 Initially 13 Qualifier for a minimum price 22 With 48-Down, Time Lord played by various performers 24 They, in Calais 28 “Need __ on?”

31 Jam ingredient?

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The lawyers of “Bluff City Law” want to change the world. Unfortunately, their show writers are not as keen on making this courtroom drama pilot any different from its peers.

NBC’s new fall procedural “Bluff City Law” follows former corporate shark Sydney Strait (Caitlin McGee, “Grey’s Anatomy”) as she moves back to her hometown of Memphis following the untimely death of her mother. With much reluctance, she accepts her father’s invitation to rejoin his law firm — a cozy office full of smiling and polite Southern stock characters — and handle civil cases instead of continuing to work on “the dark side” of large corporations.

Sydney’s father, Elijah Strait (Jimmy Smits, “NYPD Blue”), in between moments of mourning his wife and accepting praise for being a legendary civil-suit lawyer, seeks to win back his daughter’s affections after a lifetime of cheating on her mother.

Upon Sydney’s return to her father’s firm, she happily greets her supporting characters and learns of her next case: A high school custodian, Edgar Soriano, and his family claim his terminal cancer is the direct result of exposure to popular fertilizer produced by a conveniently evil conglomerate, Americorp.

Through some calculated grandstanding and some dramatic violations of courtroom and social etiquette, the Straits win the case, secure over $45 million in damages for the Soriano family and establish precedence for a pending class action suit against Americorp. Sydney and her father start to get along better, one of the firm’s partners has begun an appeal for a wrongfully convicted prisoner and some romantic tension is brewing between Sydney and her ex-husband, the chief of detectives.

On paper, “Bluff City Law” has all the components of a good courtroom drama. It has snappy dialogue, a fresh case every week, some moral introspection about good and evil in the American justice system.

But in practice, the show falls flat. It’s major issue is its focus. The sympathetic clients exist only to be defended and pitied. The lawyers drive the emotion of the show and are the only ones shown suffering from corporate greed. Suffering by being

46 At hand 47 Put in prison 48 See 22-Down 49 TV pal of Jerry and George 50 Womb occupant 53 Weather map feature 55 Unbridled desire 57 June 6, 1944 60 Water filter brand 61 That, in Tijuana

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Pilot NBC Mondays @ 10 p.m.

in proximity to actual victims, of course.

The storylines of horrific injustice simply serve as a backdrop to play up the rather uninteresting personal issues of the Straits and their partners at the firm. The warped focus results in a shocking lack of heart or emotional stakes for the audience.

Rather than demonstrating the hard work involved in these cases ripped from the headlines, characters just talk about their already sterling reputations and inexplicable talents ad nauseum. Any emotional conflict is expressed by how tragic it would be for the lawyers to fail by co-opting the actual hardship of their clients.

Yes, the system is broken. Yes, victims of the system deserve justice. But focusing on beautiful attorneys winning sanitized, simplistic cases gives the wrong people attention they don’t necessarily deserve. For every Erin Brockovich securing a guilty verdict and getting a movie made about her, there are hundreds of people and towns that continue to suffer without media coverage or a team of Sydney Straits to break the rules and save the day.

The lawyers of “Bluff City Law” are good people. Great people, if you ask them. In fact, every scene of the show’s pilot episode revolves around the moral superiority of its main characters and how wonderful they are for being humanitarian lawyers. Yet, despite their lofty rhetoric and good intentions, the show’s premiere relies on tired courtroom drama tropes and petty personal feuds while failing to come through on its promise to “change the world.”

10/02/19

‘Honeyland’ shows a give-and-take SAMANTHA NELSON Daily Arts Writer

Humans are entitled creatures. Our superiority complexes prevent us from acknowledging our relationship with the natural world to be one of mutualism, not parasitism. Though a cynical thought, it seems ingrained in our psyche to take as much as possible with minimal reciprocation. A prime example of this greed is found in our treatment of bees, one of the most central species to sustaining our environment.

Bees embody balance, buzzing behind the scenes to maintain the agricultural life-cycle through pollination. Despite their centrality to the flow of our daily lives, society rarely witnesses the magic of bees, and thus fails to respect it. The sole female beehunter in Europe, Hatidze Muratova’s world revolves around bees, a dynamic that is jeopardized when a new family disturbs the peace in Honeyland, seeking to learn the craft of beekeeping under the incentive of pure profit. Though the plot revolves around beekeeping, at the core of the film, “Honeyland” is a much deeper message about greed, solitude and human connection, a message that pushes us all to reflect on our interactions with the world around us and the ways we treat one another.

A concept the film reiterates again and again is harmony. Before the arrival of the Sam family, Hatidze’s circle was relatively small, consisting of her sick mother, a few animal companions and, of

course, her bees. Whenever she makes the long journey up to the beehive, it is so clear from the way that she gently lifts away the rockface and coaxes the bees off of the honeycomb, that her attitude toward the insects is one of honor and understanding.

Among the swarms of bees, Hatidze appears at peace, unbothered by buzzing and fearless of stings.

With the arrival of the Sams, the atmosphere of peace and symmetry is instantaneously interrupted. The family is loud, unruly and eager to learn the ways of beekeeping, which Hatidze willingly teaches them. Though she enjoys the companionship that the Sam family brings, her tone soon changes when she realizes that the patriarch, Hussein Sam, has no intention of cultivating a give-and-take relationship with the bees. The evolution of the relationship between Hatidze and the family from neighborly to hostile is exemplified through the change in behavior of the bees.

