2019-10-17

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Thursday, October 17, 2019

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The Michigan Union celebrates New restaurant its centennial with Diag event lineup includes Center for Campus Involvement shares cupcakes for the building’s 100th year

Panera Bread, Panda Express

Union will no longer house Starbucks, Au Bon Pain when reopening in January LEAH GRAHAM Daily News Editor

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The Michigan Union celebrated its centennial on Wednesday with cupcakes and a birthday card on the Diag. The Union has been a gathering space for students on campus since its creation in 1919, but the building has been under construction and

closed to visitors since April 2018.

The Center for Campus Involvement hosted the event.

LSA senior Sarah Hussain works as a program coordinator team lead with the Center for Campus Involvement. She said despite the building not being open on its 100th year of existence on campus, the center felt it was important to keep the Union alive in students’ minds while

undergoing construction.

“We knew that the 100th birthday was coming up and as a committee we all talked about some things we can do to keep its memory alive and get people excited about the reopening and keep it on the forefront of people’s minds, especially knowing that we have a couple grades of classes who have maybe never even been in the Union as a student

here, so we wanted to keep it relevant,” Hussain said.

“Knowing that it was going to turn 100 while it was closed, we decided we wanted to do at least something to commemorate that, so I just helped generate some ideas signing the birthday cards and having the block M out here for people to talk about.”

See ANNIVERSARY, Page 3A

The renovated Michigan Union will feature a Panera Bread and a Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea, among other options, when it reopens in January.

Several restaurants previously housed in the Union, including Starbucks and Au Bon Pain, will not be returning.

ButPanda Express and Subway will keep their spots in the Union with the addition of Mama Deluca’s, a station offering made-to-order pizza, pasta and chicken wings.

The other six restaurants will include MI Burger and the convenience store Blue Market. All of the restaurants will accept Blue Bucks and Dining Dollars.

The renovated Union

U-M Law School of Public Health to host initiative national center on school safety highlights $6 million nation-wide training forum will also study gun violence prevention diversity ACADEMICS

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Women Also Know Law group seeks to improve gender representation in legal academia work BARBARA COLLINS Daily Staff Reporter

Women Also Know Law, a new initiative spearheaded

by University of Michigan Law School faculty, aims to create more representation of those who identify as women or gender nonconforming in legal academia.

The project includes two online platforms. The first, a searchable database currently in the works, will include those who have or are seeking an academic appointment in legal education who identify as women or gender nonconforming. The initiative also uses a Twitter account, @womenknowlaw, to highlight the achievements and knowledge of women and gender nonconforming individuals in the legal field.

Assistant Law Professor Leah Litman and Emily Prifogle, visiting assistant law professor, co-founded the initiative. Litman said the public database will provide the opportunity to easily find experts in a given area of law for individuals looking to build curriculum or find speakers for a conference or panel.

See LAW , Page 3A

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In an effort to prevent school v iolence across t he count r y, t he Universit y of Michiga n School of Public Hea lt h pla ns to host a $6 million nationa l resea rch a nd t ra ining center on school safet y a nd g un v iolence. The new center ’s goa l is to prov ide schools w it h t ra ining a nd technica l assista nce to eliminate t he t hreat to st udent safet y.

The new center w ill be f unded by t he Bureau of Justice A ssista nce at t he U.S. Depa r t ment of Justice in hopes of prov iding a resource for t he Bureau’s f unded projects, as well as for ot her schools a round t he count r y.

This multidisciplina r y a nd multi-instit utiona l center w ill gat her facult y a nd staf f f rom top schools of public hea lt h, crimina l justice a nd education, as well school safet y

professiona ls a nd exper ts in ev idencebased practices, law enforcement, crisis inter vention, v iolence prevention a nd menta l hea lt h.

Cont ributors to t he center include t he Sa ndy Hook Promise Foundation, Universit y of Virg inia, Michiga n State Universit y, Nationa l Council of Behav iora l Hea lt h, A ssociation of School Superintendents a nd Nationa l A ssociation

of Elementa r y School Principa ls, a mong ot hers.

Ma rc Zimmerma n, co-principa l investigator at t he center a nd t he Ma rsha l H. Becker Colleg iate professor of hea lt h behav ior a nd hea lt h education at t he U-M School of Public Hea lt h, expla ined t he center w ill focus its resea rch a nd t ra ining on prevention tactics a nd notif ication technolog y.

See LAW , Page 3A

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will also house five retail partners: Barnes & Noble, the U-M Credit Union, the U-M Tech Shop, PNC ATM and the Michigan Union Ticket Office.

In an interview with The Daily, Susan Pile, senior director of University Unions and Auxiliary Services, said there was a multipronged approach to considering restaurants’ bids for space in the Union.

“I think the criteria has been, what is going to be of interest to students, the price point, the menu selection, customer service, who’s going to operate a good business that’s going to meet the needs of all those folks that visit the Union,” Pile said. “So I think that those are the key drivers.”

See FOOD, Page 3A

ADMINISTRATION

‘U’ admin reflect on progress of DEI plan Vice Provost leads community discussion on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion goals MADELINE MCLAUGHLIN Daily Staff Reporter

On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of students, faculty and staff convened in the Michigan League Ballroom for an update on the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategic Plan from Robert Sellers, Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer for the University.

The event, titled “Community Conversation: DEI ProgressUpdate,” focused on the University’s progress in regards to DEI. The session updated attendees on the progress of the University’s five-year DEI Plan, which is now in its third year.

The strategic plan was launched in 2016. It features one broad university-level plan and 49 unitlevel plans, specific to University programs and schools. The plan has three central goals: fostering an inclusive and equitable campus climate; creating a more diverse community of students, faculty and staff; and infusing diversity in scholarship and teaching.

Sellers began the talk by summarizing the plan’s overall goal: impactful change.

“Our plan is long term, sustainable, institutional, cultural change — the change being making the University a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community,” See DEI , Page 3A

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Michigan cities selected for PFAS exposure study, testing sites CDC and DHHS will begin examining drinking water in Cooper Township and North Kent County KRISTINA LENN Daily Staff Reporter

In response to growing concern regarding per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services announced in September they will begin working together to determine the harmful health effects of PFAS in drinking water on Michigan residents.

PFAS are a wide variety of chemicals produced by manufacturing, industrial and agricultural processes. In Michigan and some other states across the country, PFAS is a growing threat to drinking water.

Ann Arbor residents have become

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increasingly concerned with the levels of PFAS contamination in Washtenaw County, especially in the Huron River. Last May, the city launched a transparency initiative to detail updates on water quality.

The state of Michigan has more sites contaminated with PFAS than any other in the United States. As a result, the CDC and DHHS will examine PFAS exposure in Parchment/ Cooper Township and North Kent County.

In a September press release, Patrick Breysse, director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, said the effort would help researchers learn more about the effects of PFAS exposure.

“There is much that is

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unknown about the health effects of exposure to these chemicals,” Breysse wrote. “The multi-site study will advance the scientific evidence on the human health effects of PFAS and provide some answers to communities exposed to the contaminated drinking water.”

Terese Olson, professor of civil and environmental engineering, said PFAS contamination is ultimately a sustainability issue.

“Here you have emissions of these compounds in the environment that aren’t going to go anywhere,” Olson said. “And (they) will only build up. It makes no sense. It’s unsustainable.”

Due to PFAS resistance to things like grease and water, PFAS have been used for stainresistant materials and cleaning products.

However, because of their incredibly strong carbon-fluorine bonds, PFAS are not easily broken down, leading to elevated levels of PFAS in food, water, and the human body. Exposure to PFAS could increase cancer risk and cholesterol levels, as well as impede child development.

Of the 30 groundwater samples taken in Saline at the Washtenaw Industrial Facility, 24 were reported to have PFAS levels either greater than or equal to the standard allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is 70 parts per trillion.

These high levels are not restricted to Saline.

For LSA senior Tyler Schaub, this news hit close to home. His hometown of Muskegon has also experienced levels much higher than the EPA standard.

“I’m originally

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from Muskegon, Michigan,” Schaub said. “And there’s been households in Muskegon, Michigan, that have had (levels) up to 400 plus.”

The city has provided water bottles and filters to some of the homes affected. Olson explained how different cities react to PFAS contamination, such as the city of Parchment switching over to Kalamazoo’s water sources.

“There’s also even community systems that have discovered that there’s a contamination source, and their levels were higher than what they realize or what they thought,” Olson said. “And in those cases the city of Parchment was one such city; what they did was abandon their water source and hook up to the city of Kalamazoo. So communities have adjusted to these situations in various ways depending on how it’s surfaced.”

In spite of these adjustments, the lingering damage of PFAS ingested by humans and accumulated by the environment is a pressing concern.

LSA junior Luke McGill, who is studying environmental science, echoed the unease regarding facing the unknown.

“We know it’s in the environment and can get into our drinking water, and like you said it’s above EPA standards in some places,” McGill said. “We just don’t know what that’s going to do. So I think that’s concerning that it’s already in us or it already has the possibility to affect us.”

The city of Ann Arbor, however, has been proactive regarding the safety of its drinking water by utilizing granular activated carbon to maintain the city’s PFAS levels, which are currently below 10 ppt.

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ANNIVERSARY From Page 1A

Hussain is also on the symbolic programming committee, which works to bring awareness to the historic past of the buildings on campus, while also celebrating the milestones of these buildings.

The committee put on events for the closing of the Union in 2018, as well as a halfway point of construction, which Hussain said were especially important to her because of how much she loved the Union. She spent

FOOD From Page 1A The Union has been closed since April 2018, when work began on the two-year, $85.2 million renovation project.

Students played a role in the decision-making process through the Michigan Union Board of Representatives, a student organization that consulted with Union administrators on the renovation.

Rackham student Timothy Williams, a member of the MUBR and one of the students who served on the food review committee, said sustainability was a primary concern in considering which restaurants to put in the Union.

“I know for a lot of us sustainability was at the forefront,” Williams said. “We wanted to avoid anything that wasn’t either recyclable or compostable, keep up with sustainability trends, not only in front of house but also back of house and make sure they’re using sustainable equipment and composting, et cetera. That was a pretty big part of it as well as menu diversity, which obviously played a huge role.”

Amy White, director of the Michigan Union and associate director of University Unions, said she was looking forward to introducing new restaurants into the space.

“I think you’ll see that there are some familiar favorites, as well as some new faces and I think that’s good,” White said. “I think that if we opened the renovated Union and the same folks that we’ve seen for the last 30 years are still doing business that says something. In some ways that says some really good

DEI From Page 1A Sellers said. “I think it’s important that we start there, to understand that we are talking about cultural change.”

Sellers went on to discuss that while achieving change is not easy, the long-term benefits render it crucial to maintaining a reputation of greatness at the University.

“By definition, that requires hard work,” Sellers said. “It means that the work has to be pervasive throughout the organization. It will take time… It also means the change must happen at multiple levels of the University… if we are going to make long term sustainable change.”

LSA senior Kyle Duffy said he attended the event because of his job on campus at the Office for Organizational Culture and Strateg y.

“A huge importance of our work is based on DEI,” Duffy said. “So, a big part of the DEI for the business and finance department is knowing what’s going on around campus.

We came here to figure out what’s been going on… I am just interested to see what’s different.”

Sellers went on to discuss specific points of progress within the plan. He explained the plan was implemented in conjunction with feedback

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many hours absorbed in her studies in the Union prior to its reconstruction.

“The sophomore year that I spent 17 hours in the building one day… I loved the Union,” Hussain said. “I worked there, I would study there, I would grab meals there, so it definitely was a little hard not having it for my whole junior year. I’m so happy it’ll be open when I graduate.”

Laura Seagram, the director of account services for auxiliary marketing and communications said she was very excited to help with and attend this event.

She mentioned that

the construction plans were running earlier than expected.

“We feel really good that we can meet that date and we had all been saying winter for 2020 before, but now I think we’re comfortable in saying this coming January,” Seagram said. “It’s exciting.”

LSA junior Nithin Weerasinghe discussed his excitement for the birthday celebration as well as the reopening of the Union.

“I think it’’s going to be really nice to have it back,” Weerasinghe said. “I know a lot of people studied there down at the cafes and I think a lot of clubs also used the space.”

things, and it may also say some things that are not so good, so I think having some fresh businesses alongside long-standing favorites is something that I’m excited about.”

LSA senior Nick Schmidt, chair of the Michigan Union Board of Representatives, said customer service was another consideration.

“I think that that’s a huge part of any operation that we have in the Union is making sure that the business interacts well with the students because we want students to feel comfortable in the Union,” Schmidt said.

“That is their space.”

The current contracts vary from five to 10 years in leng th.

Some restaurants, including Wendy’s, opted not to renew their contracts for space in the Union. Last January, activists from Washtenaw Solidarit y with Farmworkers called on the Universit y and Central Student Government to block Wendy’s from coming back to campus after the chain refused to sig n the Fair Food Prog ram, an initiative seeking to promote adequate working conditions and fair wages for ag ricultural laborers.

The Wendy’s location in the Union was independently franchised and the owner subsequently decided not to renew the lease.

White said the controversy did not impact the selection process in a sig nif icant way.

“I think we didn’t see a huge amount of controversy from individual vendors,” White said.

Williams ag reed with White, adding “at the end of the day, we picked them because we thought they were all the best.”

“It was def initely in the back of my mind, just

because it was so prevalent on campus, but by and large, we just didn’t run into that with businesses that we looked at in my opinion,” Williams said. “We asked about food sourcing for a sustainabilit y perspective, more so than that particular concern. As far as I’m aware, it just never really came up.”

Apart from food, Schmidt said he was looking forward to seeing students return to the Union after its renovation.

“I mean, in my opinion, the open inviting space and the vibrancy of collaboration is something I’m excited for,” Schmidt said. “I’m excited to go into the Union and hear people talking and see people laughing and things like that.”

Williams noted the renovation will also enclose the court yard on the main level, creating more space for students.

“I’m really excited about the new court yard,” Williams said. “I think it’s going to be beautiful.

It’ll be actually usable for most of the year, instead of freezing out there.”

The enclosed court yard will be near the IdeaHub, a co-working space for student collaboration that will be built where the 97-year-old billiards hall previously stood.

