2020-02-19

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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NRA Univ. looks at role of guns, 2nd Amendment

National Riffle Association hosts seminar on fiream rights at ‘U’ CALLIE TEITELBAUM Daily Staff Reporter

MICHAEL BAGAZINSKI/Daily

A2 Council fires City Administrator Howard Lazarus without cause City Administrator Howard Lazarus, right, speaks at the beginning of the City Council meeting Tuesday evening at City Hall.

Municipal official forced out of position in 7-4 vote, bids farewell to colleagues ANGELINA LITTLE Daily Staff Reporter

The Ann Arbor City Council voted to terminate City Administrator Howard Lazarus without cause on Tuesday night, effective Feb. 29.

The resolution to fire Lazarus, sponsored by Councilmembers Jack Eaton, D-Ward 4, and Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, passed with a 7-4 vote. The resolution approves

a separation and release agreement guaranteeing a severance of one year’s salary, amounting to $223,600, and an additional lump sum of $1,000.

The agreement also states that neither Lazarus nor the city will disparage or make comments that reflect negatively upon the other party.

Lazarus opened the meeting with a statement reflecting on his almost four years serving as Ann Arbor’s city administrator.

He thanked the council and

community members for the opportunity to serve and spoke about what he believes to be the four pillars of public service: purpose, respect, health and joy.

“We’ve accomplished many significant efforts; in addition to preserving and protecting the tremendous quality of life that we have in Ann Arbor, much of what we do is unnoticed, and that is the nature of the job we’ve chosen,” Lazarus said. “We may also

never know the extent to which we positively impact the lives of people in our community.”

During public comment, multiple Ann Arbor residents addressed the upcoming vote on Lazarus’s termination.

Dan Michniewicz, a candidate for City Council to represent Ward 5, said the firing was motivated by politics rather than motivated by concern for the public good.

See ADMINISTRATOR, Page 3A

Suzanne Anglewicz, research attorney for the Institute for Legislative Action division of the National Rifle Association, began her seminar by acknowledging opposition to the NRA on college campuses: “Disagree with us, but at least disagree with us on the facts.”

On Tuesday night, the University’s chapter of College Republicans hosted a seminar in partnership with Anglewicz to discuss the NRA, gun control debate and the Second Amendment.

NRA University, an interactive presentation on gun rights, was founded in 2008. Anglewicz said NRA U’s mission is to educate college youth on the gun control debate and Second Amendment, as well as clarify misinformation about

Students, Central Student Government hosts chefs talk roundtable with local politicians no-waste Debbie Dingell, Chris Taylor join City Council members for discussion lifestyle CAMPUS LIFE

REMY FARKAS

Panel, dinner brings focus to environmentally friendly eating habits AYSE ELDES

Daily Staff Reporter

Most cooks discard pepper tops and stems as unusable food scraps. For campus chefs Russ Palmer, Tony Picinotti and Frank Turchan, however, these scraps had hidden potential to become hummus served at a buffet dinner Tuesday night.

The WasteLESS event featured dishes with recycled ingredients and a panel to inform roughly 40 attendees on food waste and preventative practices.

According to Claire Prenevost, Planet Blue Student Leader and LSA senior, the event was a joint collaboration between MDining, Planet Blue Student Leaders and the University of Michigan Sustainable Food Program.

“It’s really just a natural pairing of people being able to sit down and then gain more in-depth information from people that have more experience in their career and personal lives,” Prenevost said. “Then (they will) be able to take that information and, as consumers, apply it in their everyday lives.”

See FOOD, Page 3A

Daily Staff Reporter

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor and multiple Ann Arbor City Council members gathered on Tuesday for a Representative Roundtable hosted by the University of Michigan Central Student Government.

CSG President Ben Gerstein, Public Policy junior, introduced the panelists and led the panel

with a series of questions regarding student involvement in the November 2020 elections.

Approximately 25 people participated in the interactive Q&A session with the politicians in the Michigan Union.

Dingell touched on the importance of voting and praised the Big Ten Voting Competition from 2018, reiterating the impact that voting can make.

“I’ve just talked to most of you about a lot of issues you care about,” Dingell said. “Your vote makes

a difference. President Trump won this state by a very narrow margin of the popular vote. If more students had voted … it might have made a difference, and people need to know your vote matters.”

In anticipation of the November elections, panelists described what they are doing to mobilize student voters. Taylor discussed ways college students can vote, including absentee ballots and additional voting locations to make voting more convenient for students.

“Our goal is to also have

on-campus locations where we can have staff members there to provide in-person, absentee access for student voters for weeks in advance of the election,” Taylor said. “Our goal is to enhance the student vote this November, just from the municipal side, communicate absentee, in-person absentee … make sure that students know that that’s going to be available on campus and then increase throughput at precincts.”

See ROUNDTABLE, Page 3A

the NRA. About 45 students gathered in the Michigan League to hear Anglewicz’s presentation.

The NRA currently has nearly five million members.

Anglewicz addressed the distinction between the lobbying body of the NRA and the rest of the NRA’s work with education and safety training. Anglewicz said the NRA annually trains more than one million civilians about gun safety and has more than 125,000 firearm instructors nationwide.

“We are not the lobby for gun manufacturers and dealers,” Anglewicz said. “We are a non-profit, civil rights organization that serves people.”

While Anglewicz highlighted the education efforts by the NRA, political lobbying by the NRA has been at the forefront of national news.

See NRA, Page 3A

ANN ARBOR

Residents question leave of Chief Cox

Ind. Community Police Oversight Commission fields AAPD concerns EMMA RUBERG Daily Staff Reporter

After the City of Ann Arbor placed Police Chief Michael Cox on administrative leave earlier this month, the Independent Community Police Oversight Commission hosted a community forum to discuss Cox’s leave.

Approximately 50 community members and city leaders attended the meeting on Tuesday night in Ann Arbor City Hall.

Commission Chair Lisa Jackson began the meeting with a statement about the situation, noting the lack of public information. She confirmed Cox was not placed on leave as a result of any sexual harassmentrelated claim. Jackson said the investigation should conclude Thursday and the ICPOC will hold a special committee meeting sometime at the end of the week to update the public and allow for comments and questions.

Many community members commented on the damage done to Cox’s public image by being placed on leave.

MADDIE FOX/Daily Congresswoman Debbie Dingell answers questions from students at the Central Student Government Representative Roundtable at the Union Tuesday afternoon.

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2A — Wednesday, February 19, 2020

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

TUESDAY:

By Design

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WEDNESDAY: This Week in History

THURSDAY: Twitter Talk

FRIDAY: Behind the Story

Feb. 19, 1975: ‘U’ to destroy some student files The literary college (LSA) plans to destroy portions of student counseling records, according to Charles Morris, associate dean of LSA. The material to be removed consists of letters of recommendation written mainly by high school counselors, which have been forwarded from the admissions office to the LSA counseling office.

Morris reported that Vice President for Academic Affairs Frank Rhodes told him last week that the letters of recommendation could not be made available to students.

HOWEVER, because the LSA Administrative Board, which has

final decision-making authority over LSA counseling offices, had earlier declared that all material in students’ files should be made available to the students, Morris said there is no option now available to the board except removal of the files in question.

Morris stated that “the feeling of the board is that if the material is not accessible to the student, it should not be accessible to anyone.” He stressed that the decision to destroy the material was something that they had been forced to do, not something of which he personally approved.

Nevertheless, Rhodes had stated last term that he would

be “appalled” by destruction of files, and that the administration strongly opposed such a move.

Rhodes was unavailable for comment last night.

HOWEVER, Edward Dougherty, assistant to Rhodes, contends that “the statement last term (opposing destruction of the records) was not made for ever and ever.”

Ernest Zimmerman, another assistant toRhodes, stated that “we did not ask the Administrative Board to do that (destroy files).

They are at liberty to remove them; it’s their decision at this point.”

The move to destroy student

records was prompted by a new federal law that allows students to see almost all the material in their counseling files. However, letters of recommendation to admissions offices written prior to January 1, 1974 (with the understanding that the contents were to remain in confidence), may remain secret.

ZIMMERMAN argued that “the law provides that those letters submitted prior to January 1 are confidential and should remain as such.”