Under Hatidze’s care, the bees are calm and behaved, whereas under Hussein, they are feisty, stinging Hussein and his children left and right. This juxtaposition hints at the film’s larger theme of the bonds people form with their environments. While Hatidze regards the bees as companions and business partners for selling honey, Hussein only perceives them as temporary resources, meant to be used and then discarded.

Through the differing attitudes of these two characters, directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov prompt audiences to consider their own ties to the world around them. Do we treat the planet with respect, with an approach of reciprocation, or do we simply view the world as an asset, destined to be used up?

Honeyland The State Theatre Contact Films

By Jeffrey Wechsler ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Bluff City Law

FILM REVIEW

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle 62 Corp. tech boss 63 Action film gun 64 Privately 65 Journalist Curry 66 Brief time 67 Taste 68 Charles of R&B 69 Macaw, for some

For the Daily

NBC

Release Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2019

ACROSS 1 Barely enough 6 Like a pooch’s smooch 9 “Happy Days” actress Erin 14 Software writer 15 Texter’s “As I see it” 16 Defunct defense gp.

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ANYA SOLLER

10/02/19

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 — 7A

Wolverines value chance to compete, with exhibition against Windsor approaching ROHAN KUMAR Daily Sports Writer

With more than 30 regular season games slated from fall to early spring, the college hockey season can be long and strenuous. Opportunities to pause and fine-tune during games are few and far between.

For the Michigan hockey team, there are two chances for such contemplation.

Sunday’s exhibition against the University of Windsor marks the first, while the second is an exhibition in late January against the U.S. National Team Development Program.

To the Wolverines, exhibitions matter. Sunday will be the team’s first contest since losing in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament nearly seven months ago. “(Exhibitions give) you a good indication where some players are at,” said Michigan

coach Mel Pearson. “You know, you’re just playing someone else and it doesn’t count in any of those statistics, so it’s good.

You try some things, you work on some things.”

Such a baseline assessment can be quite valuable for a team. This is especially true for Michigan, considering the changes it has seen since last year and the questions that still must be answered.

The Wolverines added eight new players to their roster — all of whom are seen to be viable options. Kris Mayotte and Matt Hunwick recently joined the program, too, as an assistant coach and volunteer assistant coach, respectively.

Understandably, it’s not yet

perfectly clear what role all the incoming players will fill.

It’s still not even certain how all the returners will fit in.

For instance, the goaltender position still seems up for grabs between sophomore Strauss Mann and senior Hayden Lavigne.

Thus an opportunity to try different things is beneficial.

In fact, Pearson notes he wishes the team had more exhibitions.

Sunday’s trial run will be meaningful for players, such as senior defenseman Luke Martin. He injured his left arm last February and had to miss the rest of the season.

“Anytime you get to put on the ‘Block M’ you gotta be

We’re all getting tired of beating each other up...

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Senior defenseman Luke Martin said he and his teammates are eager to play another opponent after weeks of practice.

thankful for (the opportunity),” Martin said. “Especially after, you know, it’s been a long time coming this one. We were done pretty early last year, so we’re excited. We’ve been practicing for a long time, ready to get after somebody that’s not ourselves.”

Pearson plans on having a wide focus Sunday. He mentions his team has practiced pretty much all its systems and that he wants to see how that practice translates against real competition.

Pearson notes that he will likely start the regular season with the same lines that play during the exhibition, but that the exhibition could make clear things that must be improved before the opening series against No. 10 Clarkson the following weekend.

“First and foremost you want to win,” Pearson said. “I mean, I don’t care if it’s exhibition or whatnot. You want to win, but more importantly, I think, is to get as many players involved in the game and you want to see them execute the things that we’ve been working on.”

With experience comes understanding. Entering his final year, Martin is no stranger to growing pains. What he wants most from Sunday’s exhibition is for his new teammates to show effort. If that comes, the rest will follow.

“It’ll be a little bit sloppy to start, I would imagine, they always are — you know, systems and everything,” Martin said.

“Guys are going to be nervous, you know, first time wearing the jersey, everything. But it’s a good game to get your feet on the ground.

“I’m excited. We’re all getting tired of beating each other up everyday in practice.

Ready to take it out on someone else.”

MICHIGAN HOCKEY

new additions Players Cam York Freshman Defenseman Eric Ciccolini Freshman Forward Shane Switzer Graduate Transfer Defenseman Jacob Hayhurst Graduate Transfer Forward Johnny Beecher Freshman Forward Keaton Pehrson Freshman Defenseman Emil Öhrwall Redshirt Sophomore Forward Nick Granowicz Freshman Forward

Coaches Kris Mayotte Assistant Coach Matt Hunwick Volunteer Assistant Coach

Michigan draws with Indiana, 0-0 Beall holds key to Michigan season ABBY SNYDER

Daily Sports Writer

The Michigan women’s soccer team (8-2-1, 3-0-1 Big Ten) tied Indiana, 0-0, on Sunday behind a strong defensive performance anchored by sophomore defender Sydney Shepherd and junior defender Alia Martin.

“It was a tough game,” said Michigan coach Jennifer Klein.

“They’re difficult to play against, to break down. We had 22 shots to their eight and we just have to have more production in the final third to give ourselves a better chance.”

The Wolverines got off to a somewhat slow start. The first few minutes saw some sloppy passing from Michigan that allowed Indiana to put together some attacks deep in the Wolverines’ defensive third.