Pile said she was excited to see the Union come alive again and watch students use the IdeaHub. “It’s going to be this amazing new space for student organizations on campus, really unlike any other space that we’ve ever seen on campus just for student organizations,” Pile said. “So it’s exciting to think about moving into that space and what it’s going to mean for student orgs on this campus.”

his team had received from community members within the University.

Currently, there are 37 action items taking place within the DEI plan. The items specifically target areas such as raising institutional awareness; aligning University policy, procedures and programs with DEI initiatives; creating inclusive cultural norms; and broadening institutional access. Sellers noted they were formulated through individuals’ direct participation at every level of the University. He said they did not come from personal directives from any University officials such as University President Mark Schlissel.

“These were not top-down handed initiatives,” Sellers said. “These action items were all developed from the initial planning process through focus groups, through social media opportunities… through town hall meetings and other kinds of meetings.

These are not the president’s action items, these are definitely not my action items, these are action items that you all developed yourselves.”

Sellers went on to discuss specific points of empirical evidence the strategic plan has made significant changes at the University.

Rhonda Todd, director of academic success at the Ross School of Business, told The Daily she was motivated to

attend the event in an effort to see the impact of the DEI initiative across campus.

“The work I do for the Ross School of Business revolves around DEI, supporting students’ academic success,” Todd said. “I am always really busy in that building, and I wanted to consciously make myself get out of the building to get more on campus and get more involved with DEI work across campus, not just in our building.”

She went on to discuss how, from her perspective, DEI initiatives are most successful when subunits, like the Business School, commit not only to internal improvements but think about changes in the context of the larger University.

“DEI is important, necessary work,” Todd said.

“Although we are making strides within our Ross community, it’s important to me to also be involved in the big picture. To do that, I must conscientiously engage.”

Sellers concluded the discussion by announcing while areas for improvement certainly still exist, the plan has helped the University take steps forward.

“We understand that we have made a difference, and we are not the same University that we were at the start of this process,” Sellers said. “We still have a ways to go, but we are not where we were when we started.”

LAW From Page 1A “We’re trying to avoid a situation in which the same group of people tend to get invited or quoted in all of the different pieces and make it easier to erase the excuse of, ‘I didn’t know any women to appear on this panel or this conference, or to consult for this particular project,’” Litman said.

While the database is still being created, the Twitter account has been in use since Oct. 1. Prifogle said the account is used to showcase the diversity of scholarship women and gender nonconforming people have in the discipline.

“Women don’t promote themselves in the same way that men might promote themselves,” Prifogle said. “We can do some of that promotional work for them, we can amplify their scholarship, we can amplify awards that they have won and bring greater attention to their work.”

The initiative is inspired

by Women Also Know Stuff, a similar database and corresponding Twitter account of political science experts who identify as women or gender nonconforming.

Prifogle was a member of a group which formed an additional database and Twitter account for historians identifying as women and gender nonconforming individuals called Women Also Know History, which is also based off of Women Also Know Stuff. Though the three initiatives are not in an official partnership, Litman explained, Women Also Know Law has been in contact with the others and has received support from them along the way.

In addition to Litman and Prifogle, Women Also Know Law has a faculty advisory board consisting of 11 University law professors

SAFETY From Page 1A “We want to identify best practices around what the crisis intervention teams should be doing, what are the best practices around counseling kids, how quickly you get there, what role does family play, how long do services need to be available,” Zimmerman said. “We don’t really know what they are all yet, by the way. Part of it is we are going to learn. We have experts who are going to help us identify different areas, and we are going to try to see where the evidence is and help get the information out to the schools.”

When asked how the bureau will cater to unique school characteristics, Zimmerman discussed the complex approach needed to provide schools with a tailored set of guidelines based on their individual situations.

“One of our tasks is to identify what are the best practices,” Zimmerman said.

“What we also want to do is help schools identify what are their resources, and what are the needs of their context...

Absolutely, (we are) thinking about many factors: the size of school might matter, socioeconomic status might matter, geographical location might matter, the resources available to a school might matter, a public charter might matter. So what we are going to try to do is, in a way where we can be as helpful as possible, identify what their place is like and what best fits them.”

In addition to his work with the center, Zimmerman co-leads the Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens Consortium. Launched in 2017, FACTS is a five-year project devoted to seeking a scientific approach to gun violence prevention with respect to gun ownership rights. Funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National

Thursday, October 17, 2019 — 3A who help manage the Twitter account, generate ideas for website content and publicize the initiative.

A group of students from the Women Law Students Association collaborate with the faculty advisory board on the projects.

Second-year Law students Rachel Czwartacky and Emma Macfarlane are co-presidents of the Women Law Students Association and both became involved with Women Also Know Law when Litman reached out to them about the initiative at the beginning of the semester.

Czwartacky and Macfarlane said they are both looking forward to the impact of the initiative.

From her involvement in Women Also Know Law, Czwartacky said she has gotten the opportunity to work with inf luential female law professors that she wouldn’t have met otherwise.

“There are so many panels that go on in the law school all the time that are all put on by different student groups,” Czwartacky said. “Even just between (Mcfarlane and me), we’re always thinking about whose voices are represented on these panels … (Women Also Know Law) is really perfect for both of us. And I think that was something we were looking to do.”

Before coming to law school at the University, Macfarlane taught in Bangkok, Thailand, for two years. Working in a very male-dominated field, Macfarlane said she found importance in having female role models and experts to look up to.

“It’s difficult to make your way when you don’t have people immediately at the forefront of your brain to look up to,” Macfarlane said. “I think that this is an excellent project to highlight people and maybe

encourage the default be not a white man, but a woman or a person of color, or a person who is gender nonconforming.”

Litman said those involved in the Women Also Know Law initiative want the project to be used as a positive reinforcement and support tool for those who identify as women and gender nonconforming in law academia. She also hopes those considering entering academia can utilize the initiative to see the great work they can go on to do.

“We want to change the look and feel about what it means to be experts and to be supporting women who are doing amazing things in the law (field), and also encouraging people, reminding them about all of the amazing experts in the field who identify as women or gender nonconforming,” Litman said.

Prifogle said she wants Women Also Know Law to start a productive conversation about including more diversity in the field and bringing women and gender nonconforming voices to the foreground of legal academia.

“I hope for more representation of women in academia, on conference panels and syllabi; I hope the database enables greater representation and greater diversity in those key components of academic life,” Prifogle said. “But I also hope it starts a conversation in legal academia about the importance of diversity, the importance of tackling gender bias. We’re tackling gender bias in a couple of specific ways that I think are modeled on other ways that have proven successful, but they are not the only ways to tackle gender bias.

And we alone are not going to solve gender bias in the academy.”

Institute of Child Health and Human Development as part of the National Institutes of Health, the interdisciplinary project partners with over 30 researchers, health practitioners and firearm owners, as well as a dozen academic institutions.

These efforts seek to address the issue of gun violence and threats to safety in American schools. According to U-M researchers, there has been an increase in violence at schools: The number of shootings in K-12 schools increased from 15 to 97 from 2015 to 2019, and up to one in five students reported being in a fight in the last year.

Zimmerman said schools are in a position to implement better practices or more evidence-based strategies to support students who may be experiencing these issues.

“The idea (of the center) is to create a resource that will help make a difference in making our schools safer for kids so they can learn, instead of worrying about their safety,” Zimmerman said.

As a member of the Warren County Democrats and the policy chair of U-M’s Roosevelt Institute, LSA junior Morgan Showen said he hopes the center will address the legislative inaction on gun violence.

“Efforts to provide education and training to protect young Americans from further gun violence are always a step in the right direction,” Showen said. “However, just like the science behind the existence of climate change, the evidence is settled on which solutions have the greatest impact on reducing gun deaths.”

Showen comes from Lebanon, Ohio, and noted his home state has recently received national attention after a mass shooting in Dayton in August.

“My hope is that the School of Public Health’s new efforts

will not simply be focused on treating the symptoms of gun violence, but will instead help to enable legislators in both Michigan and Ohio to take proven actions towards addressing the root cause of our national gun violence epidemic,” Showen said.

LSA senior Taylor King is a member of U-M Students Demand Action, a student organization dedicated to fighting gun violence. King said research dedicated to gun violence prevention is important, especially following the passage of the Dickey Amendment in 1996, which forbade federal funding for gun violence prevention research.

“I hope to see this initiative take a varied approach to gun violence prevention at schools — considering not only mass shootings, which make up less than 1 percent of all shootings, but also considering gun suicide, daily gun violence and the toll it takes on young people who are impacted — primarily low-income students of color — and the mental and emotional toll of all gun violence on all young people and students,” King said.

King tied the need to fight gun violence to social justice causes.

“However, I do want to highlight that centers like this should not be the only thing we are doing. While school safety is undeniably important, we also need to be looking into daily gun violence and its disproportionate impact on people of color, the intersection of gun violence and domestic violence, gun suicide, hate crimes and the countless other manifestations of gun violence in our communities,” King said. “There is a tendency for people to only think of mass shootings and school shootings when we talk about gun violence, but the problem is so much bigger than that and school safety campaigns cannot solve all of our problems.

Opinion

4A — Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

JOSHUA KIM | COLUMN

Immigration policy is not solely Trump’s fault

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ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMN

T

How to navigate the gun control fight

he issue of guns in America is deeply emotional and divisive.

As the Democratic candidates vie for their party’s presidential nomination, it is critical that they recognize the optics of this issue and do not reinforce Republican talking points on gun confiscation.

While all the Democratic presidential candidates support some form of gun control, the issue of a mandatory gun buyback program divides the candidates. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, have all announced that, as president, they would push for a mandatory buyback program of certain semi-automatic weapons.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-V.T., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. and former Vice President Joe Biden have all called for instituting a voluntary gun buyback program.

From a purely ideological perspective, I strongly support a mandatory buyback program for certain semi-automatic weapons. I have come to this position in the same way that many other young people have: growing up in an era plagued with gun violence. We are tired of the endless violence, we are tired of being afraid and we are tired of the empty thoughts and prayers offered after every shooting.

While I had always been a major supporter of gun control, it was the shooting in Dayton, Ohio, this summer that pushed me to support a mandatory buyback on semi-automatic assault weapons. Due to the heroism of a police officer, that shooting lasted only 32 seconds. However, in those 32 seconds, the shooter was still able to kill nine people. The idea that any weapon can fire enough bullets in 30 seconds to end nine innocent lives proves why we should not have these weapons of war on our streets.

I am also personally in favor of restricting semi-automatic

handguns, which can also fire an obscene number of bullets in a short amount of time.

Unfortunately, beliefs do not always align with political pragmatism. Though most Democrats and I support a mandatory full buyback of semi-automatic assault weapons, this is not feasible in this political climate. Even worse, I believe that the calls for a mandatory gun buyback program play directly into the hands of the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association.

I strongly support a mandatory buyback program for certain semi-automatic weapons The GOP and the gun lobby love to warn people that Democrats are coming for their guns and, by extension, their liberty. In reality, the Democrats are simply in favor of common-sense gun regulations that help ensure the safety of all Americans. Even if this mandatory buyback program were to be implemented, it would only apply to certain semiautomatic assault weapons.

The specifics of the proposed policy have been overshadowed by media coverage of each candidates’ proposed mandatory gun buybacks. This coverage is mostly centered on O’Rourke, who has made gun control a main tenet of his campaign.

When asked about his suggested mandatory gun buyback program, O’Rourke proudly proclaimed, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” This line has become a rallying cry of his campaign, even appearing on campaign merchandise.

While this line may elicit cheers from those on the left, it only serves to further the political divide on the issue of guns. Instead of explaining the merits of a mandatory gun buyback program or citing the success that Australia had in curbing violence following their mandatory buyback, O’Rourke is instead simply providing fodder for the GOP. Democrats should instead be focused on highlighting the many common-sense gun measures that their party stands for, including red flag laws, expanded background checks and efforts to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.

These policies are much more popular than the mandatory buyback program.

According to a September 2019 poll, 83 percent of Americans support background checks for gun purchases at gun shows or other private sales. This has far more support than a mandatory gun buyback program, which an NPR and PBS NewsHour’s poll showed was only supported by 70 percent of Democrats.

But for Independents, only 40 percent supported it, and for Republicans, it was only 23 percent.

I admire O’Rourke for his tenacity on this issue and for taking this stand. However, right now Democrats must focus on doing all they can to win back not only the White House, but also the Senate. No legislation on guns is likely to be passed if President Donald Trump is reelected for a second term or if Republicans hold the Senate. That is why candidates should focus on the parts of gun control that have a greater consensus. And if candidates want to speak in favor of a mandatory gun buyback program, they should watch their words carefully and use their platform to emphasize the positives of such programs and not play into the hands of Republicans.

Isabelle Schindler can be reached at ischind@umich.edu.

LENA SISKIND | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT LENASISK@UMICH.EDU

O

n Oct. 2, President Donald Trump’s administration set plans to conduct a mass collection of DNA samples from migrants taken into custody.

The implications of this policy could be massive: Hundreds of thousands of migrants would have their DNA stored into a national FBI database.

At the Department of Homeland Security, senior officials stated that this move would grant immigration officials and officers the jurisdiction to collect the DNA from anyone held within border detention facilities. At any given time, roughly 40,000 migrants are held within those facilities.

Some contend that this measure is not severe since a similar program already exists at the border. Operation Double Helix is an active protocol being practiced to help border agents determine genetic links between parents and their children in hopes to identify child trafficking operations. However, what makes this new policy a truly abhorrent unethical wreck is its scope.

A basic American principle of justice suggests a policy of probable cause. At least in the case of Operation Double Helix, the basis of that protocol is to ultimately deter crimes particularly pertaining to human trafficking. However, this new program would give authorities the absolute power to invade the privacy of migrants regardless of probable cause. The fact that any person would think to implement such a policy is antithetical to common American values and it is shameful to make one’s own privacy the cost for entry.

Of the few supporters of this policy, some attempt to rationalize it by reminding us that illegal immigration is a crime. However, then the logical conclusion would be that not only illegal immigration – but also every first-time misdemeanor – should also be eligible for DNA collection by the FBI. Got your second minor in possession in Michigan? Eligible. Drank a little too much in public?

Eligible. Got some marijuana?

Eligible.

With that disgusting and asinine logic, the bar for officials to violate one’s privacy is a low one, making it even more insulting to suggest that a first-time misdemeanor like migrating across the border would be suitable grounds for officials to funnel DNA into a comprehensive national FBI database.