However, another clause in the law, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, also states that recommendations used for purposes other than their original

intent – namely admissions – may be made available to the subject.

Morris contended that the files should be made available for that because of this clause; in fact, he had sent a letter last month to Zimmerman explaining that he intended to make the files completely open “unless we receive a contrary directive from the University.” That directive came from Rhodes last week in the letter that asked Morris to keep the files secret.

According to Morris, “where the LSA administrative board and the University administration disagree clearly is in regards to their definition of that clause.”

“The University position was that making the files available would be a violation of the high school counselors’ rights,” Morris stated.

Morris said that the LSA board was then faced with a dilemma when Rhodes instructed that the letters remain secret – and the board was left with no choice but destruction of the files. Morris said that a consensus decision of the board was reached earlier this week.

Morris also explained that removal of the records would take some six months, and could be considerably expensive.

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Central Student Government discusses election parties, performance funding Three representatives present amendments to adjust role of parties in student government elections Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan Central Student Government convened in the Michigan Union Tuesday night to discuss allocations of Legislative Discretionary funding, to confirm new roles and to amend the election code.

The Assembly began with deliberations on allocating a fund of $5,645 for performing Macbeth in the Union courtyard.

Music, Theatre & Dance representative Zion Jackson advocated for the resolution.

“The reason we are doing this is because we feel that theatre is an integral part of the American lifestyle, and I feel that theatre has power in connecting people,” Jackson said. “This Shakespeare play does a lot of that. It has a lot of themes (that) are very political, not in a bad sense, but it shines a light on different topics of today.”

LSA representative Maddi Walsh, on the other hand, was concerned about the cost required for this production.

“We don’t have any way of really knowing concretely what the value that we are getting out of (the production) is,” Walsh said. “We don’t really know aside from just projections from past productions what our return on investments is going to be and whether it is going to be similar or not.”

In response to Walsh’s concerns, Jackson recognized the production is a risk financially, but also creates an opportunity for CSG to build a stronger

relationship with the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

“I know it’s a risk. It’s very risky and that we don’t know the actual return on investment and such, but I also feel like with something like this we won’t know unless we try,” Jackson said. “There haven’t been any efforts, at least to my knowledge, any concrete or solid efforts for us to try to establish a better relationship with the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and so I feel like this is a method to do that.”

After a vote, the resolution was referred to the Resolutions and Finances Committee due to concerns regarding the large fund needed.

The Assembly then confirmed LSA sophomore Brendan Neary as vice-chair of the Student Organization Funding Committee. Last semester, LSA junior and SOFC vice-chair Max Jones was recalled for application misconduct.

LSA freshman Kyla McCallum was also confirmed as chief of staff.

McCallum will succeed Public Policy junior Amanda Kaplan, who announced her candidacy for CSG President with the Mobilize party Monday night.

The Assembly approved a resolution to create a Student Organization Committee to improve CSG’s relationship with student organizations and relieve the workload on SOFC, which is currently responsible for enforcing CSG regulations and managing student organization funding.

The committee will be led by a director who will

manage communication with student organizations, funding and enforcement of rules. SOC will also manage other student organization operations that are not related to funding but impact student life.

The Assembly also reached a decision to remove the BIT Liaison, who oversees SOFC’s Bystander Intervention Training Liaison, and redirect the responsibilities of the liaison to the Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Survivor Empowerment Commission. It was also decided that the Bystander Intervention Training will be converted to an online course.

The Assembly discussed proposed amendments to the election code. Engineering representatives Zeke Majeske and Carla Voigt and LSA representative Sam Braden advocated for banning political parties. The group said that currently, parties seek out popular candidates who have the ability to get numbers.

Additionally, the group said there is a lack of information on ways to participate in CSG due to the fact that students usually learn about CSG only during election season. They said the party system further discourages individual candidates from contesting party picks for seats and prevents candidates from winning because of their party affiliation.

They also pointed out the financial burden on candidates who run without a party, saying they are delegated significantly lower funds when campaigning.

ekwhite@michigandaily.com

SAYALI AMIN and LEAH GRAHAM

Members of Central Student Government listen to student proposals at their weekly assembly meeting in the Union Tuesday evening.

NAVYA GUPTA

Managing Editor

CSG Speaker Whit Froehlich ruled this amendment out of order on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. However, the group said even if their proposal does not argue the unconstitutionality of the current system, it is still unfair.

The Assembly then engaged in a debate regarding the revocation of Froehlich’s ruling. Majeske withdrew the resolution.

The same group proposed another set of amendments that would allow students to campaign with other candidates, but would prevent them from campaigning under a single party name and putting a party name on the ballot.

Froehlich ruled this set of proposed amendments out of order.

The Assembly then debated the group’s third set of amendments. The Assembly voted to pass the sets of amendments, which bans party names on the ballot and prevents candidates from spending money on other candidates.

CSG Vice Speaker Selena Bazzi advocated for the amendments, saying she felt that candidates running with parties have an unfair advantage over individual candidates.

“When I first ran for CSG with MomentUM against MVision, I felt like I was chasing after everyone to vote for me, and even then I barely made it,” Bazzi said.

“When I ran with Engage, I barely had to campaign, and I was on top. I feel like parties matter a lot.”

Reporter Navya Gupta can be reached at itznavya@ umich.edu.

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FOOD From Page 1A The panel, moderated by LSA freshman Hannah Kim, consisted of Palmer; Urban Planning Professor Lesli Hoey; Jennifer Petoskey, city of Ann Arbor solid waste outreach and compliance specialist; and LSA sophomore Chase Dautrich.

Palmer shared the procedures campus chefs practice to reduce waste and recycle dining leftovers. In addition to training kitchen staff, he emphasized the importance of crossutilization of ingredients in reducing waste in menus.

“Food waste is at the forefront of all chefs’ minds,” Palmer said. “For chefs, it’s about training, really … It’s always an ongoing process.”

To inform attendees on procedures taken on a university-wide scale, Hoey shared her experience co-leading the Internal Analysis Food Team on the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality. According to Hoey, the team’s mission is to broadly analyze anything related to food on the University of Michigan’s three campuses. In an effort to reduce carbon emissions, Hoey said the team suggests waste-preventing procedures before food is prepared and suggests protocol to follow after

ADMINSITRATOR From Page 1A “City staff are making political decisions,” Michniewicz said.

“I don’t think this most recent iteration of what is a political tiff between two factions is going to get our community anywhere closer to addressing the climate crisis or housing crisis at the scale necessary.”

When presenting the resolution to fire Lazarus, Eaton said the decision came from a long discussion that began when Lazarus applied for a job as a city manager in Gainesville, Florida.

His application referenced conflict with councilmembers, offending some of his colleagues. Eaton offered no further explanation for the reason of the proposed termination.

“While the council is concluding his employment without cause under the contract, it’s mostly because we don’t wish to state those causes, and we don’t wish to engage in litigation over whether or not the cause existed,” Eaton said. “It’s really of mutual benefit to the city administrator and the city to conclude this through negotiation rather than acrimony.”

Lumm said the decision came from a need for a more positive and productive relationship between councilmembers and the city administrator.

“I don’t believe it’s appropriate to go into specific details about our city administrator or his performance,” Lumm said. “I know it is fair for anyone to ask why I would vote for this … I’ve served on council a long time and with quite a few city administrators, and I’ve seen the evidence that counciladministrator relationships are important to the effective functioning of city government both internally and externally …

I want to support and promote relationships that are healthy and what you would expect to see on a high performing team.”

During the comments in support of the resolution, some residents in attendance interrupted with yells

NRA From Page 1A

The Center for Responsive Politics reported the NRA spent more than $3 million on lobbying expenditures in 2019.

Anglewicz mentioned the NRA’s extensive efforts to ensure gun safety and its dedication to education.

“Even if we can’t find common ground on policies, we can always find common ground on how we can be safe and responsible gun owners,” Anglewicz said. “So, a lot of what we do is really, the majority, about safety education and training.”

LSA senior Taylor King, co-founder of Students Demand Action, an activist group dedicated to combating gun

News

waste has been produced.