Though a solid performance from Michigan’s defense saved any damage, the Wolverines struggled to find rhythm in their attacking third. While at halftime,

though Michigan had outshot the Hoosiers, nine to four, the score remained tied at zero. The Wolverines just barely controlled possession at 51 percent and spending only 19 percent of their possession time in their attacking third.

Michigan’s play cleaned up significantly after halftime. The Wolverines’ passing was much smoother, and they moved the ball well, spending more time in their attacking third. They still struggled to finish, though.

Michigan took ten more shots in the second half to Indiana’s three, but at the end of regulation time, the scoreboard still showed a 0-0 tie.

“We’re still doing a good job defensively,” Klein said. “Moving forward, going into next week, we need to continue to have a strong and aggressive attacking personality to give ourselves a chance to be better once we get in and around the goal.”

Both of the overtime periods were much of the same. Though

Michigan put together a few runs in their attacking third, the Wolverines were still unable to find the back of the net.

It wasn’t as if they weren’t taking shots – they totaled 22 on the match, and they’ve had similar shot totals in several games this season. But as the sun set on 5779 and the Jewish New Year began anew, Michigan still could not put the ball past the goal line.

The dreary weather seemed at times to put a damper on the pace of play. Rain drizzled throughout the match resulting in more than a few slips on the field. Despite this, both teams played a fairly physical match, contesting on the 50/50 balls and staying attached to their marks.

“Anytime the ground is as slick as it is, the ball is going to slip a little bit,” Klein said. “I think from that sense, that’s really what it was as far as bounces. I thought we moved the ball really well and were good in possession. We just didn’t have enough production in the final third.”

ALLISON ENGVIST/Daily

Sophomore defender Sydney Shepherd anchored a strong defensive performance in a 0-0 draw on Sunday.

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily

Freshman goalkeeper Hillary Beall came to Michigan as the No. 1 goalkeeper in her recruiting class.

JACOB COHEN

Daily Sports Writer

Hillary Beall came to Ann Arbor typifying what it means to be a highly-touted prospect.

The No. 1 goalkeeper in the class of 2017 according to Top Drawer Soccer, Beall was expected to become an elite keeper for the Wolverines. After all, the shotstopper was a five-star prospect and had already accumulated an impressive junior international resume as an 18-year-old.

When prospects come with the kind of laundry list of accolades that Beall did, people view them as a sure thing.

Consequently, everyone hears the stories of uber-talented busts: four- and five-star prospects that plateau, that get beat out by competition, that can’t shake the injury bug. Bluechip prospects don’t always pan out.

Hillary Beall did.

After making a solid impression as a freshman and an injury-shortened sophomore year, Beall is proving in her junior year exactly why she earned that high ranking.

“She’s been great,” said coach Jennifer Klein. “I mean she’s been really solid for us. I think she’s done a great job as far as, you know, being a great goalkeeper and keeping the

ball out of the back of the net and helping in our defensive organization.”

This season, Beall has started all 11 games and given up just six goals. This while putting up as many clean sheets — five — as the team recorded last season and not allowing more than one goal in any game.

“You can tell that she’s continuing to grow and mature,” Klein said.

Beall’s numbers prove her coach correct as she has made an impressive leap in save percentage from .756 in 2018 to .854 in 2019, along with a significant goals against average drop from 1.06 to .52.

This impressive improvement on already solid numbers begs the question: What changed?

“I went home,” Beall said. “I played a lot, worked a lot on my confidence to make sure that every game I’m locked in and here for the back line. I trained a lot during the summer.”

As she continues to put on great performance after great performance, including a foursave, 110-minute clean sheet

in Sunday’s 0-0 draw against Indiana, Beall’s work continues to show itself. The improvements she sought to make are plainly visible, as Klein recognized.

“The big thing is just the confidence that she has,” Klein said. “She’s making really good saves, she’s keeping us in good games. She’s just doing a good job all-around.”

Beall’s play has propelled Michigan to an 8-2-1 record and its first coaches poll votes since 2017, even with the offense managing to score more than two goals only once thus far.

With the offense scoring 1.78 goals per game through September 26th, a number that ranks 101st in the NCAA, Beall’s exceptional play has been all the more important.

She has stolen game after game for Michigan.

If the expectations for a fivestar prospect are to be the team’s X-factor, it’s pretty safe to say Beall has reached that level.

Beall is the lynchpin of her team, and the Wolverines’ aspirations to end a 20 year Big Ten title drought draw life largely from her skill as a backstop.

The big thing is just the confidence that she has.

Sports

8A — Wednesday, October 2, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Film breakdown: How Michigan’s first drive set tone for Gattis to follow ETHAN SEARS

Managing Sports Editor

Of all the contrasts to draw between Michigan’s first three games and its win over Rutgers on Saturday, the most striking was also the first.

For the first three games of the season, the Wolverines put the ball on the ground on their first drive. And all three times, it foreshadowed a disappointing offensive performance.

Against Rutgers, Michigan came out firing. The Wolverines played mistake-free football to start, stuck to their guns and scored in five plays. Then they marched down the field again on the second drive, going up 14-0 before 10 minutes of game time had passed. Call it a result of Josh Gattis calling plays from the field or a result of simply playing a defense as porous as Rutgers’. But, as the Wolverines worked off their script for the opening drive, the offense looked the way it was advertised for the first time all season.

The Daily dove into the tape of that drive to find out why.