The administration’s move to pursue this type of policy reveals that Trump will go to extreme lengths to desperately “fulfill” his campaign promise to be hard on immigration.

Instead of a “glorious” wall expanding along the U.S.Mexico border, Trump has opted to create a genetic barrier with a eugenic air.

Though this may seem like an abuse of executive power, it’s not. One could only argue that Trump’s policies are grossly unethical. And that’s the most troubling part.

Legally, Trump potentially has the grounds to enact this policy without any constitutional pushback.

Under the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005, Trump would have the executive power as president to implement his initiative because it falls

within the legally broad definition for DNA collection.

That’s the reality of the entire immigration border crisis: Not all of this is Trump’s doing.

True, people can argue that Trump handles immigration with an uncontained racist fervor to feed his base, but what people cannot deny is that immigration has been in constant humanitarian and ethical crisis for decades regardless of who is president.

The detention centers at the border existed during Barack Obama’s presidency with undeniably terrible conditions.

Obama deported more people than Trump. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, was founded under the Bush Administration in 2003.

Immigration is a problem that predated Trump.

Ultimately, most of the problems related to presidents and their immigration policies can be rooted in law.

Immigration laws have been designed to be so broad in purpose that the executive branch can use these laws and powers with impunity.

Due to loose and poorly developed laws, Congress has allowed immigration to be melded by the whims of the president. Instead of actually developing a basic moral standard for immigrants, partisans have decided that their views are the only correct ways to see the immigration crisis. And this failure to confidently amend the issues at the border will continue to cost immigrants their liberty, privacy and humanity.

Joshua Kim can be reached at joshica@umich.edu.

SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN

The tyranny of meritocracy is all around us

A

lmost every time I ask someone how they are doing during this gloomy, midterm-filled week, they respond with “tired.” This response bothers me because it is hard to respond to and is sometimes said to prove how hard people are working. I am sympathetic because hard work has become a tool not only for individuals to satisfy their own guilt and anxieties, but also because it is a prerequisite for high social status in the pseudomeritocracy we are being groomed to join. However, blame for this toxic culture does not fall onto the individuals that feed it. Rather, it is the fault of the narratives of meritocracy and equal opportunity that serve to reinforce social hierarchies.

This type of anti-overwork thinking is in right now. One of the most anticipated social science books this year was Daniel Markovits’ “The Meritocracy Trap.” In it, Markovits argues the illusion of contemporary meritocracy makes the extreme levels of inequality and societal hierarchies we experience today more sustainable. He points out that this meritocratic justification is fundamentally different than the arguments used to sustain inequality in the past. In the 1800s, the wealthy worked far less than the poor; it was obvious that social status was undeserved. The rich were true capitalists, just sitting on their slowly growing wealth and land.

However, this blatant inequity made anti-elitist movements easy to get behind. Today, the landscape has shifted. Instead of physical capital to solidify their social status, the wealthy now have human capital, and importantly, the ability to work longer hours. Leisure used to be a sign of privilege and esteem, but it is now looked down upon as lazy. The wealthy work as much as they want to, while the poor struggle to find work.

This system creates the illusion that the wealthy deserve their elevated social standing because they work hard, protecting themselves from criticism.

Though the arguments made to justify social hierarchy have changed dramatically, the people making the arguments have stayed the same, revealing that the difference between the two is actually quite small.

Not only does the United

States’ enormous wealth gap obliterate the possibility of equal opportunity before birth, but research shows that there is a strong relationship between parent and child income.

Meritocracy has been co-opted by inherited wealth to sustain itself, creating a more sustainable version of gross inequality while attacking class consciousness. One example is the arguments often made by the white-working class against affirmative action. According to “The Hidden Injuries of Class,” a famous sociological study, the white-working class often say there is enough equal opportunity in the United States such that everyone should be able to support themselves without assistance. But this viewpoint supports the inequality and social hierarchies that have themselves decimated rural populations by implicitly saying that they do not deserve the opportunities they do not have.

Even efforts to attack the meritocracy subtly sustain it.

For example, effective altruism — a philosophy which advocates for the rich to give all their money beyond what they need to survive to the most needy — attacks the meritocracy by saying that individuals should give their money away to those who need it more. Implicit in this ideology is that people with money do not necessarily deserve their money or are obligated to give it away.

But this philosophy sneakily supports the idea that individuals are the best decision-makers for their money and fails to bring about systemic changes in the way wealth is distributed beyond individual altruism. Another example is the revitalized academic focus on working less.

While externally these efforts attack the meritocracy, most of these writers (myself included) are white men, implying that our efforts may just be the facade for white economic anxiety over a diversifying America and the #MeToo era.

Markovits acknowledges that one interpretation of his argument is that elites should not have to work as hard as they do to attain their social status.

While Markovits does not ask readers to sympathize with the rich, he argues that the rich too are hurt by the meritocracy, which means that there is an opportunity for it to change.

But even if the rich suffer from overwork, they are actually benefiting from the meritocracy because it legitimizes their social status.

I should perhaps not be writing this because I fall victim to these same trends.

I consistently overschedule myself, I am in more than three active Slack channels and I feel the need to take as many credits as I can — even this article was finished days after the original due date. But I find that though I have thought about these issues for a long time and believe we should be doing less, I cannot bring myself to actually do it.

I think it is because overwork is a collective action problem.

It is hard for any one person to unilaterally work less within a culture that glorifies work like we do. And yet, it is also true that some people do not perform their work and need to be pushing themselves as much as possible for any myriad of reasons. It comes from a remarkable place of privilege to be able to work or not work as much as I want to based on my philosophical inclinations.

And yet, I feel compelled to write about this because I and those whom I love are victims to this culture on a smaller scale.

We conceive our value based on the systems in which we exist — grades, scholarships, whether we get the next leadership position — but so often these systems are false meritocracies.

The psychology seems similar to the way Americans think about school systems. When parents are polled on perceived quality of American schools, they consistently think the education system is terrible, but their children’s schools are great.

That is similarly true for illusions of meritocracy.

Americans are increasingly worried about inequality of opportunity on a country-scale, yet we continue to believe in our local institutions and systems.

The two cannot both be true, so we should apply our scrutiny of false meritocracies consistently.

We should tone down our high-level criticism over larger issues of false meritocracy, and recommit to identifying those right around us.

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

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Thursday, October 17, 2019 — 5A

GOLF Blankenburg embracing physicality despite size MEN’S Michigan finishes 10th at Crooked Stick Invite BAILEY JOHNSON Daily Sports Writer

Last January, when Penn State came to Ann Arbor, thenfreshman defenseman Nick Blankenburg was on the ice for his first shift just under five minutes into the game. Within moments of taking the ice, he laid a hit that Michigan coach Mel Pearson can’t forget.

Forward Liam Folkes came up through the neutral zone and lost the puck as he crossed center ice. Just as Folkes turned to look for the puck, Blankenburg stepped into a hip check that sent all 182 pounds of Folkes f lying across the ice — knocking off his helmet and one of his gloves.

Blankenburg, meanwhile, calmly stood up and rejoined the play. The hit set the tone for what eventually became a Michigan 5-1 win, and made it clear to everyone in the building that Blankenburg was unafraid to play physical hockey.

When asked about Blankenburg’s physical play on Wednesday, Pearson brought up the hit from last year’s game against the Nittany Lions without prompting.

“He’s got a little nasty streak to him,” Pearson said. “I still remember the hit last year where he popped the Liam Folkes kid from Penn State on a real good hit. But he’s a bundle of energy and a bundle of grit.

You’d like about 10 to 12 guys like him on your team.”

At 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds, Blankenburg is the Wolverines’ smallest defenseman by two inches and about 15 pounds — but he doesn’t play like it. In nearly every game, he

BRENDAN ULANCH For The Daily

RUCHITA IYER/Daily

Sophomore defenseman Nick Blankenburg has gained a reputation for physical play despite standing 5-foot-9.

finds himself at the center of chippy moments or involved in skirmishes with the other team.

And sometimes, Blankenburg will hit a player hard enough that looks like it came from a player twice his size.

Blankenburg credits the foundation of his scrappiness to growing up with his brother Alex, who is three years older than him.

It’s a cliché that older brothers play rough on their younger brothers, but it was reality for Blankenburg as a child.

“Whether playing mini sticks in the basement or just playing basketball in the driveway, he would always make sure I wasn’t … soft,” Blankenburg said. “He would always make sure that I’m tough, so I guess you could say I get that from him, and

(Nick Blankenburg’s) got a little nasty streak to him.

especially my dad, too.”

His penchant for physical play has sent Blankenburg to the penalty box a few more times in his career that Pearson would prefer, but Pearson is clear that he’d rather have a player that goes too far at times than one that he has to constantly encourage to play with an edge.

Blankenburg certainly has an edge, and now is tasked with finding a balance between playing tough and staying out of the penalty box. Last year, he took just six penalties in 36 games, but Pearson would like to see him find even more control of his emotions.

“For the most part, yes (he’s composed),” Pearson said.

“Every once in a while, he’ll just go off the deep end and

you’re wondering where his brain went. … That’s where you have to have emotional control, and it’s hard, because of guys like that who play so hard. It can be difficult, especially when it gets physical and he’s trying to play physical, too. We just have to remind him that we need him on the ice, not in the box.”

This weekend, the Wolverines host Lake Superior State, a team that’s known for playing a very physical style of hockey. It’s exactly the kind of game Blankenburg likes, and it presents a test of his work on maintaining his composure.

“Guys are going to try to get under your skin, and that’s really the point of the game,” Blankenburg said. “I think you’ve just gotta keep your composure and just play hard.”

Every once in a while, he’ll just go off the deep end.

Fifty-four holes in two days is far from an easy trip on the green, no matter how skilled the golfer, and first-year Michigan coach Zach Barlow knew that his team would need to dig deep in order to find success at the Crooked Stick Tournament in Carmel, Ind. With weather against them and a tough field to go up against — No. 13 Georgia and No. 5 Vanderbilt to name a few — the Wolverines started the first day of play with a 306 through 18 holes.

“It’s always tough to stay in it when you have a rough start,” Barlow said.

With Michigan in 13th place and 11 of the other 14 teams in the field all scoring under 300 after the first 18 holes, it was a challenge for the Wolverines to claw back in the second round.

Junior Charlie Pilon did just that. After shooting a 75 for 3-over par in the first round, Pilon reeled in a 71 for 1-under par to close out the 36-hole day. His three birdies on the 5th, 9th and 12th holes helped him lead the Wolverines up one spot to 12 at the end of the first day.

Sophomore Ben Dunn had a solid first day as well, tallying a 76 for 4-over par on both of his rounds. At the end of the first day, and through 36 of 54 holes, Michigan sat in 12th place.

“A two-round day is mentally demanding and physically demanding,” Barlow said. “We need to learn how to just focus on the present. We

need good stretches of golf to be longer and bad stretches of golf to be shorter.”

The third round started off delayed one hour due to frost on the course. With winds a problem just like the day before, the Wolverines had a lot to deal with if they wanted to make it back to Ann Arbor with a successful tournament.

Senior Brent Ito had a late surge on the back nine with two back-to-back birdies on the 11th and 12th holes and another on the 17th to give him a 73 for 1-over par on the day.

This, combined with a solid third round performance from junior Henry Spring — 75 for 3-over par — put Michigan at 10th place to end their tournament.

Pilon led all golfers with a combined 223 for 7-over par after 54 holes. Freshman Pier Francesco de Col performed well too, shooting a 76 for 4-over par in his first round, second on the team at the end of that round, and also knocking in two back-to-back birdies to start off the third round.

“We have a ways to go,” Barlow said. “Our short game needs to get better, it is your insurance policy.”

Even though the short game didn’t impress, Barlow attested a bright spot from the tournament, Pilon’s comeback second round, to his assistant coach Matt Hoffman.

“Matt walked with him for a couple holes,” Barlow said. “(They both) got in a good rhythm.”

We have a ways to go. Our short game needs to get better.

Wolverines shut out Ball State, 6-0 ‘M’ offense sputters in 1-0 loss ALEX WALKON

Daily Sports Writer

Wherever the Wolverines go, their parents follow. A weekend in enemy territory was no exception, as the Michigan field hockey team earned two victories at Buckeye Turf Field, including an overtime victory over Ohio State.

Michigan’s positive momentum and parental fandom earned the Wolverines an even playing field in Columbus on Sunday against Ball State.

“No matter where we play, we have an unbelievable amount of support from our parents,” said redshirt sophomore midfielder Emma Tamer. “Even if we are in California playing Stanford, we still have a good amount of our fans and it kind of always feels a little neutral to me.”

No. 11 Michigan’s (10-3) unwavering support paid off in its 6-0 shutout victory over the Cardinals (3-10).

With under a minute to play in the first quarter, redshirt sophomore forward Kate Burney threaded a pass to sophomore forward Katie Anderson, who found the back of the cage at the 14:04 mark.

After a scoreless second

quarter, the Wolverines started the second half with three shots in the first 65 seconds en route to 14 total in the third quarter.

“The biggest change came at halftime. I think we kind of woke up a little bit,” Tamer said. “We all know the tactics are there. It’s about the intangibles. It’s about whether we show up and work hard and whether you’re on your girl or you’re one step off. I think those are minor details that make a huge difference.”

Michigan’s third quarter surge led to another latequarter goal, this time from Tamer, assisted by senior midfielder Meg Dowthwaite, pushing the lead to 2-0.

“We’re always trying to play sixty minutes no matter if it’s the first minute or the last minute,” said Michigan coach Marcia Pankratz. “We’re a very fit team and I think they can manage doing that.”

Going into the fourth quarter, Ball State had not registered a single shot since the first half. The Wolverines’ smothering defense ensured that didn’t change in the final 15 minutes.

“It all starts with a great defense,” Pankratz said.

“We’ve had a bunch of shutouts

in a row and I think our backfield players were really clamping down defensively.”

Yet it was Michigan’s dynamic offense that stole the show in the fourth.

Dowthwaite got things started, scoring off an assist from sophomore midfielder Sophia Southam. The final three minutes of the contest included goals from sophomore midfielder Kathryn Peterson at 57:02, junior midfielder Maya Gompper at 58:08 and Tamer less than a minute later— her second of the afternoon.