“A major part of what we are going to suggest is some systems that better keep track of what we’re actually wasting still — even despite certain initiatives — and also try to understand what the impact is once you do implement more initiatives,” Hoey said.

Hoey said the team is facing a lack of data concerning food waste and composting on the campuses.

Hoey said her team struggles with a fragmented system of food production, consisting of units such as athletics, medicine, dining and autonomous consumption in schools.

Hoey noted about 40 percent of food waste occurs at the retail and customer levels. She said this means changes on the individual level will make the largest impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

As someone who has always had a problem with throwing food away, Hoey said that she will even eat off others’ plates when feasible to prevent leftovers from being discarded.

Adding to personal examples, Palmer shared that if he cannot find a way to utilize food scraps, he will feed them to his chickens at home.

“It is something we constantly talk about,” Palmer said. “It is extremely important that we use our foods to the fullest.”

According to Prenevost, one of the

steps in reducing waste at the event was using an RSVP list to estimate how much food would be needed.

Prenevost said she believes this can help prevent excessive leftovers at campus events.

LSA junior Anastasia Bergeron said she signed up to expand what she has learned through Net Impact, a student organization collaborating with businesses for environmental and social impact.

“Food waste is really an interesting topic that I just never heard about before,” Bergeron said.

“I was interested in learning more … I always knew it was good for the environment, but I never really knew scientifically why it’s so much better to compost.”

Dautrich discussed his involvement with the Food Recovery Network. The organization will host a regional summit on campus on April 4. Dautrich shared that his main goal in reducing waste was increasing conversation among students.

“One big way that people can promote sustainable food systems is just talking about it,” Dautrich said. “I feel like communication is one of the biggest challenges for this generation.

There are a lot of problems, but there’s also a lot of solutions. Maybe they just haven’t been able to spread yet.”

Reporter Ayse Eldes can be reached at aeldes@umich.edu.

of disapproval and accusations of corruption. One held up a sign that read, “Good luck with a replacement!”

Councilmember Jeff Hayner, D-Ward 1, who voted in favor of firing Lazarus, addressed the crowd’s concerns about transparency.

“There’s personnel matters that don’t allow us to speak to some certain issues publicly,” Hayner said. “I certainly am sympathetic with the public who feel perhaps cheated of their opportunity to opine on this matter … there’s not much I can do to increase transparency around this matter and for that I apologize.”

Mayor Christopher Taylor voted against the resolution and expressed his disapproval of the council’s decision in a statement to The Daily.

“This action will waste more than $275,000 of taxpayer money and, as the Council majority admits, is entirely without cause,” Taylor’s statement reads. “Mr. Lazarus has done nothing wrong.

This is a political termination that is bad for Ann Arbor.”

Taylor wrote that Lazarus is well qualified for his position and more needed than ever as the city faces critical stages of developing a $400 million budget, negotiations regarding the Gelman plume and the administrative leave of the police chief, among other challenges. He accused the council of punishing Lazarus for his resistance to “backroom” demands.

“Mr. Lazarus worked every day for Ann Arbor with intelligence, grace, and honor, to provide basic services and deliver real and meaningful change in pedestrian safety, affordable housing, and climate action,” Taylor’s statement continues. “The Council majority’s campaign of backroom pressure has culminated tonight in a grave public error. Ann Arbor, its residents and its reputation, will suffer from this deeply unwise decision for years to come.”

Councilmembers Zachary Ackerman, D-Ward 3, Julie Grand, D-Ward 3, and Chip Smith, D-Ward 5, all of whom voted against the resolution, released

an open letter addressing the decision. Their letter states that the majority made their decision out of dislike for Lazarus.

“Put simply, the City Council majority didn’t like Mr. Lazarus,” the letter reads. “They didn’t like that he pushed back when they pressured him to ignore city policy established through legislation passed in years prior. They didn’t like that he reminded them that their role is to set policy, not to micromanage and publicly berate public servants.”

Ackerman, Grand and Smith assert that the decision is unprofessional and fiscally irresponsible.

“Removing the City Administrator without cause, throwing away his skills when they are needed most, and using your money to pay him to leave is offensive to our most fundamental values,” the letter continues. “The Ann Arbor we represent believes in and expects transparency.”

During general public comment, a number of attendees expressed outrage at the council’s decision.

Speakers were critical of the lack of cause for terminating Lazarus.

Sally Hart Peterson, executive policy adviser for economic development at the Office of the City Administrator and former City Councilmember representing Ward 2, urged the councilmembers to rethink their vote, calling their decision detrimental to the interests of the community.

“The decision to terminate our city administrator without cause undermines the long-term integrity and stability of the administrative role of the city,” Peterson said. “It undermines the morale of our city employees, it is fiscally irresponsible and it is an insult to all who rely on our administrator’s leadership, authority and keen decisionmaking to keep the city running on a day-to-day basis … (Lazarus) has a clear sense of right and wrong, a respect for authority, and understands the clear line and division between city council and city administrator.”

Reporter Angelina Little can be reached at angelit@umich.edu.

violence, said gun safety must be a priority in a conversation of gun control. King said she has done gun violence prevention work for 11 years, is a survivor of gun violence and previously worked with Moms Demand Action before launching Students Demand Action on Michigan’s campus.

“I and Students Demand Action as a whole really have no problem with members of the NRA,” King said. “We promote gun safety. We think gun ownership, it is a constitutional right, but we think there are some people who are a threat to themselves and others who probably should not have guns, and that people that do have guns should be using them safely and responsibly … If (the NRA U event’s) focus is on gun safety and gun education, more power to them.”

Anglewicz discussed the debate surrounding universal background checks. She said the term Universal Background Checks is “dangerous” because it gives the impression there are no background checks in place.

She noted the NRA has been in support of the National Instant Criminal Background System, also known as NICS, since it was introduced in 1998; however, the NRA does not support H.R. 8, which requires background checks between private parties.

The NRA argues this is a private transaction and opposes legislation that would enforce a universal background check requirement for gun transfers between unlicensed sellers, such as transfers between family members.

“You want to know what ‘universal’ is?” Anglewicz said.

“It’s ‘I want to transfer a pistol

CHIEF From Page 1A

Some proactively called for public apologies from members of City Council and Mayor Christopher Taylor, asking about how damages could be repaid.

Attendees had many questions about the investigation into Cox by a private law firm and who would receive their report.

Jackson also commented on the lack of a Human Resources Director, who would normally be involved in the process. Commission members pointed out there is little precedent and they are not entirely sure what will happen.

The discussion quickly moved to City Administrator Howard Lazarus, who City Council voted to remove Tuesday night.

Councilmembers Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, and Jack Eaton, D-Ward 4, sponsored the resolution to separate with Lazarus, which includes a severance of one year’s salary, amounting to $223,600, and an additional $1,000. Lumm is part of the ICPOC and Eaton was present for the majority of the meeting.

After the announcement about the resolution to remove Lazarus, many community members grew frustrated and began shouting at Lumm.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 — 3A She explained his possible removal was unrelated to the situation with Cox. “The separation agreement is not in the least related,” Lumm said. “The timing, of course, is furious, but coincidental.

Your assumption the two are related is understandable, but they are not related.

This was discussed with Lazarus in various settings, well in advance of our email (announcing it).”

Many commission members and attendees expressed anger with the city government at all levels and especially with City Council.

They said Cox’s placement on leave was a demonstration of the inefficacy of Ann Arbor’s government and the community’s underlying racial tensions.

Jackson commented on how the situation ref lects on Ann Arbor, regardless of the final outcome for Cox and Howard Lazarus.

“I have no knowledge of what happened; I don’t,” Jackson said. “But what I do know is that it is not a good look for the city of Ann Arbor.

It doesn’t speak well for us; it doesn’t speak well for the process.”

Councilmember Eaton spoke to the commission, explaining the City Council has no information about Cox. He also said he thinks the public should be given more information and that City Council would

investigate how the current situation evolved. Eaton said City Council did not know of any issues with Cox and that, if he is reinstated, they will look into repairing the harm that was done.

After Lumm and Eaton left for the City Council meeting, the commission and community members expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to have ICPOC meet and hear community input.

Ann Arbor resident Lori Saginaw, who has been involved in previous police reform efforts in the city, spoke about the importance of the community being involved in ICPOC meetings and how activism can affect the city government.