First-and-10: Zach Charbonnet 6-yard run In the wake of last week’s loss at Wisconsin, we heard a lot about offensive identity. Specifically, the Wolverines wanted to run the ball more after throwing more than 40 times against the Badgers.

Against Rutgers, Michigan starts by running a counter, clearly with establishing the run in mind. But this play has jet motion attached, so the linebackers get caught going the wrong way. In theory, senior quarterback Shea Patterson could turn this into an option with receiver Ronnie Bell, the player in motion, as well.

Second-and-4: Ronnie Bell 14-yard catch This is a slight tweak to the way Gattis ran things for the

first few weeks. It’s a run-pass option, but instead of Patterson standing back in the pocket, the play turns into a naked bootleg, as the offensive line goes left while Patterson goes right, without any protection.

Patterson has looked uncomfortable running RPOs with dropbacks attached. Rarely had he gotten to break the pocket and throw on the move, an area in which

he excelled in 2018. Here, Gattis puts Patterson in a position to do that without compromising his own philosophy.

First-and-10: Christian Turner 2-yard run Gattis keeps it basic on first down again, this time with a pinand-pull.

Like the first run of the game, it seems to have an RPO attached with Bell, but Patterson hands the ball off and Rutgers

Against Rutgers, Michigan came out firing.

linebacker Avery Young makes a nice play on the stop.

Secondand-8: Christian Turner 10-yard run This is the first run of the game that appears to be a straight give, with no read of any kind attached. It’s just inside zone, hat on a hat — the kind of thing Michigan excelled at doing last season, which is apparent here.

The line moves people,

Turner hits the hole and it goes for a considerable gain. This is just as you draw it up.

Firstand-10: Nico Collins touchdown, 48-yard catch There’s nothing complicated going on here, and that’s the beauty of it. Collins is matched up against a smaller, less athletic cornerback. Gattis isolates him with a flat route while freshman

The first drive set a tome that went on for the... game.

RUCHITA IYER/Daily

tight end Erick All runs the other way. It’s what everyone clamored for Collins to get — a chance to win a 1-on-1 matchup with his physical ability.

And he does just that, getting initial separation on the route, then runs right by the defensive back and has a clear path to the end zone.

Gattis’ problem for the first three weeks of the year was that he couldn’t find a way to imprint his philosophy onto Michigan’s personnel. For all the talk about identity, all you had to do to see what the Wolverines wanted to be was go on Twitter at any point in the last six months. Actually doing it in a game, though, is a different matter altogether.

On Saturday, from the first play, Gattis seemed to have it figured out.

That all comes with the asterisk that it was against Rutgers. But the emphasis on getting Patterson out of the pocket was obvious throughout. So was using their best receivers in the passing game.

Collins, Donovan Peoples-Jones and Tarik Black were noticeably more involved.

More than that, Gattis put them in positions to use their physical skill, like that throw to Collins, or a fade to PeoplesJones on the next drive.

The first drive set a tone that went on for the rest of the game — Gattis’ ideolog y tailored to this roster. It’s no coincidence that Michigan scored 52 points once the coaching staff started to think about how those two elements could work in tandem instead of forcing one on the other.

Whether the Wolverines can replicate it against Iowa or Penn State is another story.

But for now, they at least know what the plans should look like.

Senior quarterback Shea Patterson displayed his ability to make a bevy of different throws and rushes, scoring four total touchdowns in a 52-0 win over Rutgers.

Collins remains patient with offense Christian Turner staying level MAX MARCOVITCH Managing Sports Editor

Nico Collins leaned back against the ledge at Schembechler Hall and smiled. His semisarcastic laugh didn’t nullify the validity of his answer, though.

“I’m always open,” he joked, before the next question came flying in.

It’s a phrase many players say, with varying degrees of seriousness. But it’s easy to get the sense that the 6-foot-4 Collins believes it.

“I feel like as a receiving corps, we’re always open,” Collins reiterated. “I believe in our guys, and Shea believes in us. And I believe he can give us opportunities to go make a play.”

Collins’ answer, though basic, stripped down the essence of a potentially potent passing attack to its bare bones. It underscored the optimism that was so pervasive around this unit before the season, and even offered a hint of what Collins and others believe could still be coming.

Collins himself posted 632 yards and six touchdowns in 2018, seemingly a sign of an impending breakout year before a legitimate NFL decision would arrive.

Then Michigan hired offensive coordinator Josh Gattis, who brought a history of producing current and future NFL talent, like Chris Godwin, DaeSean Hamilton, Jerry Jeudy and Jordan Matthews, among others.

He brought a concept of “speed in space”, which was quite an appealing vision. Put your best players in the best position to make plays.

By any measure, Collins is one of Michigan’s best players. And by those same objective measures, his 10 catches though four games tell the tale of scant usage in what was supposed to be a defining year.

In the Wolverines 35-14 loss at Wisconsin, Collins was among those who outwardly displayed signs of frustrated On one particular route in the fourth quarter, Collins’ cornerback fell down mere yards past the line of scrimmage. Collins, hand raised,

watched with the entire crowd as Patterson’s pass sailed well over the intended receiver, draped in double-coverage.

“We were losing — there’s always going to be frustration when you lose,” Collins said. “Not really, it was just open, it’s alright, it is what it is, next play. I’m not going to hold a grudge. There were times I was open, but I know Shea is going to find me next time.”

Late in that game, Collins started to become more involved.

On one drive in the fourth quarter, he caught three targets for 79 yards, though one of the catches was nullified for pass interference.