After narrowly winning the shots battle, 3-2, in the first quarter, Michigan dominated, 28-3, the rest of the way. The Wolverines’ aggressiveness on the offensive end was paramount in their fourthquarter scoring outburst.

“No shot is a bad shot,” Tamer said. “We have amazing forwards who have their sticks down and can finish. We know that it’s a process and not every shot is going to go in, even though we strive for that.

“I think it’s just trusting the process and knowing that eventually those goals will come if we continuously work hard.”

Sunday, that hard work paid dividends.

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Redshirt sophomore midfielder Emma Taber scored two goals in Michigan’s 6-0 win over Ball State on Sunday.

MILES MACKLIN/Daily

Goalkeeper Andrew Verdi gave up a near-post goal but otherwise played well in Michigan’s 1-0 loss at Indiana.

JARED GREENSPAN For The Daily

As graduate transfer forward Nebojsa Popovic re-entered the scoreless match in the 66th minute, hope abounded that the team’s leading goal-scorer could spark a stagnant Michigan attack.

Just a minute later, a goal was scored — only it was Indiana breaking the ice, not the Wolverines.

Hoosiers midfielder Spencer Glass tip-toed his way past the Michigan defense down the left flank before blasting a nearpost goal over the head of senior goalkeeper Andrew Verdi. The goal proved to be the difference in what was a 1-0 loss for the Wolverines (6-3-3 overall, 2-1-2 Big Ten) against No. 4 Indiana (8-1-3, 4-0-0) on Sunday in Bloomington.

“We take advantage of our opportunities, and we have them,” said Michigan coach Chaka Daley. “They took one of theirs, and we were not fortunate enough to have one of ours.”

In the game’s waning moments, Michigan created one last chance in an attempt to notch the elusive goal. A rightside corner resulted in a frenetic game of pinball in the box, the ball bouncing off two Wolverine

heads before landing at the feet of junior defenseman Joel Harrison. Harrison unleashed a strong bottom-center shot, only for it to wind up in the hands of conveniently-positioned Indiana goalkeeper Roman Celetano.

Michigan’s defense continued to serve as an anchor, limiting a potent Hoosier attack to just one goal. Junior midfielders Marc Ybarra and Carlos Tellez in particular helped set the game’s aggressive tone from the onset.

“That’s a confident group,” Daley said. “You know, they haven’t conceded more than one goal since game one.

So that’s a sixweek period where they’re not accustomed to conceding goals. Defense is a big team effort, back to front.”

The Wolverines especially embodied the definition of team defense in the 16th minute, when Verdi strayed far out of his net chasing a tailing cross from the left side. Though the ball found its way to an Indiana forward before Verdi could get it, junior defender Jackson Ragen intervened to protect the goal, denying the threat by

stepping in front and absorbing the shot with his body.

Verdi’s play in the net also offered the defense a firm backbone — recording four saves in the match.

“That’s what we ask out of our goalies, to give us an opportunity to win the game,” Daley said. “And he did that with a good performance.”

Noticeably absent in the Michigan attack was senior forward Jack Hallahan, who missed the contest due to injury.

Still, without Hallahan, the Wolverines were able to generate opportunities with nine shots and three corners.

Despite the loss, competing with the perennial Big Ten favorite in Indiana offers reason for optimism.

“The group believes that we can play toe-to-toe with anyone in the country, even with a bit of a depleted squad,” Daley said.

“So if we can get ourselves with other guys that are coming back full circle, that will be helpful.

Within the group, the belief that we can do this against a tough team is there.”

The belief that we can do this against a tough team is there.

Sports

6A — Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Ed Warinner hoping Michigan has McGrone playing in Bush’s image found its identity in the run game MAX MARCOVITCH Managing Sports Editor

MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily

Freshman running back Zach Charbonnet was part of a 161-rushing yard first quarter against the Fighting Illini.

THEO MACKIE Daily Sports Editor

Monday afternoon, when Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh was asked whether he likes the progress from the run game, he offered up only one word before pausing for further contemplation.

“Yes.” And so far through six games of the Josh Gattis era, the numbers back him up. Since averaging a miserable 2.1 yards per carry against Wisconsin, the Wolverines have managed at least 3.4 in every game since.

Not lighting the world on fire, but progress.

On Saturday, Michigan football’s ground resurgence peaked in a 14-carry, 161-yard first quarter against Illinois.

The Wolverines had five explosive plays (which they define as rushes of at least 12 yards) on the ground in the first 15 minutes — more than their last four games combined.

“We got the outside zone game going with the pin-andpull, getting some linemen out on the edge, pulling our guards and center out there,” said offensive line coach Ed Warinner. “They did a nice job of that. But it was just good to establish the run game.”

Early in the season, teams were taking away that pinand-pull play — Michigan’s most-used run scheme a year ago, according to Warinner.

The play requires the strongside tight end to seal the edge, allowing either a guard or center to pull and get to the

second level, and opening up holes for potential big plays.

But facing different defensive looks in Gattis’ spread offense, the Wolverines hadn’t been able to open up holes on pin-and-pulls until Saturday.

“The difference in what you see defensively when you’re in more spread-out formations and when you’re in more condensed (is big),” Warinner said. “Yeah, that for sure has been the biggest difference for how you block.”

Michigan’s issues establishing the pin-and-pull underscore that larger point.

It’s week eight now, and the Wolverines are still finding out which run packages work in Gattis’ offense.

Warinner knows that’s not okay. He also believes they’re still figuring it out.

“I just think it becomes clearer what you can and can’t do and what you’re good at and what you’re not good at,” Warinner said. “And it just, as that picture clears itself up, then you stick with that, do it more, build on it. So we’re all into doing that.”

The goal, of course, was to have an identity solidified long before entering the meat of their schedule — a bruising slate featuring marquee matchups against Penn State, Notre Dame, Michigan State and Ohio State in the latter half of the season.

Wednesday afternoon, Warinner said he evaluates what a team’s identity should be after two to three games.

Classifieds

This year, its third game was a 21-point loss to Wisconsin, with just 40 rushing yards and a carry split in f lux. Senior quarterback Shea Patterson, who ran for 273 yards a year ago, had a long of four yards that day.

Now, he has 42 yards in Michigan’s last two games. A modest total, but enough to get the Wolverines’ zone-read game working.

“That makes a defense stay honest,” Warinner said. “And when I say honest, they have to protect all the gaps. They can’t collapse extra people into the box and so they have to be real cognizant of him as a threat.

Because he is a threat, you’ve seen it the last couple weeks.”

In front of Patterson, the offensive line play has been there — “really getting consistent, gelling and playing with a style of play that’s physical, smart and tough,” as Harbaugh puts it. The running backs, despite their inexperience, have enough explosiveness to get the job done. The key is putting it all together into a coherent run game.

“You have to establish who you are and what you want to do,” Warinner said. “And then you evaluate. At some point, you have to say, here’s what we’re good at.”

As the 11.5 yards per carry in the first quarter against Illinois showed, the Wolverines are getting there.

As the 3.9 yards per carry after that showed, they still have a ways to go.

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

Release Date: Thursday, October 17, 2019

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

HELP WANTED

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Quick blows 5 In need of a massage 9 “Back to the Future” surname 14 Kitchen topper 15 Repeatable toy vehicle sound 16 Pine or Rock 17 Duo in the news 18 Pushed the bell 19 Fountain pen precursor 20 Article about life jackets?

23 Whirl, so to speak 24 Brewed beverages 25 Didn’t let renege on 28 Chi follower 29 Bumbler 30 Steal from 31 Article about a European language?

36 Serpent suffix 37 Latest thing 38 Monet medium 39 CBS military series 40 Texter’s “Yikes!”

41 Article about crosswords?

45 Solemn assurance 46 Word ending for enzymes 47 Deli delicacy 48 Surround, as with a glow 50 Cherokee on the road 52 Dude 55 Article about a dessert?

58 Choral work 60 Small addition?

61 Honey haven 62 Ward off 63 School near Windsor 64 __-friendly 65 Entourage 66 “The Metaphysics of Morals” writer 67 Cubs spring training city DOWN 1 Support beam 2 Destination for a wedding

3 Like many wrestlers 4 Unspecified amount 5 Nail salon material 6 Irritate 7 Sharpens 8 Class with mats 9 “12 Years a Slave” director Steve 10 Boor 11 Panda Express staple 12 Short short?

13 Designer monogram 21 Assignment 22 Classic 1954 horror film about giant ants 26 Vodka __ 27 More than a bit heavy 28 Middle of Tripoli?

29 One advocating buying 31 Trees of a kind, often 32 San __, city near San Francisco 33 Meringue ingredients 34 Go slowly

35 Claiborne of fashion 39 Scuttle 41 Painter’s set of colors 42 Biennial games org.

43 Mercury, for one 44 Orchestra name reflecting its music 49 Superb servers 50 Volkswagen sedan

51 Big name in stationery 52 Capital WNW of Cheyenne 53 Wanders 54 Stage performance with singing 56 Give a strong impression (of) 57 Buddy 58 Hiker’s guide 59 Lacto-__ vegetarian

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

By Susan Gelfand ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

HELP ELDERLY W/ HSHLD TASKS Walk to UM 734.276.6797 $10/hr

Cam McGrone briefly shuffled his feet as he approached the line of scrimmage, sizing up the play before launching. He kept his eyes forward, identifying the roll-out, play-action Illinois was attempting to execute. The redshirt freshman linebacker then bolted, darting toward Illinois quarterback Matt Robinson, grasping his right arm and holding tight.

Moments later, he jarred the MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily ball loose, as the convulsion MIKE linebacker Cameron McGrone has stepped into Devin Bush’s role. of Robinson’s body met the force of McGrone’s strength. up for some mistakes of in the Wisconsin game, were The ball came free. Fifth- the linebackers, but we’ve invaluable to him. Any work year senior linebacker Jordan grown as a linebacker room you get as a young guy, in terms Glasgow fell on it. In doing so, as individuals,” Glasgow said of developing confidence, it’s the defense put to rest any hints before the season. “I feel that huge. He’s done a great job with of an upset bid on Saturday — we’ll be able to cover each other. it, he’s taken a step each week. and McGrone added another We might not have a top-10 pick From camp on, I think he’s just chapter to his rapidly-evolving in the linebacker room now, but gotten progressively better and breakout campaign. that doesn’t mean that we can’t better, incrementally.”

What Campanile describes — “They didn’t really want be as effective as linebackers, a kind of measured, incremental to play with us anymore,” like, in total.

“As everyone improves, I feel rise — might well be true. But McGrone said confidently after the game. “I had an that we’ll be just as good as we what’s been on display on the field for McGrone has been opportunity, and I had to take were last year.”

Even that confidence, meteoric. it.

Mere weeks ago, he was “I saw the opportunity to though, did not promise a likesecond on make a big play. So, I had to for for-like replica of Bush. No comfortably one assumes that mantle four the depth chart at MIKE my team.”

It was the kind of play games into a career, no matter linebacker, with Josh Ross the Michigan fans have come how impressive, but McGrone heir apparent to Bush’s throne. to expect from their MIKE has shown glimpses of a similar Ross, in fairness, had filled in admirably before he was linebacker in recent years. skillset.

And with 2.5 sacks and 3.5 sidelined with an undisclosed Devin Bush, now flirting with NFL stardom himself, made tackles for loss, there’s reason injury less than a month ago. those plays at Michigan on a to believe he’s learning how Now there’s a real question as near-weekly basis, when his to translate that talent into to whether Ross will reassume that starting spot. whirring sideline-to-sideline on-field production.

“That’s a good problem to “You can have a good idea speed and uncanny instincts landed him among Michigan’s of when guys are seeing it, have,” Campanile said. “I think best ever. When Bush left, because like I said, your eyes we’re back to the issue — it’s not charting off to millions of control the function of your an issue, it’s a great situation — dollars as a top-10 NFL draft body,” said linebackers coach in the summer. We had had that pick, it was reasonable to Anthony Campanile. “They situation in the summer. ‘Hey, expect a degree of drop-off at tell your feet what to do. When this guy we can (win) with on guys’ feet start playing fast, you Saturday. We can win with that the position.

Cerebral linebackers with got a pretty good idea as a coach guy on Saturday. We can win running back-speed don’t that this guy is taking a step with that guy on Saturday.’

“Never a bad thing to have a just grow on trees. Or so the and he’s kinda entering another bunch of guys that can help you level. coaching staff thought.

“I think the reps he got, even win on Saturday.” “(Bush) was able to cover

Seniors leaving stamp on program KENT SCHWARTZ Daily Sports Writer

It’s hard to replace 1,000 points, a two-year starter and “Miss Hustle.” It’s even harder to replace 2,000 points, a fouryear starter and the pacemaker of your team. Nicole Munger and Hallie Thome were the heart of the Michigan women’s basketball team, on the court and off it. They graduated last year – leaving the Wolverines needing a transplant.

But where some teams have trouble finding new leaders, KEEMYA ESMAEL/Daily there was no sign of such Senior guard Akienreh Johnson has emerged as a leader for the Wolverines. problems in Crisler Center at Wednesday’s media day. Senior class from last season now has though, building a team goes forward Kayla Robbins and a year of experience under its beyond the court. When senior guard Akienreh Johnson belt. Three players have played freshman center Izabel Varejão have filled the gaps and made internationally, and Michigan arrived at her dorm, without is coming off two straight trips her family, the team made time the team their own.

“I think sometimes the to the NCAA Tournament after for her. They welcomed and younger kids took a kind of going five without a ticket to the supported her, grabbing dinner and ice cream to make her feel backseat,” said Michigan coach dance.

The expectations are higher; at home.

Kim Barnes Arico. “Kind of just “They’ve done a really good listened to (Thome) said this or the next steps are steeper. To (Munger) said this, we’re just climb them, the Wolverines job of helping us with anything,” going to follow what they say need to grow over the course said freshman guard Maddie because they know best. Now, of the season by having leaders Nolan. “Not even basketballI feel like, the team really feels empower wise, if we who like, each individual person can players needed advice contribute to the success of our may not make about school team. Whether that’s from a an immediate or stuff around basketball perspective or that’s impact. campus they’ve “(Johnson from a voice.” done a really Robbins) With the new season, Johnson and good job of and Robbins are each bringing opened (it) up integrating us everyone their unique perspectives to so into a team.” the team. Neither of them have feels like they Added been regular starters for a whole have a voice,” Robbins: “Me Arico season in their college careers Barnes and (Johnson), “Now – Johnson handicapped by said. we’ve had a injuries, Robbins coming off the when you come in there’s just an different journey than everyone bench. The pair nevertheless energy of everybody’s looking on the team and we’ve been the used their experience to reach around, everybody’s ready to go. freshmen who came in and don’t out and make every member feel And that’s something different really know what to say or what we haven’t had and I think that’s to do so we really just opened valued.