“I cannot tell you how grateful I am that all of you are doing what you are doing,” Saginaw said. “There were so many times I was the only person sitting here during these meetings, in contrast, to tonight when you can know this community cares and wants to be a part of this work. So, talk about activism, here it is. We are going to continue to talk (about these issues).”

The meeting ended with calls for transparency regarding both Cox and Lazarus, as well as demands for the release of data about policing in Ann Arbor.

Reporter Emma Ruberg can be reached at eruberg@umich. edu.

The panel then discussed college affordabilit y and its impact on students at the Universit y. Benji Timpf, regional coordinator for U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, stressed the senator’s focus on college affordabilit y.

“The Senator has been doing work to hold the Department of Ed accountable to ensure that the loans students are receiving, they know the conditions of those loans,” Tim said. “The Senator has been pushing to hold the Department of Ed accountable, increase the availabilit y of those prog rams’ work … (and) making Department of Ed more accessible and understandable to students.”

Cit y Council members weighed in on housing affordabilit y and efforts to address the issue.

Councilmember Zachary Ackerman, D-Ward 3, discussed the disparit y between the 10,000-person increase in Universit y enrollment and the 6,000-bedroom increase in housing.

“That doesn’t quite add up,” Ackerman said.

“Simple math tells us there’s an imbalance. We have a supply issue. So, we need to address supply by building new housing.”

Ackerman said Cit y Council is working on zoning rules and increased incentives for

building. The council is also looking into building on land already owned by the municipalit y as well as reg ulating the market of short-term rental properties.

Councilmember Julie Grand, D-Ward 3, suggested thinking of campus affordabilit y in relation to communit y affordabilit y.

“One way to reframe the issues is that a lot of issues that are important to affordabilit y are important for our communit y more broadly,” Grand said.

“Sometimes we put student issues in this bubble where they really don’t belong because you’re a really important part of our communit y. …

What’s good for students is what’s good for our communit y.”

Following a question from the audience regarding divisiveness in public discourse, Dingell addressed her role in this and her interactions with President Donald Trump via social media.

“I think the biggest fear to our democracy is the hatred and division in this country right now,” Dingell said. “I have seen hatred and vitriol and some of the worst rhetoric you can ever imagine. It’s simply not okay.”

Dingell, whose husband John Dingell passed away last February, said she plans to collaborate with Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, for a tour centered around civilit y.

“We were both

married to g reat men and heroes that we loved, and we’re going to talk about civilit y,” Dingell said. “ You’re all communicators. You have to tell people it’s not okay.

We have to stand up to the hatred in this country.”

In response to a question from the audience regarding health care, Dingell reinforced her message on the importance of engagement in this area.

“If you care about an issue, become engaged,” Dingell said. “Advocate, put the face on it, on the issues and … as we go into this year, we need to tell people about the importance of Medicaid and have people understand … it’s a child, it’s a senior that has nobody to care for them.”

LSA freshman Timothy Marvin, who attended the event, thought the conversation on the social media divide was especially pertinent to today’s political environment.

“I liked the kind of tangent we had about social media and more broadly the public discourse and where that’s at in the United States today,” Marvin said. “I think that’s like a real problem. Policy starts with how people talk, and the way people talk isn’t very collaborative right now. And you notice we’re very divided, so we don’t really get anything done.”

Reporter Remy Farkas can be reached at rsfarkas@umich.edu.

to my father, I have to go get paperwork, run a background check on him, do all of our fingerprinting, then sell him the firearm and re-register it’ and that sort of thing. That’s what they’re calling ‘universal.’

We already have background checks.”

Anglewicz admitted current background checks fail to prevent threatening individuals from obtaining firearms, but gun reform should not come from bans on types of assault weapons.

“We already have background checks,” Anglewicz said. “They are failing. It’s a terrible system and it needs help. People who are convicted felons, adjudicated mentally ill and a danger to themselves and others, should not have access to firearms. So, this system is broken. So, instead of focusing

on the system, people are talking about assault weapon bans. Congress is wasting our time with these silly things that are going to keep nobody safe.”

Anglewicz discussed the term “assault weapons” and said the term did not exist prior to 1989, calling it a “made-up political term.”

In a 2018 article, CNBC reported that the firearm industry often refers to “assault rifle” as a military weapon with “select fire capabilities,” or the capability to switch between semi-automatic or a fully automatic mode. The AR-15 only has semi-automatic settings and is therefore not an assault rifle by this definition.

Anglewicz referenced rifles more powerful than the AR-15, and said despite AR-15 high profile media presence, assault weapon bans are not the most

effective approaches to reform.

“Any gun can be deadly,” Anglewicz said.

“But to demonize one particular rifle in the effort to ban it so they can create a slippery slope, you have to see through that. It’s very dangerous rhetoric.”

LSA freshman Nick Schuler, College Republicans freshman chairman, said he hoped the event fostered an educational dialogue about the Second Amendment and gun control debate.

“Our goal is not to convert everyone into a gun lover, but just to have more understanding on campus,” Schuler said. “We think it’s very important to understand both sides of the political spectrum no matter where you lie, and to create more of a culture and foster a good campus that has diversity of thought.”

ROUNDTABLE From Page 1A

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, February 19, 2020

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EVAN STERN | COLUMN

Reflections on the impeachment of Donald Trump

W

hen the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in December, Chairman and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., declared that it was “a solemn and sad day.”

In retrospect, Nadler could not have been more right — just for all the wrong reasons.

The impeachment trial against President Trump was a deeply unsettling spectacle that targeted far more than the current occupant of the White House. It ripped at the very fabric of our country.

The impeachment against Trump was solemn and sad not because our president was being charged with high crimes and misdemeanors, but because one of America’s major political parties had unashamedly stooped to such a low level. The trial was a clear slap in the face for so many in this country.

As many of us know, the impeachment effort fortunately came to a quick end a couple of weeks ago in the president’s favor. But what has not come to an end is the dangerous political pattern this trial is a part of. The impeachment was the last straw for many in this nation, and Americans have had enough of it. There’s simply no excuse for the Democratic Party’s relentless attacks on our president.

Since our president first announced his candidacy nearly five years ago, Democrats have unceasingly picked apart everything about Trump, investigating and scrutinizing his every move. They have thrown bombshells into the Oval Office, one after another. They have put his business affairs under a microscope. And, most recently, they have impeached our president and put him on trial for weeks in front of the American people.

Trump isn’t perfect. He’s made some questionable choices that fall outside the boundaries of historical presidential behavior.

But an occasional mistake shouldn’t subject the president to a process that has only occurred three other times in U.S. history.

Democrats have truly done everything imaginable to damage our president and bring him down once and for all. They have tried to rip this country apart, literally.

(I am referring to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s stunning move at the end of Trump’s State of the Union speech).

While the impeachment trial only ended recently, Democrats began plotting the end of Trump’s political career before it had begun. It all began in 2011, when Fusion GPS was founded in Washington, D.C., by a group of veteran journalists.

While Fusion did some investigation in the past, it rose to

prominence after it was hired to investigate the 2016 presidential candidates, which included Trump. By the time Trump won the election in November of that year, Fusion had hired intelligence expert Christopher Steele to help investigate Trump’s ties to the Russian government. Steele’s research and the firm’s efforts ultimately produced a plethora of alarming allegations against the president, among them that Trump had an extensive record of collusion with Moscow. Once all of these unverified charges against Trump surfaced, Democrats quickly worked to implicate the president by constantly talking about “Trump-Russia collusion,” even though the origins of the allegations and the dossier as a whole are questionable.

Whether Democrats like it or not, Trump has done a lot of good.

As the Trump administration continued to come under unrelenting scrutiny, Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice Robert Mueller came into the picture, assuming command of the investigation once he was appointed in May 2017. After working for about two years, Mueller’s anticlimactic findings were released in a final report that was clearly disappointing for Democrats. The underwhelming ruling didn’t charge Trump with any crime at all and found the president didn’t engage in any conspiracy with the Russian government.