Still, the downfield sequence left fans wondering where that was two hours prior.

That loss led to a week of introspection, both with the receiving corps and with the offense writ large. Collins said the group honed its emphasis on attention to detail, which translated to a clean 52-0 win against Rutgers. The win included a 48-yard touchdown for Collins, who caught a seven-yard out route, turned upfield and sprinted down the sideline for the score.

It looked easy. Speed met space.

Almost as though finding your best players is both simple and smart.

Still, Gattis has been adamant that this offense, at its best, does

not force-feed anybody. When it’s humming, everyone and everything will be an option, he emphasized.

“We talk about being balanced; balance for us is not run or pass,” Gattis said. “Balance is how many guys touch the ball. We want to be balanced from that standpoint; that the ball is being distributed to all of our playmakers and all of our skill guys.”

But when a player of Collins’ caliber only has 10 catches, there is a reasonable question as to whether everything has been over-thought. Collins and juniors Donovan Peoples-Jones and Tarik Black are among the three best weapons — if not the three best — this team has.

To not use them repeatedly, particularly amid offensive troubles, would be to self-restrict this group’s ceiling.

Asked where this offense can still go, Collins started down a laundry list.

“Trusting the play-calling,” he said. “Receivers working on our details. Watching film from Wisconsin, what can we do better? We can always improve as a receiving corps, and Shea can always improve as a quarterback.

We can always improve.”

What wasn’t said, though seemingly implied: He’s always open.

KEEMYA ESMAEL/Daily

Junior Nico Collins caught a 48-yard touchdown pass on Saturday.

after first career touchdown ETHAN SEARS

Managing Sports Editor

Ten months removed from the hype of the Peach Bowl, in front of an emptying stadium as a blowout took hold, Christian Turner finally scored.

He emerged from the pile, a grin visible from inside his helmet and briefly celebrated before jogging back to the sideline as Michigan’s lead over Rutgers grew to 31. He didn’t want to bask in it.

Still doesn’t. “Don’t want to make that some spectacular moment I think about for the rest of my life,” Turner said Tuesday evening.

Turner, a sophomore running back, has already experienced the fleeting nature of these things. In Michigan football’s ecosystem — a fan base yearning for the next hit of serotonin and a roster constantly churned by competition — hype doesn’t last long. High praise about practice performance is met with wariness until anybody sees it in a game.

In the run-up to last year’s Peach Bowl, Turner was the subject of that spotlight. He heard it from Jim Harbaugh, from his fellow running backs, from the rest of the offense. “He’s been tearing it up all Christmas camp,” Jon Runyan Jr. said in the days before, echoing general sentiment.

In the game, for a brief moment before everything fell apart, he delivered on it, darting across the formation, taking a handoff, cutting upfield, hugging the boundary, going into the end zone untouched. Then the touchdown got called back on a penalty, and Turner finished the game with 32 yards — less than he would have gotten on that play alone had it stood. As spring approached, conversation turned to a new offense and a new running back, Zach Charbonnet. It stayed there this fall, as Charbonnet racked up 48 carries, even as Turner notched more touches in four weeks (34) than the 21 he did all of last season.

On Tuesday, Turner was put in front of the media and gave a rush of cliches in a low voice.

KEEMYA ESMAEL/Daily

Sophomore running back Christian Turner scored his first career touchdown.

Buried underneath them, a quiet confidence simmered.

“It took some pressure off,” Turner said of his touchdown.

“I finally got to the end zone, but now I just want to get comfortable scoring. I don’t want to just get complacent.”

Turner said his pass protection is still developing, a lingering product of the transition to college.

He stressed that he didn’t get down last year when he sat nor when he got hurt. He’s staying level now, too, as the Wolverines try to develop a more steady rotation of carries. All the right things.

In high school, Turner’s coach stressed the importance of keeping things steady. Turner was splitting carries with Anthony Grant, now a sophomore at Florida State, and Derrian Brown, a Texas signee in the 2019 class. They had a great backfield, but Turner played a lot less than most threestar recruits who get high-major offers. He kept his coach’s advice in mind last year. It’s not far from his mind now, either.

“You can’t control everything that’s gonna happen to you in your

life, but you can control how you react to it and how you respond to it,” Turner said. “That’s the R factor.”

Still, when he got to Michigan, Turner got caught trying to run straight forward. Asked Tuesday about what he carried into this year from those bowl practices in December, Turner mentioned complacency twice. “Or just thinking I’m already there when I hadn’t really done anything yet,” he said.

To be clear, he knew there would be a learning curve, and still acknowledges that there’s aways to go. Last year, Karan Higdon told him to be patient. Turner brought it up in the context of running the ball and waiting for a hole to open up.

It was hard not to see a bigger picture coming into focus.

“I was just trying to outrun everybody,” Turner said. “He was the one that told me, if you keep trying to do that, you’re gonna get hit pretty hard.”

On Saturday, instead of going down when he got hit, Turner moved the pile and crossed the ball over the plane.

Don’t want to make that some spectacular moment...

statement T H E M I C H I G A N DA I LY | O C TO B E R 2 , 2 0 1 9

Sleeping in the cell

PHOTO BY DANYEL THARAKAN

2B Wednesday, October 2, 2019 // The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | O C TO B E R 2 , 2019

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

Designers Liz Bigham Kate Glad Copy Editor Silas Lee

Editor in Chief Maya Goldman Managing Editor Finntan Storer

Photo Editor Danyel Tharakan

In defense of bangs F

BY MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

resh off the plane back from my study abroad experience in Paris, and standing in front of the mirror in my mother’s bathroom, I took a pair of kitchen scissors and haphazardly cut a fringe, framing the front of my forehead. The bangs were uneven, a little too thick on the right side of my forehead, and very clearly an amateur job — but they immediately made me feel transformed, like a new woman.