“What I’m trying to do is something the kids really like as it up for the team. If somebody sit back and listen,” Johnson they all feel they can contribute has a problem or somebody has a said. “When I was a freshman, to our success.” suggestion, they can always just Added freshman guard bring it up. It’s never an issue.”

I didn’t really have a voice because I didn’t think I could Michelle Sidor: “If they see Johnson and Robbins speak up. I didn’t think there you getting down on yourself, probably won’t end up as was a place for me to speak up. if I’m having a bad practice or Michigan’s leading scorers.

But I always make sure that this something, they’re definitely They may not be the type of there to, especially (Johnson), players that dominate a game, year, everything is a debate.”

The two seniors are taking to lift you up and be like ‘It’s but they’re already making the mantle of what is probably alright, you got the next play, their mark on the team before the most talented Wolverine keep your head up.’ I think that’s the season has even started: team under Barnes Arico. The huge.” a culture that prides itself on For Johnson and Robbins, inclusivity. coach’s 12th-ranked recruiting

If someone has a problem ... they can always bring it up.

10/17/19

10/17/19

2B — Thursday, October 17, 2019

b-side

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

B-SIDE: LEAD

Activism: Building bridges against the climate crisis MARGARET SHERIDAN Daily Style Editor

Climate change is real and it’s happening now. From fossil fuel emissions and greenhouse gases, to the growing ecological footprints of individuals all across the country, our earth is in a state of crisis. These are only a few layers to the broader crisis we are facing while simultaneously waiting for government officials to implement some form of policy to change this broken system. As the 2020 election moves closer each day, individuals and candidates are doing everything in their power to draw attention to this issue. Artists are no exception.

The climate crisis is abstract and intimidating. It can be confusing to understand exactly what it entails when the effects of climate change are sometimes hidden, or have been entrenched in our societal norms for so long, we forgot they were even there. As activists and community members alike are taking to the streets, urging for change, so are artists. Their work serves as an integral visual reminder of what is at stake, and in many cases, bridges the gap between different communities, identities and locations across the country. Artist and activist Ellen Rutt and activist Joseph Trumpey, a University professor, are on the frontlines of this movement in Michigan, working alongside their communities in Detroit and Ann Arbor to raise awareness about this crisis, unifying individuals of all identities and reminding us that in this fight, we are all connected and must urge for policy change together.

Detroit based artist Ellen Ruttis often known first for her massive, abstract murals. With murals located in Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Detroit and beyond, Rutt explains how her role as a muralist came to be and how it has guided her path into other, more environmentally driven projects.

“I definitely think that murals are how I branded myself. And now, I’m shifting away from that, or shifting into more political murals or saying no to murals that don’t align with the projects that I really think are important,” Rutt said in an interview with The Daily at her studio in Detroit. Rutt’s work consists of colorful, abstract paintings of all sizes — her murals being the largest — and are often for clients. Rutt mentions her murals as the more traditional side of her practice, a way to sustain herself and her studio.

“Do I always want to do commercial murals? What are the conversations I want to have? Moving forward … it’s figuring out how to do (murals) with as much integrity as possible,” Rutt said. With murals as her tool for supporting her more contextual collections of paintings, Rutt has always been an advocate for the environment, a theme that has driven her most recent collection of paintings. “(The environment) was definitely always part of my life … it was just after the IPCC report came out at the end of 2018 that I think kicked every part of me into gear because it put a very tangible time frame (on) the number — we have 12 years. It felt like all of a sudden all of these things that were sort of ambiguously in the future had a timeline. It was at that moment that everything inside of me switched,” Rutt said.

This environmental inf luence shows through in Rutt’s most recent collection of paintings titled “This Must be the Place.” Each painting includes found textures existing in conversation with Rutt’s well known, bright, abstract shapes.

“I haven’t always done this, but I would go outside and do rubbings and gather textures and find various ways to use the landscape for the backdrop of my paintings. That shows up in a number of ways, from very linear to more abstract and loose,” Rutt said. She explained that bringing these textures into other spaces creates a very specific experience, one viewers can exist within. Rutt described how this process was formed from her experience with murals. As she created each part of the collection, she asked questions about the way that spaces create experiences and how our culture can interact with the spaces depicted in her paintings. It is these questions that build the visuals and theme of “This Must be the Place,” a collection created in direct response to the climate crisis.

“These (paintings) were my way of gathering evidence and capturing aspects of places that may not always be around or that will inevitably change. I think there is also something deeply intimate about not just looking at something and drawing, but setting (the canvas) on the wall and really physically being on the ground or in a space. That also really reconnected me with my commitment to what it means to participate in a conversation about climate change,” Rutt said. She explained that this body of work pulls textures from all around the world, bringing textures of all environments to one gallery space for audiences to interpret.

“I can’t make work outside, in this way, and not say it exists within the context of climate change. We have to deal with that … now,” Rutt said.

The textures present in “This Must be the Place” started at a

residency Rutt completed in New York, and more textures were pulled from locations all across the United States during a road trip to Los Angeles.

Rutt explained that while the message of this collection may not immediately emerge, it is the selection of these locations and the individuals she meets at each location that build their context and bring her closer to a fight against climate change.

“In my current juncture, I’m not an energ y expert, and I’m not a policy expert. What I do have access to are forms of culture. So what I’m most interested in at this moment, which will eventually evolve, is learning enough about these other (places) to funnel the information I learn to all the people who pay attention to my work, and also connect with people who are on the front lines, who are people of color, who are marginalized communities to also say, ‘Where are you needing the most support, how can we envision this just transition, how can I be an ally?’” With this notion, Rutt explained her personal and artistic ties to how this body of work especially impacts policy and climate reform.

“I don’t know that my particular work will inspire policymakers to act differently. I think it’s the way that (these paintings) are made and the reason for them being born. It’s all the auxiliary things outside of the paintings which is starting to ask, where should I do the place paintings, and why do them there? Who do I meet while I’m there? The more people talk about it, the more it just becomes known and will ultimately elevate the activism

COURTESY OF JOSEPH TRUMPEY

have shaped the action we are aiming to take today, Trumpey mentioned that the climate crisis is not so black and white.

“I think it was easier to get people motivated back then because rivers were on fire; that’s a very dramatic thing that doesn’t take much paying attention to notice. People look at that and go, ‘Oh crap … bad news, we need to fix that right?’ And now it’s a lot more subtle. Look, it’s a beautiful day, but up there in the atmosphere, there are bad greenhouse gases,” Trumpey said.

With this knowledge of the environment, Trumpey’s work is heavily centered around environmentally conscious building and reducing the sizes of footprints that exist within the built environment. A master of strawbale building, Trumpey has educated students in this strateg y at the University’s botanical gardens and lives in astrawbale homethat he built with his wife and family.

“We live off the grid and we do not purchase meat or eggs. We grow half of our food and we make all of our electricity.

So once you’re paying attention in those sort of ways you understand that there’s such a thing as good pork versus bad pork, and there’s good electricity versus bad electricity.”

Trumpey noted that while he pays attention to his footprint in this way, other larger groups of individuals (he offered the University population as an example) do not.

“This works for me and it works for subsets of folks, hopefully we can get it to work for decision makers and policy makers because if you look at U-M, we can’t expect 90,000 people to pay attention to their electricity this way. If we got the decision makers to think about it like, ‘Oh crap.

There really is bad electricity,’ and that’s called the grid,” Trumpey said.

Trumpey explained that the grid is heavily based on fossil fuels and large areas of development, like the University, are built with this type of environmentally harmful electrical system. Strawbale buildings combat this, while simultaneously building connections among those who are ready to make these changes in the built environment.

“You’ve got to build those relationships and trust to be able to do something that’s technically against the rules. ‘Strawbale buildings are technically illegal in the state of Michigan.’ So how do you get somebody to be able to trust you enough to do something illegal, and you’re not doing it in the shadows like to rebel? You’re doing it in full daylight to get people to pay attention differently,” Trumpey said.

It is this notion that makes Trumpey’s work such a strong parallel to Ellen Rutt’s environmentally themed paintings.

Both individuals are using their knowledge and depictions of environmental consciousness to invite a broader audience to learn from their techniques and urging them to follow their lead.

Trumpey also heads an effort to build a sustainable campus farmfor students at the University, made entirely out of straw.

“I think that’s what the strawbale at the farm is all about.

It’s about building a community, but it’s also about pushing the edge out so that people could go, ‘Oh, look, yeah, that’s cool.’ I understand the mission of that, it’s tangible, it’s part of a bigger thing. (Strawbale campus farms) gets a lot of attention and people are there, they’re drawn to it, because it’s beautiful and has texture. It was built by humans that they know, and it came from the land,” Trumpey said.

Trumpey explained that this is the type of thought we need to approach green buildings with. He argues that we need to focus on the bigger picture instead of aestheticized debates that are currently circulating the climate crisis.

“Efficient building is cool, it’s needed, but it won’t fix everything. We get distracted by the scale of things, like the plastic straw debate. There’s stupid stuff we get lost on. My house and my practice doesn’t have a significant effect on the footprint of Southeastern Michigan or my township because it’s just me and my family right now, but I think you punch outside your weight class, because it draws a lot of attention and makes people think,” Trumpey said.

The work of both Ellen Rutt and Joseph Trumpey is unifying members of Ann Arbor and Detroit communities. By starting a conversation through abstract art and green building, Rutt and Trumpey are making alternatives to our broken system accessible to the masses. As they open these conversations and engage with wider audiences through their work, a wider understanding of the need for environmental policy reform becomes even more present. While this work is not directly building new policy, through its inclusivity and ability to spark conversation, the informed viewers of Rutt’s art and Trumpey’s buildings can come away with the realization that in order to make environmentally conscious decisions, we must urge for policy reform to make them more feasible.

“How do we change the system so that it’s not about making smart or ‘right’ choices, it’s so that the options available are significantly better? How can we stand by our morals, work to get better, then just commit to understanding we’re interwoven?

Let’s fight to break apart this system of reliance on fossil fuels,” Rutt said.

By starting a conversation through abstract art and green building, Rutt and Trumpey are making alternatives to our broken systems accessible to the masses. As they open these conversations and engage with wider audiences through their work, a wider understanding of the need for environmental policy reform becomes even more present.

to a degree where I hope policy makers are like, ‘Wow, this is serious,’” Rutt said.

Rutt’s work invites us to understand that we are all connected to the spaces we inhabit. Rutt argues that it is in these overlaps of our environments where viewers can see how integral it is to protect these spaces, as they are already changing.

“We have to first see (climate change) as a huge problem and see the alternatives not as something to be overwhelmed by — or maybe to be overwhelmed by — but to commit to anyway, because it actually could benefit so many people in ways that we can’t even imagine yet. It’s not as much an act of sacrificing as it is an act of liberation, making it as joyous and empowering as possible to change our whole view on the value system that we currently have,” Rutt said.

A parallel to Ellen Rutt’s environmentally driven abstract paintings and murals is Professor Joseph Trumpey. An educator at the University’s Stamps School of Art & Design and the School of Natural Resources & Environment, Trumpey said in an interview with The Daily that “making beautiful stuff to change the world,” is a gig for him. Similar to Rutt’s work, his emphasis and extensive knowledge of green building focuses on connection and inspiring broader communities to take action in the fight against climate change.

“I think there’s a natural fit for creative work to be able to tell unique stories,” Trumpey said. “Personally I was an avid boy scout as a kid in the ’70s, so my time was spent learning about the Big Woods and how to camp and to do things, but it was also … how to clean up.”

Trumpey said environmental issues impacted society early on, and now they have lasting effects on us today.

“For the last fifty years, the environment has been a pressing issue in the mindset of North Americans. Now we’re on the rebirth of the first Earth Day and we’re on the anniversary of the Cuyahoga River catching on fire. All of that set into motion a lot of activism,” Trumpey said. While these COURTESY OF JOSEPH TRUMPEY early forms of activism

b-side

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Thursday, October 17, 2019 — 3B

B-SIDE: STYLE NOTEBOOK

B-SIDE: MUSIC NOTEBOOK

Making a definitive case Mediocrity isn’t awareness for sustainable fashion JIM WILSON

Daily Arts Writer

ISABELLE HASSLUND

Daily Community Culture Editor

Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg has been making big headlines with her environmental activism, even making the cover of Time Magazine. Thunberg looks stunning on the cover, a green and ruffled dress falling perfectly over her small frame, making her look more mature than her usual hoodie and jeans ensemble — somebody to be taken seriously.

I was shocked to see where Time got this beautiful garment. The photographer, Hellen van Meene, simply said she found it in an outlet store in Copenhagen, Denmark. While I was not expecting Thunberg to make an appearance in a piece from the latest Versace Spring/ Summer 2020 collection — although the blue-green foliage accents would have probably had a similar earthy vibe — I had thought that if she were to participate in any sort of fashion statement, it would be a plea for a more sustainable fashion industry.

Fashion is one of the largest major polluting industries in theworld. So why don’t we include fashion in the conversation on climate change? Perhaps because there does not seem to be enough research or data to beconvincingto some? Or perhaps because fashion is so personal — we literally carry it on our backs every single day.

But with the rise of designers like Stella McCartney, the poster woman for sustainable fashion, and Gabriela Hearst, the first designer to put on a carbon neutral fashion show, the new and upcoming trend in fashion is sustainability.

Furthermore, MUD Jeans, a Netherlands denim brand and certified B-corporation (a professional certification for sustainable forprofits), is one of many fashion companies that dedicate their business model to environmental consciousness. MUD’s vision is impactful in consideration of how denim is a large part of the fashion industry. The production of denim is also a major polluter — from the growing of cotton to the dying of the fabric and shipping of clothing.

“We’ve lost the true cost of a pair of jeans or a jacket. We don’t calculate the real cost of the price of a clothing item into the shops,” CEO of MUD Jeans Bert van Son said in an interview with The Daily. “We want to make money, but at no volatile cost to humanity or to the planet.”