But the Democratic Party didn’t stop here. Still determined to take the Trump presidency down, they began to explore other ways that they could somehow end this resilient administration. Soon after the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, the Democrats used their broad control over the investigative powers of the House of Representatives to begin an impeachment inquiry into a July 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

This impeachment inquiry quickly spiraled out of control, collapsing almost immediately.

From the start, it was obvious it was a highly partisan effort, with every Republican voting against both articles of impeachment in the House.

Even though the Constitution plainly requires the House to forward the articles to the Senate, Pelosi and Democratic leadership

initially resisted because they knew Trump would never be convicted in the Republicanmajority Senate. But still, they were eventually passed on and — after weeks of monotonous trial proceedings with few new revelations — Trump was swiftly acquitted with only one Republican siding with Democrats, receiving the vindication he deserved.

That brings us to today. After years of systematic attempts at destroying this legitimate administration, Trump is still the president. And he’s doing better than ever before. Meanwhile, Democrats have been forced to return to the drawing board, and it’s not hard to wonder what they’ll try next.

But I sincerely hope that before the next allegations surface — before they engineer the next bombshell and before they find another “impeachable” offense — Democrats take a moment and return to reality. While they have been trying to demolish, Trump has worked to reconstruct.

Trump may be controversial, but Americans have unequivocally expressed their support for his innovative policies.

A recent Gallup poll released in the midst of the polarizing impeachment trial found that 49 percent of Americans approve of the president’s job in office, an all-time high from this pollster.

This may not be a majority of the nation, but according to the same poll, only 46 percent of Americans approved of President Obama’s job at the same point in his first term. Moreover, Gallup added in another poll that over 60 percent of Americans feel they’re better off than they were three years ago, while only 45 percent said the same at the same point in the Obama presidency.

In the end, whether Democrats like it or not, Trump has done a lot of good for millions of people across the country. These numbers don’t signal us that we have a rogue president who is blatantly violating American law, as Democrats tell us, but a respected leader who is doing great things.

More than ever before, it’s time to give our president the respect he deserves and actually let him govern as the leader of the U.S. I’m not asking Trump’s political opponents and haters to vote for him in November. Every American has a right to go to the polls at the end of this year and vote for whichever candidate they believe can best lead our country forward.

But until then, it’s time to part ways with this immature behavior. We may not all support Trump, but we all have a critical duty to be fair to our president and support him in his ultimate mission to uplift all Americans.

Evan Stern can be reached at erstern@umich.edu.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

Ignorance is a choice

A

common sentiment shared by people of color is that it’s exhausting to constantly have to explain your identities, your culture and whether or not a particular comment is appropriate to say when a simple Google search likely would have provided the inquirer with the answer to the question. What is often even more frustrating is that it is obvious when you’re not actively trying to diversify what you know about social identities or you’re not seeking out the opportunity to learn more about backgrounds and cultures different from your own. While asking genuine questions isn’t to be discouraged, be aware of your intention. If you’re coming off as close-minded, then it is in itself a form of ignorance. Diversity is a complex concept and mandates effort and attention. So, making inappropriate comments, asking offensive questions or repeatedly committing the same microaggressions sends the message that the asker is choosing to be ignorant.

That said, if you’re curious about the food a peer is eating or a cultural event a friend is celebrating, be conscious of your word choice and ask questions respectfully. The general rule of thumb: Exhibiting a willingness to learn will always be celebrated.

However, people of color often feel as though they’re burdened with the responsibility of educating their peers. This creates a campus climate that is uncomfortable for students and faculty of color.

It is known that people of color experience college differently than white people. It’s difficult to navigate predominantly white spaces while enduring microaggressions along the way. Back in 2017, Marist College conducted a survey investigating “Racism in the United States: Who’s Responsible for Fixing the Problem.” The

results of the survey showed the majority of Americans place the responsibility of tackling racism head-on upon everyone, not just one specific race. Additionally, most Americans did not agree that the burden of ending racism should fall upon people of color.

Similar to the findings of this poll, it’s important to not only address issues related to social identities like race and ethnicity as they happen on campus, but also take initiative to educate ourselves on the diversity of social identities on campus before an issue arises.

As students at the University of Michigan, we are privileged to have access to a plethora of resources: books, computers, courses, professors and educational events. Therefore, it is the general expectation we recognize that privilege and use it to better our knowledge. This means finding space on your Google Calendar to attend Martin Luther King Jr. symposiums, events, talks and dialogues. This means attending conferences and dialogue-based events on topics like racism on college campuses not because it’s an extra credit assignment, but because you’re trying to learn more.

I’ve also spoken with students who are not from marginalized communities or do not identify with minority groups who feel like they’re walking on eggshells around classmates of identities different from theirs. Even more so in courses that discuss multicultural content and topics related to race and ethnicity.

Rather than avoid participating to prevent accidentally offending your classmate or to risk appearing not “woke,” take actionable steps to improve your knowledge on diversity, equity and inclusion activities and initiatives on campus as well as to further your communication skills, as you’ll likely be a part of diverse work environments in the

near future. For example, take an introductory level women’s studies class like Women’s Studies 220. Take it because you’re likely to engage in relationships or conversations with women, whether in professional contact, friendships, romantic relations, etc.

Diversity, equity and inclusion events, programs and policies are, of course, important for undergraduate students’ professional and personal development. We all know that.

Nowadays, the terms “diversity,” “accessibility” and “inclusivity” are found in every Fortune 500 company’s mission statement or campus initiative. This is great in theory, but it’s no longer sufficient to simply exercise awareness of what those terms mean. Instead, consider viewing these words through the lens of your peers and their lived experiences.

Showing support and acting as an ally involves educating yourself, showing up and engaging with other students of diverse identities during dialogues covering controversial topics.

As University students, it’s important to support one another on our way to becoming wellrounded professionals and part of the workforce. For students of color, this means inviting your friends of all identities and cultural backgrounds to the cultural events for the organizations in which you’re involved. Don’t solely market these events to those who are already immersing themselves in DEI endeavors. It is equally important to engage in DEIrelated discussions with people of diverse thoughts, experiences and ideas as well. If we all take it upon ourselves to share our lived experiences with one another, we will all benefit together as a community.

Varna Kodoth can be reached at vkodoth@umich.edu.

KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMN

Battle for the soul of the Republican party

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hat is in Georgia besides the Coca-Cola headquarters, peaches and the state opossum, Pogo? Well, both the soul of the Republican Party and its greatest danger — former Democratic Rep. Stacey Abrams — reside in the state. While I would love to write about the massive threat that Abrams poses to Republicans, there’s frankly not enough space in this article to accurately portray her brilliance, so let’s take a look at the soul of the Republican Party — and by that, I do not mean the former steak salesman in the White House.

In fact, I do not believe that the soul of the party lies with any one person right now, but I believe that two Republican Senate candidates — Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., and United States Rep. Doug Collins — are vying to be its figurehead.

This old-fashioned far-right versus center-right battle began Aug. 28, 2019, when Georgia’s senior senator, Johnny Isakson, announced that midway through his third term he would retire due to health concerns. Immediately, all eyes went to Atlanta where Gov. Brian Kemp was given a gift and a curse: Appointing Isakson’s replacement.

Kemp, ever the strategist, held an open application process where any Georgia citizen could submit a resume and cover letter. Though this publicity stunt bought Kemp some time, the political universe quickly narrowed the selection pool to Collins, Loeffler and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price. However, with Price’s public resignation putting him in a precarious legal position, Kemp’s table was set.

If former President George W. Bush and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., could breed a senator in a lab, Kelly Loeffler would be the product.

Born to soybean farmers in rural Illinois, Loeffler worked her way up the corporate ladder of a commodities trader, Intercontinental Exchange, and eventually became the CEO of Bakkt, an IE subsidiary, in 2018.

Throughout her business career, Loeffler was an avid Republican donor and activist, having donated more than $3.2 million with her husband. The power couple’s pet causes included former presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. While her money brought her into the party’s upper echelons, she has always wanted to

hold elected office. And after seeing David Perdue win an open Senate seat in 2014 that she passed up, Loeffler did not want to miss her chance to become a part of Congress’s clubby upper chamber in 2020.

While Loeffler seems born for this job, Collins couldn’t be less poised to work with McConnell.