When my mom saw my handiwork later that evening, her knee jerk response was, “Oh god, Meghann, what have you done?” My friends had a similar response (I’d consulted with very few people prior to my decision). In general, the theme seemed to be one of cautious support with a wary undertone of, “Are you sure you’re OK?” I reassured them that I was, in fact, doing well, and that the bangs were a conscious fashion decision and not the product of a mental breakdown — perhaps trying to convince myself as much as them.

I didn’t think it would take much convincing because, for the most part, I felt like I was doing well. I returned from Paris feeling more confident, independent and solid in my identity. This was a year of change and new experiences, and I was going to embrace it fully — hair and all. Cutting my bangs was another exciting change in an era of my life where things seemed to be constantly in flux, and I was completely OK with that.

This was the dominant narrative I was telling myself.

There was one big “but” to this, however — I didn’t have a summer internship lined up. That was something I was enormously insecure about, and perhaps the anxiety surrounding that aspect of my life manifested itself into enough liquid courage to pick up the kitchen scissors.

Bangs on women tend to fall into one of two categories: 5-year-olds on their first day of kindergarten or “artsy girls” with film cameras and Monet paintings on their walls. I’d flirted with the “artsy girl” identity before (having both a film camera and Monet prints on my dorm wall), but was wary to commit to it.

As a high school senior, I was deciding between the University of Michigan and University of CaliforniaBerkeley. One of the appeals of the University of Michigan was how many different types of people I would be surrounded with. But being from California meant Berkeley was the easier option. It was in-state, I would know people there, and I’d spent a fair amount of time in Berkeley.

I also felt that everyone that went to Berkeley was the same in a familiar way — “artsy” political activists who cared about the environment and were vegetarian. I was afraid it would be too easy for me to fall into that identity without really trying to be different, without actively surrounding myself with people who didn’t come from a liberal Californian town.

So I came to Michigan, and I surrounded myself with new people. Freshman year, I definitely made some friends that were familiar artsy political activist

types, but also spent a fair amount of time in circles that were more “mainstream”— and tried to make myself as palatable as possible to as wide a range of people as I could. I dressed relatively unobtrusively, I tailgated for every game day, I went to frat parties on Friday nights.

And it was great — I felt like I was getting the full “college experience.”

It was also completely necessary, I think, for me to try different things and throw myself into that scene. The thing that I eventually began to come to terms with over the next few years, however, was that I wasn’t always being quite myself in these situations.

I was trying to be neutral, to be whatever and whoever was expected of me in any given setting — whether that was the (pseudo) sorority girl who wore bedsheets to themed toga parties, or the political science student who wouldn’t shut up about John Locke. I wasn’t necessarily being untrue to myself. I was just trying, really hard, to be the stereotype of a million different things at once.

So, I cut my bangs. I figured that if I was going to live a life of stereotypes, I might as well pick one and run all the way with it. And while the new haircut was in part maybe just a manifestation of a need for change, it also simultaneously symbolized me letting go of the Meghann who would try to blend into every social group.

I am a stereotypically artsy liberal political activist girl from California who now lives in Kerrytown, and I am fully ready to embrace that aesthetic in the most obnoxious, cliché way possible. Cutting the bangs also gave me courage in the way haircuts tend to do. The bangs made me feel new and shiny, and view myself in a different light. I felt more confident in my own skin than I had in a long time, and the feeling lasted.

My bangs and I have been together for almost four months now, and we’re doing great.

It might just seem like a haircut — and it totally is just a haircut. I still look more or less like the same person I did a few years ago. Even my own father, who is notoriously unobservant about these things, didn’t notice my bangs until I pointed them out to him an hour into our dinner.

I’m well aware that there are much more dramatic changes people can make to their lifestyle — yet, bangs still feel like they hold a special spot as a tried and true

PHOTO BY DANYEL THARAKAN

classic of self-reinvention.

Bangs tend to get a bad rap as a product of mental breakdowns and low periods of someone’s life. This narrative, however, overlooks the reality that changing one’s personal appearance (even if it’s through bangs) can be immensely cathartic — changing the filter through which the world perceives you is so empowering and in my case, made me feel more like myself than I had in a long while. And I did eventually find an internship that summer. Which probably can’t be entirely attributed to the bangs, but I’d like to think that they get at least some credit. Or at least some credit goes to the confidence and subsequent wave of motivation they gave me.

So if you’re considering bangs, my advice is to just do the damn thing. Just maybe invest in some sharper scissors than your mother’s kitchen pair.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 // The Statement

Copy That: Breaking the rules I

remember the exact moment in sixth grade when I realized an essay didn’t need to be five paragraphs: Intro, body, body, body and conclusion. It didn’t need to have topic sentences and transitions. I was always taught an essay should be concise and clean. It must be easy on the eye and straightforward — beautiful, even.

Those were the rules, but I remember when I realized I was allowed to break them. I think this was one of the moments that made me want to be a writer. I understood how wonderful it is to write freely; how hallowed is a page of words that breaks the rules, how terrifying and how lovely.