The well-known documentary “The True Cost” highlights this major shift from making clothing on sewing machines in your own home to fast fashion. Fast fashion, made popular by stores like Zara and Forever 21, seemed like an intoxicating fantasy to fashion companies.

In this increasingly connected world, where the speed of producing and buying products is becoming more important, how do we quickly produce clothing that is readily accessible to the public?

The answer from companies like Zara was to exploit laborers in developing countries and produce clothes using unsustainable practices.

This included using cheaper, toxic dye, throwing out instead of recycling water and buying fabric crops, such as cotton, that are full of pesticides. The subsequent expansion of the fashion industries — producing clothes in China, sourcing cotton from India, shipping finished products to the United States — has increased our individual carbon footprints.

“We’ve seen all the beautiful sides of the fashion industry and we’ve made it into throwaway, one-wear, low-quality things.

What a shame,” van Son said.

Companies like van Son’s came up with solutions to the environmental and humanitarian crises made by fast fashion. His solution was to look at every step of making a pair of jeans and to improve it by finding ways to lower its environmental impact.

“24 billion kilos of cotton are grown every year. If we would all use 40 percent recycled cotton, it’s fantastic for the planet,” van Son explained. MUD Jeans does everything from using post-consumer cotton in their products to localizing the sourcing and shipping of their products to Europe to decrease their carbon footprint.

With the rise of designers like Stella McCartney, the posterwoman for sustainable fashion, and Gabriela Hearst, the first designer to put on a carbon neutral fashion show, the new and upcoming trend in fashion is sustainability.

“For every step of making jeans, we try to do something else. But that’s not good enough,” van Son explained. MUD Jeans has its customers actively participate in making the company sustainable. You can either ship an old pair of jeans to MUD when you buy a new pair from them, or lease a new pair of jeans for a year or so. When the latest and newest jean trend comes onto the scene, customers can ship MUD their leased pair of jeans to exchange for the newest style.

However, the choice to be a more sustainable fashion company comes with a major tradeoff.

“The margin we make is lower than all of my competitors,” van Son said. For every step, from recycling water used in the process of making fabric to using post-consumer cotton, the company needs to invest more money.

This means that their clothing becomes more expensive and the business has to be careful to make sure they have enough money to pay their workers, rent out their office spaces and keep making a profit.

For companies that want to become more sustainable, this can be even more difficult.

Convincing shareholders to make changes in order to become more environmentally friendly at a financial loss is no simple task.

So where does the final responsibility to sustainable fashion lie?

“You need three parties. You need companies doing this, the consumer starting to get more conscious, and you also need the government to install rules to help companies like ours to be more interesting,” van Son explained. “We can only do this with a team of high motivated people that are going for the same cause” There are many solutions I can offer to those who feel helpless in this major issues.

Try apps such as Good on You that evaluate and lay out the environmental impact of clothing companies.

Do research. Research what your favorite clothing brands are doing to minimize their environmental impact.

Money speaks. Put money toward companies whose values align with yours. Your individual dollar makes a difference because others will see and also want to make a difference.

Lastly, vote. Vote for representatives, senators, mayors, governors and presidents who care about changing climate change. Call up your local government office and ask them if they’ve ever considered creating policies to support sustainable fashion practices in major companies. If they haven’t, make them think about it and act accordingly. If it matters to you, it should matter to our government officials.

COURTESY OF MUD JEANS

In 2018, indie weirdos Animal Collective decided to collaborate with art-science duo Coral Morphologic in order to celebrate the International Year of the Reef, an initiative to protect coral reefs across the globe. The result of the collaboration was Tangerine Reef, an audiovisual project in which all the members of Animal Collective except Panda Bear made the music (obviously) and the members of Coral Morphologic created a film that attempted to make the coral human-like, and thus more relatable to people.

Tangerine Reef wasn’t exactly impactful, at least in terms of awareness raised. Animal Collective did not include any sort of environmental message in their music. Hell, I don’t think they even bothered to mention coral in any of the songs.

Instead, they created background music intended to put focus on Coral Morphologic’s work, which made a successful attempt at presenting coral in a way that proves it is a living, functioning organism and not just a zany-looking mineral deposit laying around on the bottom of the ocean. This is all well and good, but, unfortunately, not much came of this collaboration.

The audio aspect of the collaboration far overshadowed the visual aspect, which was a shame because the work Coral Morphologic did was groundbreaking and beautiful, and Animal Collective’s work was hypnotically numbing.

Perhaps fairly, Animal Collective received a majority of the press, and any mention of Coral Morphologic and International Year of the Reef was nothing more than a quick aside. What’s more, most individuals ended up only listening to Animal Collective’s contribution in full without watching

the accompanying film. Sure, Animal Collective pledged to donate a portion of Tangerine Reef’s proceeds to coral reef conservation efforts from the Ocean Foundation, Project Coral and Oceana, but when one aspect of the project receives all the press (neutral to negative press at that) it’s hard to feel good about projects like these.

Animal Collective, despite their intentions, did the bare minimum to be a part of this project.

They merely made another album, a mediocre one, and sent it to Coral Morphologic for them to figure out how to implement. With the AC name attached, the project was sure to get press, but Animal Collective’s lack of effort drove audiences away, many unaware of Coral Morphologic’s contribution. Had the music been more captivating and its subject matter more pertinent, perhaps Tangerine Reef would have raised some serious awareness, but sadly, that isn’t the case.

The project was unsuccessful, and Animal Collective is to blame. The bottom line is, if a mixed media project like this is to be successful and spread a message, both sides need to make sure they adequately work to spread that message.

Learn from Animal Collective’s mistake; it could do a lot to help our planet.

If a project like this were to be done again, perhaps the artists should release only the joint collaboration, rather than the collaboration and each individual contribution. That way, the entire project has to be experienced. In the case of Tangerine Reef, it would have been more effective to release in this manner. Coral Morphologic’s videography and Animal Collective’s music would be experienced in the way the artists and intended, and audiences would see that reefs are living and functioning. And maybe, just maybe, it would call attention to our poor treatment of reefs and the need for restoration and, at the very least, conservation.

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B-SIDE: COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

On decolonizing the planet TRINA PAL

Senior Arts Editor

I am not an Indigenous person, nor am I First Nations. I acknowledge that I am writing this piece based solely on research and travel and do not represent the voices of Indigenous people across the world. However, I think it’s important that we listen to the experience and wisdom of Indigenous people in tackling an issue as large as climate change. As a nation, we have a lot to learn about our relationship with our surroundings.

This past summer, I stopped by the Abbe Museum nestled in the middle of Bar Harbor, the largest town on Mount Desert Island, Maine.

Mount Desert Island is more famously known for Acadia National Park, where I had spent the last three days hiking and exploring. Equally as important as national parks is the history of its land: Who originally inhabited this area of earth, and what are their stories? With this mindset, I stopped by the Abbe Museum on our last day in Bar Harbor, and a gentle, sloping cream-colored building with olive green trimmings welcomed me inside.

The Abbe Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate since 2013, is in collaboration with the Wabanaki, the People of the Dawn. The Wabanaki Confederacy includes the Abenaki, Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Nations, all of whom have inhabited what is now known as Maine and Southeastern Canada for generations.

The Wabanaki are known as the People of the Dawn due to their location in Turtle Island (now known as North America); they are the first people to see the sunrise over Turtle Island, and thus the first to see the dawn.

Visiting the Abbe Museum made me rethink my environmental education thus far. I’d only learned about white, eurocentric environmental pioneers in middle and high school; names like Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt may sound familiar to you. But what about Indigenous pioneers, who have lived in harmony with the environment for centuries to a much greater extent than settlers ever have?

This is all part of a larger process of decolonizing environmental history and climate change, which, among other goals, includes understanding that Western ways of environmental thinking and teaching often overshadow perspectives of Indigenous people. Indigenous people around the world are protecting forests and their biodiversity,

which sequesters carbon and protects natural resources. Indigenous people can teach us how to live sustainably through their agricultural practices, having depended on the environment their whole lives. Indigenous people are protesting against large oil companies and deforestation, recognizing that these practices contribute to increased worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

We can all learn from Indigenous perspectives on our climate crisis, and the Abbe Museum is no exception. The exhibit “wolankeyutomon: Take Care of Everything” focused on the conservation of sea life and emphasized the Wabanaki’s relationship with whales and other maritime creatures. The whale of Maine appears in Wabanaki stories as Bootup, whose back allowed for travel across the Western Atlantic, waters that are sacred to the Wabanaki. Whales have been poached and harpooned by humans for many years. Recently an equally alarming problem has come to light: the discovery of whales washed to shore with stomachs full of plastic products.

There was a painting at the museum that immediately caught my eye when I stepped into the exhibit, and for good reason. There are very few ways to misinterpret the message conveyed: Single-use plastics are threatening our marine biodiversity, including whales, one of the most ancient species on this earth. The Ziploc bag that you casually toss in the trash, the plastic fork that is thrown away instead of reused, the plastic bag that you insist is more convenient than a reusable one: All of this contributes to the problem.

Too often, I’ve come across the perspective that climate change can only be solved by large corporations changing their methods of production. Yes, a huge part of the problem lies with big oil and political lobbying. But another part lies with our f lawed understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to help the environment. Grassroots change is hard, but it can spread like wildfire if you allow it to.

Undoubtedly, Indigenous people are welcome to these changing habits and have a breadth of knowledge to contribute to our understanding of the environment. A small panel tucked in the back of the Abbe Museum allowed visitors to input their personal commitments to help the environment on an iPad with the responses being projected continually on a large screen above. There’s more to this climate crisis than we think and spreading information from different cultures and ways of life is critical to our relationship with this planet.

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4B —Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN

B-SIDE: TV NOTEBOOK

The almost-masterpiece that is ‘The Rose Tattoo’ SAMMY SUSSMAN

Daily Community Culture Columnist

I read Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” in 10th grade English class. Ever since then, I’ve been a fan of his work. In particular, I love his concept of a “memory play,” the idea of a play taking place entirely in the mind of a character and thus being warped by the distortions, diminutions and exaggerations we all experience in our memories. Williams himself states at the beginning of the play that “the scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic … It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.”

“The Glass Menagerie” takes place in the mind of the main character, Tom, as he tries to find a suitor for his introverted sister, Laura, at the urging of his mother, Amanda.

Tom eventually invites his friend, Jim, to come to their home to meet Laura. After Jim meets Laura, he claims that he is already engaged.

Amanda angrily blames Tom for not having already known this. In the end, Tom leaves his sister and mother, determined to never return.

As his memories of the two of them end, Tom says goodbye to his mother and sister and asks his sister to blow out the candle on the memory play.

Given how essential the memoryinduced distortion of narrative is to this play, I’ve always assumed this concept would carry through Williams’s other works. I’d assumed this, along with many other staples of Modernist theater, would carry through any Williams play being performed today.

So this past weekend, when I had the privilege of seeing the Roundabout Theatre’s new production of Tenessee Williams’s “The Rose Tattoo,” I assumed I would see the same narrative-distorting concepts come into play.

Williams wrote “The Rose Tattoo” in 1951, after all, shortly after the success of “The Glass Menagerie” in 1944. How could he not be influenced by the ground-breaking success of this memory play concept while he worked on “The Rose Tattoo”?

But to my great surprise, “The Rose Tattoo” is a simple, if quirky, romantic comedy. It follows main character Serafina Delle Rosa as her husband passes away, her daughter grows up, and she learns to love again. It’s almost a dark comedy: Right when Serafina is ready to love again, she meets a man with the body of her husband but the head of “a clown.” As she grows to love him, the audience cannot help but note his many faults.

My predisposition towards unreliable narrative in this play proved to be entirely unfounded. If anything, the narrator/point of view of this play is so loosely defined as to be entirely negligible. But because of my experience with “The Glass Menagerie,” I found myself assuming throughout the show that the narrative I was witnessing was not accurate. At one point, as Serafina’s daughter cuts her wrist right before she goes on a date with her new love, I all but assumed that she was about to pass away — that Serafina’s love for her daughter had blinded her (as the narrator of the play) to the reality of her

daughter’s feelings.

As the play began to conclude, I couldn’t help but allow the tragic ending of “The Glass Menagerie” to keep me constantly on edge — just as Tom’s relationships to his family fall apart, I all but assumed that Serafina’s would fall apart as well. Serafina’s withdrawal from the world, after all, is eerily similar to both Laura and Amanda’s withdrawal. I couldn’t see how this play could end with such a simple, happy conclusion given the incredibly somber ending of “The Glass Menagerie.”

Oddly enough, this wasn’t the first time that my knowledge of an artist tainted my perception of their work. As a young composer back in high school, I’d been obsessed with Beethoven’s “Große Fuge,” his thorny, dissonant, (seemingly) über-avant-garde late work. For those unfamiliar with the piece, it’s a blistering 15-minute trek through Schoenbergesque atonality and rhythmic, harmonic and melodic dissonances.

As a high school composer, and as I began branching out to other Beethoven string quartets, I remember being constantly affected by the rhythmic and harmonic dissonances that I’d learned to expect in the “Große Fuge” — I’d study early Beethoven works that were quite dissonant for the classical era he lived in at the time, but would barely notice the structural dissonances.

I’d been preconditioned, almost, to expect all of Beethoven’s music to reach the height of his quasi-Serialist masterpiece, and I was unphased by anything less dissonant.

While Beethoven’s incredible artistic output allows for many separate interpretations and listening mindsets — notice that my obsession with the “Große Fuge” merely tainted my perception of his string quartets, not his greater catalogue of compositions — Williams’s comparably slim output leaves little room for this. “The Rose Tattoo” is a perfectly good play, after all, but given Williams’s other famous plays, it’s frequently neglected.

Perhaps minor, less successful artists are frequently affected by the fame and success of their magnum opuses. Perhaps the “one hit wonder” concept in popular music transfers to other genres of the performing arts.

Almost as soon as I posited this, I saw the inherent flaws. Unlike popular music, which has only recently become a topic of historical study, other performing artforms have years of scholarly study preventing this hierarchical abandonment from taking place — I wouldn’t be surprised if a scholar or two have founded their entire careers on the study of Williams’s entire catalogue, from “The Glass Menagerie” to “The Rose Tattoo.”