From humble beginnings in rural Georgia, Collins earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Georgia and a master’s in divinity from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Following his education, he was the pastor at Chicopee Baptist Church for 11 years. Capitalizing on his church’s success, Collins entered the political sphere through the Georgia House of Representatives, ultimately moving to the U.S. House where he currently serves as the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.

From this perch, the Congressman has spent the last two years making his southern drawl and fast-talking a staple on cable news by arguing with Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. and making “irregardless” trend on Twitter.

For Kemp, this decision was obvious: Loeffler. The former Bakkt CEO and co-owner of Atlanta’s WNBA team had plenty of financial backing for her 2020 run, and, more importantly, she shared Kemp’s traditional Chamber of Commerce republicanism. Conversely, the far-right Collins had no qualms about appearing on Fox News or berating former Special Counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice Robert Mueller, which earned Collins a strong ally: the President.

Collins’s position on the front lines of Trump’s defense put him in the President’s good graces. Therefore, Trump extensively lobbied Kemp behind the scenes for Collins. Kemp’s tiebreaker was McConnell, who gave him a gut check and reminded Kemp that Republicans could still win the Senate in 2020 even if Trump lost.

Therefore, Loeffler needed to be appointed. And on Dec. 4, she was.

When she got into office, Loeffler had one priority: get Trump’s endorsement. From allying with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during the impeachment saga to baselessly attacking Romney, she has proven she will go to great lengths to receive it.

She was on track to receive this golden ticket to victory, but on Jan. 29, her life got significantly harder as Collins announced that he would challenge her in the special election for Isakson’s

old seat. This decision was met with a swift rebuke from the chairman of the NRSC Kevin McLaughlin, who said “All (Collins) has done is put two Senate seats, multiple House seats, and Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in play.”

Additional groups like the Senate Leadership Fund and several sitting Republican senators have issued similar warnings, but, importantly, there is one person who has been conspicuously quiet on the issue: President Donald Trump. With great power traditionally comes great responsibility, but the former reality TV star has been like a bull in a china shop — or horse in a hospital — over the last three years. Thus, Trump is the wild card in this primary who could drastically swing the race one way or the other. However, learning from his 2017 primary endorsement of Luther Strange over the ultimate victor Roy Moore in Alabama, Trump has typically refrained from supporting candidates in competitive primaries. Therefore, Loeffler and Collins will likely have to slug it out until Nov. 3.

While the winner of the special election remains unknown, the winner of the Republican infighting is one person: Rev. Raphael Warnock. Warnock is a Baptist preacher from Atlanta who has been sharply critical of Trump and announced his candidacy for the 2020 special election amid a flurry of prominent Democratic endorsements, including Abrams and Democratic Rep. John Lewis.

Warnock’s deep ties with Black voters will energize this key voting bloc in 2020, which poses a greater threat to the Republicans than either Collins or Loeffler; and, because of Georgia’s Jungle Primary election rules, these three will share a ballot in November. If none of them reach 50 percent, then there will be a runoff between the top two, but the two Republicans are in a precarious position because they must fight on multiple fronts while Warnock can address them as a unit and possibly squeeze out 50 percent.

The bottom line is if Republicans want to keep this key seat from Warnock and the Democrats, they have to convince Trump to endorse someone. If he doesn’t, we will see a fight for the soul of the Republican Party play out, and we might see the end of the party’s 15-year Georgia dynasty.

Keith Johnstone can be reached at keithja@umich.edu.

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 — 5A

Music Talks: A rountable on Tame Impala’s latest DAILY MUSIC WRITERS Daily Arts Writers

“Music Talks” is a series where Daily Music Writers give their takes on the biggest releases in new music.

From picking best and worst tracks to asking what makes a record tick, the Music beat is here to give praise and give shit to music worth talking about.

For better or for worse, Kevin Parker (the tie-dyed mastermind behind Tame Impala) is back.

After a relatively quiet 2018 spent collaborating with the likes of SZA, Theophilus London and ZHU, Parker finally announced a new album in early 2019, The Slow Rush, and dropped a new track called “Patience” in mid-March. For some, it was like the homecoming of a friend who had spent over twelve months in Big Sur, dropping a whole lot of acid as a vehicle to find themself. That is, he is now back and better than ever. For others, it was like the return of a yacht rock nuisance cosplaying as a psychpop-rock poseur. (For better or for worse, remember?) Since the release of “Patience,” Parker has been in full-on album-release-mode, slowly trickling out singles (as the album’s title implies). Now, he’s wrapping up several months of a press tour that has included a much-lauded performance on Saturday Night Live and an interview with Beats 1’s Zane Lowe, in which he boasted that while creating the album, he was inspired by Travis Scott (the two are mutual fans and collaborators) and shopping while stoned (a rather pedestrian activity these days).

The Slow Rush is the first massive release of 2020. Will it remain that way, or will it wash away the current of Parker’s past releases (get it?)? Find out below.

Jim Wilson, Daily Arts Writer: First and foremost, which camp do you ascribe to: Tame Impala is the force that will bring modern psychedelia to the mainstream, or Tame Impala is the force that will reduce modern psychedelia to nothing more than marijuanatinged yacht rock? (all laughing) Clara Scott, Daily Arts Writer: Well, uh, I’m a fan of Tame Impala, but I don’t think that they’re bringing psychedelia back to its former glory. However, I think that they’re doing something really interesting on this album where they’re merging psychedelia with house in a weird way. I would say I’m a fan, but I wouldn’t say that I ascribe to either camp.

Sam Cantie, Music Beat Editor: What do you mean by merging with house, may I ask?

Scott: I think a couple of tracks on this album that are more house and techno inspired than the rock foundation that a lot of Tame Impala’s previous music was influenced by, especially with the use of synthesizers and digital production.

Cantie: I can’t firmly say that I’m in either camp. Like, I’m somewhere in between because well ... let me think of a reason for that ... I just feel like a lot of people listen to Tame Impala without any notion of genre or what that means for the music industry as a whole. It’s more that the entity of Tame Impala is a cool thing to say you listen to at parties,

or like a good conversation sparker.

Diana Yassin, Daily Arts Writer: I would say I’m a very casual fan, and I don’t think I’ve ever been very pumped about stuff that Tame Impala puts out, but whenever I see Tame Impala, I think, “hey, that’s great!’ I think they bring back psychedelia in some ways, like what Sam said, there’s a new sense of meshing new genres, like what you see rap artists doing these days. I don’t think there’s anything pure psychedelic, though.

Drew Gadbois, Daily Arts Writer: If you asked me, like, eight years ago, around Lonerism, probably would have been way more on the side of “they’re doing something really different … ” Cantie: Wouldn’t you have been like 12? (all laughing) Scott: I was the same way!

Gadbois: I think now, and it’s interesting that Clara brought up house, that it’s more synth-wave …

Scott: Interesting.

Gadbois: Especially this album, but also Currents. Like, Kevin Parker definitely dove deep into what he could do with his synthesizers. It kind of strayed a little too far to be called psychedelic in that way, because once you go synth-wave, you’re going into a completely different atmosphere. And, to “flex my genre knowledge,” I also heard some hypnagogic pop, which I, ya know, only know one band that falls under that genre, but ... yeah, I’m probably on the latter side of things here.

Wilson: That’s definitely a round-about way of saying it.

Anish Tamhaney, Special Guest and Daily Film Editor: I

MUSIC ROUNDTABLE

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

think Kevin Parker has something really special, and I think the question on the longevity of Tame Impala’s impact was sort of an open one before this album came out. But I think, if anything, that question has been answered negatively by this album. I think people will not talk about Tame Impala the same way they did a year ago, a couple years ago after this album.

Cantie: Hot takes …

Scott: Hot takes.

Wilson: Whole lot of hot takes …

Yeah, I’m not a fan. I think it’s a lot of yacht rock, and… yeah.

Scott: I think yacht rock is selling it short.

Gadbois: Yeah, Michael McDonald plaaaayed. You can’t compare!

Scott: Yeah, we all love Steely Dan in this house (at Daily Arts).

Q: What is your snap reaction to ‘The Slow Rush’?

Yassin: Why does every song sound the same?

Scott: Oh. well, I don’t think every song sounds the same. I really… aagh (drops phone) ... really liked the first one and “One More Year.”