Granted, I’m the copy chief at The Michigan Daily and I spend six hours a night making sure each piece that comes in adheres to our rules. I double check names and triple check facts; truth is a rule of journalism we don’t break.

Truth is not easy on the eye, and it’s not always beautiful.

Like the rain, we can wish it away and it comes anyway.

Without warning, it removes that final layer of dust, parting those last clouds in the sky. Sometimes, the sun shines through.

I try really hard to do my job right. Ask me a question about grammar, and I’ll know the answer. I know the name of every city councilmember. I know the way each reporter writes. I know the cadence of the newsroom. I try to make

ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE

3B 3B

BY EMILY STILLMAN, COPY CHIEF

sure what we publish is truthful, that we’re answering the questions correctly. But I’m still looking for my own answers, learning how to write the truth for myself. If you’re reading this, I’ve probably lied to you. I’ve probably told you I was okay when I wasn’t. I’ve probably said I’ll be there soon, and never came. But who hasn’t? What are the rules of telling our own truth? When do we know when we’re holding too much back, or taking it too far?

You want my truth?

I’ll confess: I spend Monday night playing with words, but can’t push past “Hey, how are you?” on Tuesday night at the bar. Sometimes I still skip meals. I chew an entire pack of gum a day. Am I really a writer if these are the first words I’ve put on a page in months? I’m recovering from an eating disorder — what do I know about breaking the rules? What do I know about living the truth?

Is it as simple as just being myself? What is simple about breaking our own rules, about ignoring the commandments we’ve laid out for ourselves? Don’t eat until you have to, always say, “No, thank you.” Don’t ask for help. Don’t take up too much space. Intro, body, body, body and conclusion. Do you know how hard it was to eat when I was hungry? Do you know how hard it was to fill a blank page with words?

Here’s my real topic sentence: Let’s break all the rules and put them back together again. Every time I correct your grammar, what I mean is thank you for your truth.

When I leave a note in your article, what I mean is that I

hear you. Journalism is about truth. Healing is about truth.

Topic sentence. … Transition. Loving yourself through the rain is so hard. I’m tired of not talking about the hard stuff. Am I allowed to write in metaphors? I can’t breathe when I look at pictures of myself from a year ago. When I ask you if you’re okay, you can tell me the truth. I’m telling you to write as many paragraphs as you want. I’m telling you to speak your truth. I’ll be there to break the rules with you. I’ll be there to fix your commas and let you scream at the top of your lungs.

I’m going to remind you to eat. I’m going to remind you you’re a writer. Say, “Yes, thank you.”

I love what I do at The Daily.

I’ll confess: sometimes I complain to my friends, sometimes the work is so tedious and my name is so small in the fine print. They’ll tell you no one reads the newspaper just like they’ll tell you that skinny means beautiful. They’ll tell you to skip the metaphors and just get to the point. Stop writing about yourself; stop writing. These are the rules I’m happy to break.

If I’ve learned anything at all — from being sick, from healing, from copy editing, from writing, from sixth grade — it is this: Make your own rules and break them.

How terrifying and lovely it is to tell the truth now. How beautiful, even.

Sleeping in the cell,

4B Wednesday, October 2, 2019 // The Statement

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 // The Statement 5B

after “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff

BY ALEXANDER WAGNER, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

S

PHOTO S BY DANYEL THARAKAN

eymour’s last meal had been overcooked, which, at least to him, ruined what should’ve been a perfectly civilized execution. There was no reason for it not to be civilized, after all. He had confessed right out to those “despicable acts of human indecency” of which he was accused. No sense in lying about it, anyway. He was unsure whether it was delusion, hellish rage, or straight up boredom that drove someone to murder, but whatever it was he had quickly figured out that people can smell it on you. And so, he offered little protest to anything brought up in court, with the exception, of course, of when his lawyer — his own lawyer! — had claimed that Seymour himself was insane.

Honestly, how rude must a person be to insult a man on his way to death row like that? Even the decision to put him to death had elicited no such objection from Seymour. He knew he deserved to die; at least, in an objective sense. As he lay down in his small, rectangular cell, he thought about this and about how there was no reason for this transaction to be anything less than pleasant.

However, after enduring the blatant disrespect with which the prison chefs had handled his meatloaf, all courteousness on his end was out the window. Now he was determined to raise as much hell as possible on his way down there.

He stared into the small TV buzzing in the corner of the death watch cell. It was one of three luxuries that Seymour was offered to indulge in for his remaining hours on earth. The other two were listening to a radio or reading, both of which he would’ve traded in for an earlier sentence without hesitation. The TV was alright — the reception was bad, but he was watching a weather report about the massive snowstorm set to hit early tomorrow morning, and how it was likely that many people would lose power. He would’ve laughed at the poor bastards, but he caught himself when he remembered the three guards who were watching him through the two-way mirror at his back. He loathed that he was being observed, and had actually protested to it when the idea was first brought up. It seemed to him a form of cruel and unusual punishment to take a man whose utter hatred of people had driven

him to murder quite a few of them and then force that man to spend his final hours surrounded by a bunch of strangers. He could almost hear the guards on the other side of the glass — one of them had made a snide comment over his subpar meatloaf, expressing relief that he “hadn’t asked for people-meat instead.” That was just childish, honestly, and very disrespectful. As if just because he was a murderer, all his standards went right in the shitter. He had half a mind to inform the guard that he probably had a more refined taste in meat than she did, but he kept his mouth shut. After his meal, he wished he hadn’t.