What I have learned, however, is that it can sometimes be just as interesting to study an artist’s minor works as it is to study their major works. In the case of Williams, for example, I learned far more from the discrepancies between this work and his other more popular works than I did from any of these successful works themselves. Perhaps our interests should lie not in an artist’s success but in their other attempts at reaching such success. Perhaps it is not the masterpiece but the almost-masterpiece, the near-masterpiece, that is most deserving of our critical thought.

I couldn’t see how this play could end with such a simple, happy conclusion given the incredibly somber ending of “The Glass Menagerie.”

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Nervous about the end?

SAMANTHA DELLA FERA Senior Arts Editor

In the third episode of the second season of HBO’s hit suburban drama “Big Little Lies,” a second grade teacher is shown giving facts to his students about climate change. “How many gallons of water does it take to make a single sausage?” he asks. His obedient congregation responds: “A thousand.” “That’s right,” he continues, “and how many showers does that add up to?” Again, the children respond: “Fifty.”

Following this chorus, a young girl is shown fainting, her frilled shoes flying up into the air.

For those who watch the show, you will recognize this as the moment Amabella (Ivy George, “Girl Meets World”), the daughter of the vivacious, headstrong Renata (Laura Dern, “F is for Family”) passes out from a panic attack — a panic attack induced by her teacher’s lessons on climate change.

Renata, of course, is never one to take things lightly, and goes strutting down to the principal’s office with an aura of royalty only a blazer-clad Laura Dern can convey. After unloading on the forlorn principal, she leaves us with pure poetry: “I will be rich again. I will rise up. I will buy a … polar bear for every kid in this school. Then I’ll squish you like the bug you are.”

Besides this being an excellent representation of the wealthy’s response to the threat of climate change, this scene also opened up discussion for a topic that is becoming more and more relevant: climate anxiety.

As the peril to our world at the hands of our changing climate increases and our government officials look the other way, anxiety about the end of the world is rampant. It’s gotten so bad that the American Psychological Association released a 69-page guide for mental health care providers on how to help patients cope with “eco-anxiety.” There are support networks dedicated to helping people deal with their climate anxiety, and many people have sworn off having children due to concern for how life will be for coming generations.

And why shouldn’t people be worried? Every day the new headlines pop up: “Air pollution is linked to miscarriages,” “250,000 deaths from climate change is a ‘conservative estimate,’” “Trump Administration weakens Endangered Species Act.” The future of our world is getting bleaker and bleaker, and anxiety isn’t just coming from this fact. The changing climate is leading to wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and other repeated natural disasters that threaten the lives and stability of people across the globe. If the afflicted individuals weren’t already suffering from some sort of climate-induced anxiety, the trauma and loss they endure as a result of climate change may lead to PTSD, depression and anxiety about an impending natural disaster.

Yeah, this is all really depressing. If I was a second grader learning about this I probably would have fainted, too. Because truly, what can we do?

Speaking as someone who struggles with anxiety, I understand that this distress stems from a lack of control. The climate is changing — and? Even with all of the recycling, veganism and plastic bans in the world, nothing will truly be done about climate change until the government and corporations change the way they fundamentally run. We have less than 50 years until our world is sure to become inhabitable, and our elected officials are spending their time making fun of a 16-year-old girl doing her best to save the planet.

The sad truth about climate change is that it’s here and it’s getting worse. No matter how many painted signs or sustainable t-shirts you wear, nothing will stop it except systemic change. Not even Laura Dern, with all of her power, might and enormous wealth can stop it. The only thing we can do is take all of the anger and anxiety and channel it into something productive. Call your representatives, show up to the polls, boycott polluting companies, try to cut down on meat consumption, stop buying single-use plastics. If the older generations won’t care for a world they won’t be around for, shut them down and vote them out. And in 20 or 30 years — polar bears for everyone.

B-SIDE: FILM NOTEBOOK

Saved by ‘First Reformed’ ELISE GODFRYD Daily Arts Writer

Will God forgive us? It’s a question that’s asked time and time again throughout Paul Schrader’s film “First Reformed.” It’s a question I find myself asking whenever I read yet another headline announcing the death of a species, the melting of a glacier or the failure of another climate agreement. Like most humans, especially young humans with (hopefully) many more years on this planet, I am afraid for my future.

I am afraid of rising temperatures and everything they are expected to bring with them: crop failures, climate refugees, more extreme weather, more pain, more suffering. My fear grows stronger every day, and I still don’t quite know how to deal with it.

The characters in “First Reformed” are afraid, too.

The entire film is drenched in a despair that many of us feel to the core — guilt about what we have done, anxiety about what is going to happen next. Two men in particular feel it most acutely: Ethan Hawke (“Before Midnight”) as Reverend Toller, a wellmeaning but tormented pastor and Philip Ettinger (“Indignation”) as Michael, a soon-to-be father obsessed with the coming end of the world.

Toller lets his despair about both climate change and the death of his son eat him alive, partaking in binge drinking he knows might just kill him. He is a dying man on a dying planet and he hardly cares enough to save himself. Michael, though physically healthy compared to Toller, is grieved by the new life carried by his wife Mary (Amanda Seyfried, “Mamma Mia!”). At one point he asks Toller, “But how can you sanction bringing a girl … a child full of hope and naive belief into a world … when that little girl grows to be a young woman and looks you in the eyes and says, ‘You knew all along, didn’t you?’”

Both Toller and Michael are overwhelmed by this despair — it’s so easy to let it overwhelm you. In the

face of the megacorporations and billionaires who run our world, it’s natural to feel small, to feel helpless in saving the earth. The power of these feelings is only amplified when we convince ourselves that these feelings are ours alone, something we must confront on our own.

For most of “First Reformed,” characters appear detached from each other, physically and emotionally tethered to their own bodies. A profound sense of loneliness pervades the film’s cold, biting New England winter. But there are brief, striking moments of intimacy too, and this intimacy is precisely what brings characters out of their despair. Every interaction between Toller and Mary is electric, and just a touch of their hands inspires a transcendent, psychedelic dream sequence. In this sequence, we see the two soaring over beautiful natural landscapes.

This scenery, though, is soon swapped out for images showing heaps upon heaps of trash, air-polluting factories and other man-made ecological nightmares.

Once these images come to the forefront, Toller and Mary are removed from the picture entirely. Their love and their connection simply cannot exist in that world. We cannot exist in that world, at least not for much longer.

Maybe saving the planet in order to save our lives and the lives of the people we love is selfish. After all, we alone are responsible for climate change and we alone are obligated to fix it; we should feel compelled to do whatever we can to reverse the course the planet is heading toward out of sheer humanity and decency.

But if selfishness is the thing that can ultimately save us from ourselves, I can’t imagine a better, more worthy motivator than love.

Climate change is real and it’s happening right now. More than 97 percent of scientists agree. And we’re running out of time before our descendants no longer have a healthy and habitable earth to live and love on. And that — love — matters. Of course it does.

It matters more than anything.

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Thursday, October 17, 2019 — 5B

B-SIDE: TV NOTEBOOK

B-SIDE: BOOKS NOTEBOOK

ManBearPig: ‘South Park’ ‘Disappearing Earth’ is on and our sweet, fiery planet the planet’s radical edge DYLAN YONO Daily Arts Writer

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, co-creators of “South Park,” never apologize. Even after getting banned in China last week for satirizing Chinese censorship on the episode “Band In China,” the duotweeteda mock apolog y. “We too love money more than freedom and democracy,” the statement reads.

“We good now, China?” (South Park and China are currently not good).

The humor in “South Park” usually falls on a spectrum from woke and relevant to kind of fucked up. Still, the show and its creators always stand by their sometimes-shitty message. But once — and onlyonce, as far as my research shows — did “South Park” go back on their word. In 2018, they reversed their stance on a topic they had once laughed off: climate change.

In the 2006 episode “ManBearPig” where Parker and Stone first took a stance, Al Gore presents to South Park Elementary: “There is something out there which threatens our very existence … I’m talking of course, about ManBearPig. ManBearPig doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done. ManBearPig simply wants to get you.”

The euphemism of a “half-man, half-bear, half-pig” boogie monster speaks to Parker and Stone’s impression of global warming: Climate change is something silly and unrealistic, a childish fear, even an impossibility. The duo doubles down on that impression in show’s 2007 “Imaginationland” arc — ManBearPig appears as a character in Imaginationland, a world full of made-up characters, suggesting climate change is imaginary.

While palpable and perceptible today, especially among the activism of Ann Arbor, this impression of climate change as something absurd wasn’t uncommon in the 2000s. In a 2009 report by Yale University, only 18 percent of Americans were taking action about climate change. Another 33 percent believed in it but did not feel personally threatened by the issue; the remaining 49 percent ranged from f limsy belief to total dismissal.

Today “South Park” is a clear criticism of American culture and politics, but earlier seasons were less satire, more juvenile humor. By the time “ManBearPig” aired in ’06, the show was full-f ledged commentary, and the episode accuses Al Gore of being alarmist and self-serving. It especially mocks “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary chronicling his global warming awareness campaign. The end of the episode makes the show’s position clear when Stan has an angry outburst at Gore: “You just use ManBearPig as a way to get attention for yourself because you’re a loser!”

Twelve years later, “South Park” revisits climate change on season 22’s “Nobody Got Cereal?” and “Time to Get Cereal.” In 2018, it would turn out that the smug Al Gore was right all along, when the two-episode special opened with an attack from a realManBearPig. In a telling scene, a father speaks to his wife while his family enjoys dinner at Red Lobster.

“There’s no scientific proof, no real evidence of a ManBearPig,” he says over a glass of wine.

Just as he begins to explain, ManBearPig itself bursts into the restaurant window. As the father continues to deny ManBearPig’s existence, the monster wreaks havoc in the background, destroying everything in its reach and killing all bystanders. When his wife points to the pandemonium behind him, he simply observes, “OK, ManBearPig is real … what are we gonna do that’s gonna make any difference now, Susan?” The monster devours him just as he begins to blame ManBearPig on China. Parker and Stone’s new target in 2018 is not an alarmist Al Gore, but the delusional climate change denier. In a total f lip of opinion from “South Park,” the climate change denier is depicted as more smug and self-absorbed than Al Gore was twelve years earlier.

The everyday ambivalence toward climate change held by society at large is maybe the most mocked. As fires rage in South Park and citizens scream with terror throughout the town, the community center hosts a presentation titled “When should I start to worry?” One character asks, “I’m pretty sure there’s a ManBearPig and I’m fairly certain that he’s eaten two of my children and destroyed our home. When should I start to worry?” Another character says, “I don’t know if I believe in ManBearPig or not, but I do know that I am open to the idea of starting to worry,” earning proud applause from the audience for his bravery. In a local TV talk show discussion, one character declares, “I don’t think there’s any more room for not considering underestimating the importance of beginning to start the process of mulling over the conceptualization of starting to worry. And the time to do it is very soon.”

Baby boomers are blamed for climate change when Stan confronts his grandpa in the senior home, accusing the older generation of making a deal with ManBearPig. One old lady says, “We thought we’d be dead by now! We didn’t think we’d have to live to see the consequences!”

Stan accuses them of signing his future away, to which his grandpa admits they traded the present joy of cars and ice cream in exchange for ManBearPig’s inevitable return. The show mocks a generation of people who greedily chose to enjoy frivolous luxuries without thought for the future.

In classic “South Park” fashion, the show makes a prediction of sorts. Stan enters negotiations with ManBearPig, who offers to never return so long as the town gives up two things: soy sauce and “Red Dead Redemption 2.” But those luxuries are too much to sacrifice, so in order to keep them, Stan signs away the lives of all children in third world countries, putting off ManBearPig’s return for five more years, during which the carnage will be a thousandfold higher.

This is the most grim assessment made by “South Park”: Action to prevent climate change will only be put off again. Swap soy sauce and “Red Dead Redemption 2” for beef and fossil fuels, and the reality of climate change is depicted perfectly. As I fuel up my car at the gas station and pick up burgers to grill, I wonder if I should start to worry.

The everyday ambivalence toward climate change held by society at large is maybe the most mocked. As fires rage in South Park and citizens scream with terror throughout the town, the community center hosts a presentation titled “When should I start to worry?”

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EMILY YANG

Daily Arts Writer

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to write a novel “about” climate change. Much like dealing with its ramifications in the day-to-day life of one individual, futility starts to set in when confronting such an enormous problem woven so tightly with modern society. It sometimes seems like the more climate change becomes an existential threat, the more difficult it is to talk about. Even as novels are increasingly written in a broad scope, incorporating multiple voices and experimental techniques, the form of the novel at its core still relies on the subjectivity of individuals who are, generally speaking, not the very few executives and government officials responsible for the stasis of society in responding to climate change. It’s possible, though, that novelists are responding to the effects of climate change in ways other than direct representation.

The kind of numbing anxiety that necessarily has to coexist with mundanity has been poking its head into numerous recent works of fiction, possibly because it has seemed to increasingly saturate daily life.

Julia Phillips’s brilliant debut novel “Disappearing Earth” is what Jane Allison calls a “radial” narrative — one where some inciting incident creates ripples that move outward and often compound in complexity rather than resolving. Novels structured like this frequently resemble a loose amalgamation of short stories, but Phillips succeeds in her deft, transparent prose and her ability to play narratives off each other in a prismatic way. It coheres in its creation of a community of people, in this case in an incredibly isolated city in Russia. The plot orbits around the mysterious disappearance of two young girls, Sophia and Alyona Golosovsky, in the coastal town of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula. Everyone in the town hears about it, is haunted by it. Suddenly, other young girls aren’t allowed to cross town to see friends, adults are newly nervous about the other residents of the small seaside town. Predictably enough, some people in town use the disappearance as an opportunity to stoke racial and ethnic tension.

An elementary school administrator, Valentina Nikolaevna, blames the disappearance first on a

This connection between an increasingly vague anxiety and the xenophobia that emerges is fairly straightforward, but it also feels important that the Kamchatka peninsula is almost unnavigable, where communities are incredibly isolated from each other geographically and culturally.

Central Asian and then on the father of the girls, who lives in Moscow.

The theme of the book, broadly stated, is the parochialism, blame and anxiety that ripples through a community in the wake of grief. The feelings the girls’ disappearance evokes in the town are rarely straightforward, but they get into everything, their presence is felt everywhere. They are dismissed, relegated, compartmentalized only to hover over the scenes of the novel in a blanket of worry.