TRINA PAL

HULU

The ‘High Fidelity’ reboot curates a perfect playlist Rob makes “Top Five” lists.

Movies, villains, musical artists, heartbreaks. Rob has a Top Five for everything, and while looking straight into the camera, she’ll tell them all to you. “High Fidelity” has returned and may very well deserve a place on your next Top Five list.

In a reimagination of the Nick Hornby novel and 2000 film of the same name, Hulu’s new TV series “High Fidelity” updates its recordshop love story to 2020. Starring Zoë Kravitz (“Big Little Lies”) as Rob, this series rewrites its own story with a fresh image of living and dating in New York City.

Rob, in addition to making constant Top Five lists, owns a record store where she works with her friends Simon (David H. Holmes, “Mindhunter”) and Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “Dolemite Is My Name”). After a particularly devastating breakup with number five on her “Top Five Heartbreaks” list, Rob decides to revisit her list and investigate what exactly has prevented her from finding true love.

As Rob reluctantly reopens her past, ex-boyfriend No. 5 Mac (Kingsley Ben-Adir, “Peaky Blinders”) returns from London after moving away the year before and brings a new fiancé back

Read more online at

michigandaily.com

Unorthodox theatre and womanhood in ‘Yerma’ Daily Arts Writer

Daily Arts Writer

be Kevin Parker.

Scott: This project, yeah. (murmuring, probably in agreement) Gadbois: To go off of your point, he sings too much for his own good, he doesn’t let his own production shine when, a lot of times, it really should. It just seems like he’s trying to talk about something when he has nothing to talk about.

Cantie: I watched his triple j interview or whatever, and I got that vibe, one hundred percent. He was saying he listened to no other music while making this album. He was like, “Elevator music set me off” and I …

Scott: Mü-ZAK! Cantie: Yeah, and when they were asking him what’s your infatuation with time and how this album plays with nostalgia and all that stuff, he was like, “I don’t know.

I was kinda just thinking about it.

Kinda what was just on the brain,” while I’m like, “ah I want more from you!”

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW

TV REVIEW

ANYA SOLLER

Cantie: Mine was that all I could hear was Kevin Parker’s voice ... constantly ... over and over again ... you couldn’t discern anything else. (unanimous agreement) Tamhaney: It was a little too similar for my liking. A few times it took risks were either on the singles or the finale, “One More Hour,” which was one of the times I truly felt impressed. I don’t feel like that ending was earned by the rest of the album.

Scott: Yeah, the opening track and the ending track are the best ones that weren’t previously released. Anish is totally right: when he took the risk to break from his norm, those tracks were the best ones, but the rest was just filler.

Wilson: He definitely wanted to make himself the shining star. In an interview, he said that he was ready to fully embrace being a celebrity, and this album is the embodiment of that.

Gadbois: That brings up an interesting point: should certain artists, when they’re supposed to be bands, be the deciding force? I don’t even know … calling it Tame Impala seems disingenuous. It should just

with him. Now confronted with a choice between making amends or wallowing in self-pity, Rob begins the dreaded process of “getting back out there” and opening herself back up to the world.

Unlike previous versions of Rob, Kravitz’s character struggles not only with navigating her love life, but also with her position as a black, queer, small business owner in a

High Fidelity Season 1 Hulu Now Streaming

quickly gentrifying neighborhood.

The New York of “High Fidelity” is the New York often ignored by TV — looking at you, “Sex and the City”and “Girls.”

“High Fidelity” maintains an atmosphere that matches cynicism and social critique equally with lighthearted fun and humor. Much like the original novel and film, “High Fidelity” addresses the topics of unrequited love and unbridled

music snobbery with the snark and occasional earnestness that unites millenials and Gen X. Rob, obsessed with music history and pop culture, presents a paradoxical image of youth that is both lost and found.

Between long rants about the history of the Beatles or the indifference of the universe, “High Fidelity” captures the confusing, soul-sucking process of recovering from bad relationships and allows its audience to enjoy the sadness and absurdity that ensues in the process. Despite Rob’s persistent negativity and self-doubt, “High Fidelity” offers a realistic and, at times, heart-warming response to modern dating culture.

This iteration of the “High Fidelity” story also includes the most important aspect of the original: an absolutely killer soundtrack. Both the book and film relied heavily on music as its language for expressing Rob’s journey, and the Hulu show pulls no punches with its mix of hip hop, disco, punk, French pop, ‘90s R&B and unapologetic guilty-pleasure songs.

In accordance with its source material, the spirit of “High Fidelity” is carefully preserved in its 2020 update. The Hulu series makes significant amendments to the original version but executes its vision with wit and artistic flair. In its first season, “High Fidelity” has already staked its claim for a place in this year’s “Top Five TV Shows.”

“Can we be careful of those bells on the f loor there?” shouted Malcolm Tulip, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre & Drama and director of “Yerma,” in the middle of my interview. His voice reverberated through the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, bouncing off the historic walls with intensity. A student on stage, unfazed, snatched up the golden bundle immediately before turning back to the scene. A Thursday night rehearsal of “Yerma” was in full swing, and gloriously so.

This coming weekend, the Department of Theatre and Drama will present “Yerma,” a story of a young woman struggling to conceive in a small village in rural Spain.

“Yerma” was originally written by beloved Spanish poet and playwright Frederico García Lorca in 1934, two years before he was executed in the Spanish Civil War of 1936.

This performance of “Yerma,” a heartfelt tragedy that questions womanhood, was translated by Jo Clifford, an openly transgender playwright who’s achieved acclaim in the London theatre scene.

“There will be nothing that’s naturalistic in the piece.

Yet, the idea of the piece is still to get to something essentially human,” Tulip said.

He considers “Yerma” to be a blend between traditional theatre and out-of-thebox thinking, preferring to add his own unique f lair to conventional productions.

Tulip also prefers to think of “Yerma” using Lorca’s description: “a tragical poem in six paintings.” Looking out at the rehearsal stage that Thursday night, bustling with a f lurry of students, I began to see what Tulip meant. Art forms are interchangeable and f luid — who’s to say a poem can’t also be a play, as

well as a painting? Paintings, while static, can convey facial expressions and gestures as acutely as a moving body of art can.

Diversity is crucial to the identity of “Yerma.” The cast is composed of 14 women and only three men, a rare scripting in classical theatre.

Many of the cast are native Spanish speakers and all music is composed and performed by students.

“It was important to have a different array of bodies on the stage that are capable and able to do different things,” said Javier Soriano, a sophomore Theatre Performance Acting major playing the shepherd and mailman.

Mallory Avnet, a senior in the BFA acting program, knew she wanted to play Yerma the moment she saw Simone Stone’s production broadcast

by National Theater Live, starring Billie Piper as Yerma.

“I remember seeing it and thinking, I have to. I have to do that,” Avnet said. “The role is so complex, complicated, gritty and messy. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of roles that encompass that for women in theatre.”

“I think everyone’s perspective on Yerma is ever changing, but it’s always very judgmental,” Soriano said.

The same can be said for women all over the world, a gender frequently slandered

for being too proactive or assertive. Every woman can understand the trepidation with which Yerma encounters the world, even if Yerma as a character seems unhinged at times.

“I resonate with her so strangely. This show has brought up things for me that I wasn’t expecting,” Avnet said.

As all good works of art are, “Yerma” is still relevant to our times even though it was written nearly a century ago.

“The creative voice is critical and subversive. We’re in that world now. Especially post-impeachment,” Tulip said.

The most recent budget proposal for 2021, released by the Trump administration weeks ago, proposes cutting the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities completely.

Lorca wrote “Yerma” in the wake of the Spanish Civil War against fascism. Years later, we’re still struggling with the same balance of power. Liberal arts have a reputation of challenging existing, oppressive powers, and “Yerma” is no exception.

“Yerma” isn’t a f lashy, eyecatching play or musical. But often times, the best theatre isn’t. The cast is confident that “Yerma” will touch everyone in some way, minute or grand, when they leave the Mendelssohn.

Yerma Thursday Feb. 20 @ 7:30 p.m.

Friday & Saturday Feb. 21 & 22 @ 8 p.m.