The worst of all, however, must’ve been the priest; a thin, nasally man who came into the chamber around nineish to ask Seymour all sorts of questions about Jesus and hell and peoplemeat and the Bible. God, Seymour thought he’d never shut up. It took a threat to “personally waltz up to heaven and castrate St. Peter” to convince the priest that Seymour wasn’t interested. He was far more concerned with the few hours of rest that he were permitted from 6 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., when they would start going about the myriad of “preparations” that apparently had to be done. He looked to the bottom corner of the TV screen for the time. He couldn’t make out the last number, but it was 11:20-something. With a sigh, he repositioned himself and wondered, for his last few minutes of pseudo-solitude, whether that time the priest had stolen from him really made that much of a difference. He concluded, just before one of the guards came in, that it really didn’t, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be upset about it. It was a matter of principle, y’know?

The guard laid out a new pair of denim jeans and a blue collared shirt on the bed before giving him a few minutes to change. He stripped himself of his jumpsuit and dressed himself for execution. The jeans, he reluctantly admitted, were comfortable, though he wished he didn’t have to wear so much blue all at once. Talk about tacky. It was ironic, he thought, how many times he had expressed distaste in an outfit by saying he “wouldn’t be caught dead in that.” He made a mental note to mention to one of the guards that they should probably stop using that phrase

as well, on the off chance they end up in his situation.

At about midnight, the three guards entered the cell and escorted Seymour to the execution chamber. It was even smaller, with a big gurney — to which he was probably supposed to be strapped — taking up most of the cell, and the entire room was a gaudy lime green color that didn’t much compliment all his blue at all. He peered into the two-way mirror on one of the walls, beyond which he guessed about 50 people were seated to watch him die. He laughed at the irony. After all, wanting to watch people die was most likely what got him in this situation. Had he known there were free showings down here, maybe things would’ve turned out differently.

The guards laid him down in his chair and spent about five minutes strapping his arms and legs down, which Seymour thought was perfectly purposeless. Coming from someone who knew very well how to murder a person, they weren’t doing too great. He’d never heard complaints from his victims, and they’d certainly never been bored about it. It had always been a quick, clean, easy ordeal. After securing him, the guards left and the medic came in to insert the needles into his forearms. There were two of them, complete with long transparent tubes that coiled their way back behind him and into the wall, from where, Seymour assumed, the death would be coming. The first needle, inserted with an entirely pointless swab of rubbing alcohol, was quick and easy, but the medic had a little trouble locating the vein on Seymour’s right arm. After about eight minutes of searching accompanied by Seymour’s demands to “see your medical license to make sure you don’t accidentally kill me,” the needle was inserted and the medic went to work wiring him up to a heart monitor. After he finished, he scuttled out of the room. Seymour counted to a hundred before the warden came in, wearing a black suit and tie instead of his usual pompous uniform. He then stood a few feet away from Seymour, his arms crossed behind his back to make sure everyone knew just how highly he thought of himself, and looked him over.

“Do you have any last words?” the warden

asked.

Seymour thought for a few seconds before replying.

“You should really let me live so I can teach you how to properly kill someone,” he said. “The system you have in place here isn’t very efficient at all. If I were in charge, I could’ve had this whole bitch finished before lunch.”

The warden grimaced and shook his head.

“May God have mercy on your soul,” he said.

The warden then turned and exited the room, shutting the door behind him and leaving Seymour, apart from his invisible spectators, alone at last. He laid back in his chair and let the fluorescent lights wash over his closed eyelids, indulging in the silence. For the first time in many years, he felt comfortable — completely separated from all these people whom he had grown to hate so sincerely, freed from all worries of the future and ready to embrace whatever isolation death had in store for him. With a smile on his face, Seymour fell asleep.

Seymour’s sleeping was, of course, not of his own volition. It was the result of the five grams of sodium pentothal, a barbiturate that had, at the touch of a small plunger, run from the back room through the intravenous lines connected to Seymour’s forearms and, finally, into his bloodstream, to make him lose consciousness in less than 30 seconds. This alone would almost always kill a person, just as any overdose of opioids would. However, over the following five minutes or so, the lines were flushed with a saline solution, and a second plunger was pushed.

This one injected 50cc of pancuronium bromide, a neuromuscular blocking agent that relaxes the skeletal striated muscles during tracheal intubation and surgery. In this case, it was being used to paralyze Seymour’s respiratory system. Then, in an act of security which would have elicited from Seymour an endless tirade of ridicule, the lines were flushed again and, with the press of a third plunger, filled with 50cc of potassium chloride, which would stimulate cardiac arrhythmia and, eventually, stop his heart.

See SLEEPING, Page 6B

8B

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 // The Statement

VISUAL STATEMENT BIOLOGICAL STATION

BY ALEXIS RANKIN

I SPENT MY SUMMER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN BIOLOGICAL STATION BOTH AS A STUDENT AND AN INTERN. MY TIME WAS DIVIDED BETWEEN MY GENERAL ECOLOGY CLASS AND MY JOB AS A MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS INTERN, WHERE MY MAIN ROLE WAS TAKING PHOTOS. IT WAS A COMBINATION OF TWO OF MY FAVORITE THINGS, NATURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY. IT WAS AN OPPORTUNITY THAT ALLOWED ME TO BE CREATIVE, LEARN MORE ABOUT ECOLOGY AND PHOTOGRAPHY AND MAKE LIFE LONG FRIENDSHIPS.