The girls’ disappearance is used as a justification for a boyfriend’s anxious surveillance, and it comes up as two young professionals go on a camping trip in the “empty wilderness” north of the town.

This connection between an increasingly vague anxiety and the xenophobia that emerges is fairly straightforward, but it also feels important that the Kamchatka peninsula is almost unnavigable, where communities are incredibly isolated from each other geographically and culturally.

The isolation amplifies this sense of echo. Petropavlovsk is more or less inaccessible by land, and the city has the feeling of being hemmed in, surrounded by nature that appears in many different guises. Nature is almost a character in the book, commenting on the goings-on. This is especially true of the stunning opening, which takes place in the hours before Sophia and Alyona are abducted. Alyona tells Sophia a story of a city at the edge of the Pacific ocean that was obliterated after a tsunami: “Even in Zavoyko, they didn’t notice how the sky had gotten darker; they were busy sweeping up, checking in on their next-door neighbors, making repairs. But later, when the electricity came back on, somebody realized there were no lights coming from the edge of the cliff.”

Julia Phillips’s brilliant debut novel “Disappearing Earth” is what Jane Allison calls a “radical” narrative — one where some inciting incident creates ripples that move outward and often compound in complexity rather than resolving.

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6B — Thursday, October 17, 2019

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

B-SIDE: SECONDARY

Weed it out: Gardening to understand the environment EMMA CHANG Senior Arts Editor

Climate change as an issue is abstract — we know it’s coming, but how many of those issues detailed in the climate report can we actually see, in Ann Arbor, right now? Sure, point to trends, rising temperatures and the melting ice caps (Iceland recently held a funeral for one of their melted glaciers), but has anything changed in our day-to-day life here that reflects any sign of climate change? Barely.

VSCO girls may be touting their reusable straws and campus might have hosted a climate march, but how many red solo cups littered the ground the following game day? People still use single-use plastics, many are reluctant to even reduce their meat consumption and others still deny the fact that climate change even exists. But we know it’s coming and you’d be hard-pressed to find a scientist who disagrees with that fact.

Beyond the statistics, social media has made it increasingly easy to feel like you care about climate change without actually doing anything of substance. Being able to like or reshare a story about the effects of climate change has made it dangerously easy to passively watch the world fall to flames, especially as we sit in a sheltered university town in Michigan. Let’s also keep in mind that our state, with its access to the lakes we know and love, has been deemed one of the better places to reside as our climate becomes more and more unpredictable. Pure Michigan is sounding pretty great right about now. None of this is to say that it’s entirely up to the individual to tackle climate crisis — we know it’s a systemic issue stemming from the roots of capitalism, but surely there is something we can do.

Aside from calling your representatives and other forms of political climate activism, one of the first steps, and something we should all come back to from time to time, is to put ourselves in a situation where we can understand what we have to lose. Ignoring the imminent societal collapse that will come hand in hand with climate change is dangerous. And what is happening to the actual Earth?

The coral is dying in Australia and the Amazon is burning in Brazil (though that was less climate change and more poor leadership), and those are both incredibly important, but when people don’t ever plan on visiting either of those places anytime soon, this removed feeling has the potential to manifest as apathy. Michigan has some gorgeous places to visit to combat this phenomenon, but if you don’t feel like driving the four hours to get to Sleeping Bear Dunes, the University’s botanical gardens are a one-stop shop for all your climate-apathy assuaging needs.

Located right off of Dixboro road, the Matthaei Botanical Gardens are an Ann Arbor staple. This hidden University gem boasts gorgeous scenery and houses an absolutely adorable collection of Bonsai trees.

But what sets the gardens apart and helps connect their patrons to the realities of climate change around them is the art exhibits that decorate the halls of the visitor’s center and continue throughout the gardens. According to the garden’s mission statement and the Public Events Coordinator, Alexis Ford, the art exhibits at the gardens are meant to “develop a strong connection with the audience in a means to foster enjoyment, stewardship, and sustainability.” Impressive words, but what does that actually look like?

As you walk through the gardens, the art becomes apparent. The entrance of the Gateway Garden was commissioned to commemorate the Ann Arbor Garden Club’s 75th anniversary in 2005 and, walking deeper into the complex, you stumble upon gorgeous fountains surrounded by insane bursts of colorful flowers. Trees loom in the distance, and if you visit in October like I did, the leaves have turned from summer greens to vibrant reds, oranges and yellows. Seeing the art, surrounded by various plants, evokes a calming feeling. In a phone interview with The Daily, Ford spoke to how these pieces are chosen and their purpose within the gardens.

Ford explained that artists can be commissioned to create something for the gardens, or come up with and pitch their own

ideas. Once approved, the art is put up in the gardens and its visitor center, which Ford described as a “non-traditional gallery space,” — a fitting arena for an organization dealing with the non-traditional problem of emotionally connecting people to climate change. In thinking about the role of the gardens in combating an indifference toward climate change, Ford pointed out that, when selecting the art, she’s not looking for “a pretty picture on the wall.” She emphasized the importance of instilling a feeling of “why” — why is the garden important to visitors? Why are these pieces of art specifically here, at the gardens? Eventually, she wants the art to prompt people to consider what their role is in this precarious environment.

The fountains, the gates and the other permanent exhibits, however, aren’t all that Matthaei has to offer. Ford talked about the importance of working with people in and around the community to create opportunities in which visitors can experience art in different ways through the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. Take, for example, Metthaei’s collaboration with the Center for World Performance Studies this past March. Composer Raven Chacon brought “The Living Earth Show” to the gardens and performed an engaging piece exploring “the urgent but approaching crisis of water shortage burdening the region from California to the Navajo deserts.” “(Art is) not a two-dimensional painting on a wall — it is an immersive experience. So, art can often involve video aspects of dance or theatrical aspects,” Ford said.

Ford also mentioned that in the future, Matthaei is trying to further the experience of developing art that has a strong connection with nature but also “exploring what that means for the particular artist.” Matthaei is currently accepting submissions for their latest community exhibit surrounding our micro environment and challenging our existing views of nature from the human perspective.

It’s an exhibit meant to explore nature as if we were the small things living in it — the bees and the birds and everything in between.

After visiting Matthaei, I started wondering what goes behind creating a garden itself. Once you’ve come to terms with the overwhelming “eco-anxiety” that seems to plague our generation, it becomes increasingly clear that there are ways to give back to your environment in meaningful ways. This past summer, I spent an absurd amount of my time scrolling through gardens on Instagram, watching as people built the gardens of my dreams. As someone whose green thumb is a little more on the brown side, I decided it would be beneficial to talk to someone about it.

In a phone interview with The Daily, Lindsay Wilkinson, a 2002 alum of the University’s School of Social Work and an avid gardener, talked about getting her garden started and the nuances behind creating a mini botanical garden at her home. Aside from how beautiful the flowers were, the most intriguing thing about the garden was the large amount of wildlife that seemed to always be present. From her Instagram, it would seem that this was because she had decided to make it a butterfly garden, planting specific plants meant to attract certain butterflies, like milkweed, the preferred snack of monarch butterflies.

“When (my family) first moved into (the) house, the former owners were really into trying to establish more native species onto the property. And, honestly, that was a concept that I had not really looked

at. Why would you plant plants that were meant to be in your area versus plants that were ornamental and were considered pretty by your big box stores?”

Wilkinson’s family has always had a vegetable garden in their backyard, but this new garden was a product of observing the nature around her. “Living the first summer in our garden and just having this huge bank of native coneflower growing on the back side of our house, all I had to do was step back into our backyard to be witness to the fact that … these echinacea are covered with butterflies,” Wilkinson said.

The concept of growing native plants isn’t necessarily a revolutionary thing to do — once you really think about it, it’s just common sense. But that doesn’t make it any less intriguing.

“Planting native is a neat idea because it’s just going to enhance and perpetuate and support what’s meant to be there,” Wilkinson said. As a result, her garden and lawn has remained pesticide free.

She has to contend with certain bugs, like aphids, invading her garden, but she advises that if you’re planting things that attract ladybugs (a natural aphid predator), then nature, not pesticides, does the work for you.

Not only does the garden provide a summer haven, but as Wilkinson prepares to get ready for Michigan’s winter, it also creates a home for the bugs to stay when the cold hits. While her vegetables go into the house, her coneflowers to stay outside and become hollow — the perfect home for caterpillars and other bugs to spend the colder months.

The garden has proven to be a community staple. She voiced her concerns about having such a prominent garden (Wilkinson counted nine neighboring homes that could see straight into the garden). But she needn’t have worried. The garden prompted her to have more conversations with her neighbors in one summer than in the other three summers that she lived in the house.

Art is just as much of a dynamic concept as climate change, though a little less threatening, and the different ways we interact with it can affect how we choose to cope with things as scary as a climate crisis.

For some, gardening is just as much an art as creating a sculpture or writing an opera. Creating a diverse, sustainable garden offers insight into what it means to be a part of this world. We should move towards ways of artistic expression that allow us to understand the environment and our local ecosystems better as a whole. While our long-term goal of overthrowing capitalism looms in the distance, we can find ways to subvert the system and give back to the environment by actively questioning our relationship with the world around us.

ALEXIS RANKIN / DAILY

B-SIDE: ARTIST PROFILE

In conversation with Detroit-based Antonio Rafael JULIANNA MORANO Daily Arts Writer

It is difficult to describe an archetypal day in the life of Antonio Rafael. In his teens, he was commuting from Detroit, his hometown, to a private high school in the suburbs. He attended college at Eastern Michigan University, where he studied economics. After Detroit filed for bankruptcy and was subjected to state intervention, Rafael became increasingly vocal as an activist and artist in his community. Most recently, he has devoted the bulk of his time and energy to environmental anti-racism and activism and has taken on a variety of roles in the process, including outdoor educator, urban farmer and beekeeper.

Needless to say, Rafael has worn an overwhelming number of hats, but it seems that this process of constant evolution is part and parcel of the life of an activist. How else can we expect our leaders to keep leading, amid evermounting burdens of historical oppression and ever-increasing awareness of all the insidious ways that structures of oppression likewise evolve and adapt?

On the subject of his personal evolution into environmental activism, Rafael described a parallel development he’s seen in his approach as an activist.

“Changing people’s consciousness is beautiful and rewarding. I love to see the analysis and thought of people around me grow and evolve and change, but like, I also want to do something tangible, you know?” said Rafael in an interview with The Daily. He then went on to describe “Southwest Grows,” the community farm he has started behind his house in Detroit, with hopes of someday turning it into a market garden.

Rafael is not alone in these efforts to push for the adaptation of agricultural practices outside of rural environments. His native Detroit is becoming a hub for the nationwide urban farming movement. Farms like Rafael’s are part of grassroots campaigns for “food sovereignty” in marginalized communities, which seek to reclaim control of the local food system. To that end, Rafael has other projects lined up as well. This semester, he is partnering with the National Wildlife Federation on a program with an ambitious goal: to “create the next generation of environmental and conservation leaders from communities that are most impacted by environmental racism.” This program will take the form of after-school workshops in three Detroit high schools and will feature both indoor and outdoor curriculums in order to promote historical, community-based and pragmatic knowledge of the environment.

Rafael’s work seems inextricable from the city of Detroit and the metro area. Many of his environmental projects of his are literally rooted in the city’s soil, and his street art from years prior is often anchored to said streets, appearing as murals and graffiti on the facades of buildings and even, infamously, on a water tower overlooking Highland Park. Despite this rootedness, throughout our conversation Rafael also vigilantly drew parallels between Detroit’s situation and those of other communities, historically and transnationally. In fact, Rafael described this global consciousness as one of the positive markers of modern-day activism.

“We need to be specializing and working on specific issues within various issue communities, but we also need to be looking at the interconnection of issues, and I think that’s another thing that’s really unique about our generation and something we’re growing and learning through,” Rafael said.

Every so often, his responses to questions would reverberate in ways that confirmed this conviction. This was particularly resonant when Rafael was discussing the colonial critique often at the center of his artwork, both in the United States and Latin America.

“Everyone’s talking about the Amazon forests burning, and they’re like, ‘That’s the world’s lungs!’ — but the world’s lungs were here, too,” Rafael observed, in a statement that lived at the intersection between his community and something larger, something interconnected and infinite.

In that way, he reminded me of other activists who fought for change in Detroit throughout their lives, like the late Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs, and the still-active Tawana Petty. In fact, Rafael had attended the latter’s birthday COURTESY OF NICK HAGAN party a few weeks prior to our

“Changing people’s consciousness is beautiful and rewarding. I love to see the analysis and thought of people around me grow and evolve and change, but like — I also want to do something tangible, you know?” interview. And while Rafael spoke with admiration for the work of the Boggs and their legacy, he spoke at length and with the greatest enthusiasm about his contemporaries in the local activist community. It was perhaps his fellow graffiti artists for whom he expressed the most admiration, recommending the work of street artists like Sintex and Chaos and calling the city of Detroit a “graffiti mecca.”

Images of Rafael’s graffiti and other works of art are surprisingly hard to come by online. More often than not, such photos can only be found in articles reporting on his public, unsanctioned projects — the ones that upset the police. The aforementioned Highland Park water tower, onto which Rafael and another artist William Lucka spray painted the words “Free the Water” and a raised fist, made a number of headlines, especially when the two were facing potential felony charges for it. But that might not be a bad thing. I’m starting to reevaluate the importance of context to a piece of art, and to question whether or not works of art, especially community-centric artwork like Rafael’s, should be excavated from the environs in which they were created and, in a way, also had a hand in creating them.

Rafael was definitely the one who set in motion my reconceptualization of art and how it translates across space and time. At one point, I described to him a dilemma brought to my attention through my coursework in the University of Michigan’s Community Action and Social Change program: That it is easy to name what a movement or work is against, but it is much more difficult to name what it is for. I asked Rafael for his take on this question, and I did not see his answer coming.

“When my house and farm are done,” he said, “that will be an articulation of what I’m for. It’s an ongoing art project that I’m working on, my house and farm.” I’d never thought of environmental work that way, as a form of speech, as a work of art. But how narrow-minded is that? Perhaps if we saw the environment as a work of art, as another being communicating with us, I imagine the conversation around climate change would shift dramatically, and for the better. I also wonder what Rafael’s garden might say, were I ever to see it in person. I imagine something like, This is where it begins, but who knows — perhaps I’ll find out for myself someday.