Sunday Feb. 23 @ 2 p.m.

Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre $30 and $24 General Seating, $13 with student ID

Arts

6A — Wednesday, February 19, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

BOOK REVIEW

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

Telling Mrs. Churchill’s story in ‘Lady Clementine’ braids together. We are exposed to all elements of Clementine’s life, and the inclusion of these issues makes her story feel as real as if it was written during these trying times when she was still unsure of how her future would unfold. Benedict is able to tell Clementine’s story knowing the results and impacts of the events discussed without undermining Clementine’s own fears and doubts.

The periods of the book set during WWI and WWII were most gripping for me; the wellresearched historical inclusions

LILLY PEARCE For The Daily

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Her Macabre Highness ROSE SOFIA KAMINSKI For The Daily

Some days, you wake up feeling like a queen of darkness and start searching through your sock drawer for your chandelier earrings and crow companion. On these days, I tend to turn to the music and, more specifically, the music videos of Angel Olsen. One look at the cover of her new album All Mirrors — featuring her severe, eyelinercaked stare emerging from a halo of black fur — and you know this is not a woman to be trifled with.

All Mirrors emphasizes her eccentric style like never before — it uses sweeping string arrangements to emphasize screeched vocals.

The listener is left with an ominous taste in their mouth, but I’m not here to review the album. What really impacts me is the way her music videos for “Lark” and “All Mirrors” correspond so precisely to the music she makes and her overall musical persona. Her music videos are an exact expression of her music (something I’d categorize as “glamorous doom”). They correspond to a very specific mood of mine, or are viewed when I don’t know what mood I’m in. However, according to Spotify, her monthly listener count on their platform

is over a million, recognizing that even this niche state of mind finds an enthusiastic following.

In the video, she bathes in noir, 1940s elegance, the drama emphasized through costume switches. She changes from a

Some days, you wake up feeling like a queen of darkness and start searching through your sock drawer for your chandelier earrings

structured, pleated gown that seems to be made out of white gossamer, to a spartan black dress with a small touch of lace around the waist.

Clad in these black folds, she comes face to face with another version of herself dressed in an enveloping black outfit and a dramatic crown

with pieces of metal shooting like sun rays from her head. Finally, she slowly spins in a glittery lightcolored dress that completely covers her body in shaking, shimmering fringe. She emerges from a crowd of grabbing hands that hide her for a moment with a triumphant air, carrying herself tall and proud.

Yet, her costume changes, from light to dark then back again, seems to reflect something within herself.

I’ve always been very attuned to clothing, and attempt to dress in a way that expresses something about myself. As such, watching an emotional transition of her’s expressed through clothing strikes a chord with me. As her Spotify bio says, “this record is about owning up to your darkest side.” She can be powerful while accepting both her good and bad sides.

Somehow, this video is sparkly and spectacular while also being goth and dark. But, even though it is severe in its lack of color, it also provides a sense of comfort to the viewer. The brilliant self-confidence and victorious rebirth-type imagery incites similar feelings in the viewer in a forceful empathetic reaction.

It is not tailored to any one specific gender, but is an empowerment message to all.

Read more online at

michigandaily.com

“Lady Clementine” is one of Marie Benedict’s righteous novels focused on unearthing the untold stories of prominent women in history. All of her books center on hidden historical stories of women; this fiction in particular concentrates on the life of Clementine Churchill, the wife of well-recognized British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The novel follows Clementine and her relationship with Winston closely, shifting tones from World War I, to the interwar period, to World War II. Using Clementine’s firstperson perspective, Benedict brings her protagonist to life through her intelligent remarks, quick wit and observant nature.

Marie Benedict Benedict paints Clementine Soundbooks Landmark as incredibly human with her candor and the inclusion of Jan. 7, 2020 self-doubt that shapes both the book and Clementine’s overall life. Despite her insecurities, Clementine grows increasingly confident in her attempts to stand up for what is right, no matter the consequence. Her true notable role in the British Parliament of Benedict are enough to pique is unveiled within this novel; interest, though the usage of the Clementine is much more than perspective of someone as crucial just a wife to Mr. Churchill, a yet unknown as Clementine permitted these sentiment almost immediately Churchill familiar and tragic retellings clarified by Clementine herself.

Her story is told in such of war to be told in a new way. a personal manner that the It was strange reading about book reads as if it were one the events of these wars from of Clementine’s resurrected the perspective of a woman personal diaries. Her struggles since the view of women and as a mother and the strains in her their plight are often left out of marriage are only heightened by history textbooks, along with the the tension of war, the pressure perspectives of other minority of the political atmosphere groups; regularly ignored by her weighing heavily on her and own husband and the majority of Winston’s shoulders.

This parliament, Clementine makes it constantly pushes the book her mission to fight for the rights Sudoku Syndication forward with the several layers of of these groups and encourage a conflict that Benedict beautifully greater consciousness of all the

Lady Clementine

people involved and affected by the policies of those with power.

Nevertheless, her lack of power, especially in the face of general resentment from other political figures, diminishes her efforts. The frustration she faces routinely sends Clementine into sicknesses that cause her to leave home in order to recuperate.

This cycle repeats itself several times during the novel and leaves Clementine with the same anxieties: feeling like a bad wife and mother for leaving; dreading a return to the draining duties required of her to keep the house in order, take care of her family and continue her work as a political correspondent. Though understandable, her frequent trips away from her family and the resulting consequences slow the plot, taking away from the otherwise eventful and suspenseful novel.

The interwar period is not as strong overall in comparison to Benedict’s tellings of the gruesome events of the war; there is less happening in Clementine’s life and the lack of action encouraged her repetitive spirals. She is a powerful force during the wars, called the “secret weapon” by Winston as she takes on an essential role for the advancement of Britain and the execution of her husband’s demands. Even so, the “secret weapon” nickname coined by Winston is not as rewarding for me as it is to Clementine. If anything, it is an accurate label for the insufficient recognition Clementine receives for her pivotal influence.

Benedict’s goal of highlighting the significance of Clementine was well-achieved. The blend of Clementine’s personal and diplomatic endeavors enables an engaging atmosphere, especially as we enter the tense political discourse during the wars where http://www.sudokus Clementine’s most vivid presence is portrayed.

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Release Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Low poker pair 5 Mus. key with three sharps 9 Nigerian seaport 14 Greet with fanfare 15 Pizza Quick sauce brand 16 “You’ve got a friend” 17 First name in scat 18 Region where broadcast reception may be poor 20 Mix 22 Former Soviet leader Brezhnev 23 Progress at a faster rate 26 Prefix with tourism 29 Navigation technology, briefly 30 Brooding genre 31 “Spartacus” Oscar winner 34 Bowler’s pickup 36 Amtrak express 37 Army rank last conferred in 1950 42 Breakout game developer 43 Pool triangles 44 Sent a message, old-style 47 Rock’s Ocasek 48 Grow older 51 Thorn __, former Virgin Records owner 52 Riot control weapon 55 Arizona MLBers 58 Dig find 59 Automatic functions in most cars, and what can be found in this puzzle’s circles 63 “Ciao!”

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DOWN 1 Roald Dahl novel adapted as a 2016 Disney film 2 Big hit 3 Gretzky’s first NHL team 4 Word on the street?

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37 Inevitable end 38 Tabloid couple 39 Stamp, as a passport 40 Teri of “Tootsie” 41 Vaping device, familiarly 45 Mark on metal 46 Puck-handling skill 48 Shining brightly

49 Instrument for The Romeros, a classical quartet 50 Pitch tents 53 Regarding 54 Tuned to 56 Very dry, as Champagne 57 Nile vipers 59 H.S. dropout’s test 60 __ de cologne 61 Scone go-with 62 Surreptitious

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Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 — 7A

Fatigue catching up to Michigan Hutchins hoping for improvement JACK KINGSLEY Daily Sports Writer

minutes as well as they had, and she would have to figure out how to keep them fresh.

“We tried to utilize some timeouts tonight,” Barnes Arico said after a Feb. 6 win over Purdue. “I think we made them stay seated until the end of the timeout. Sometimes we run out there a little bit quicker. But tonight we were saying ‘Nope.

Stay here until that horn blows and rest your legs.’ ” While Brown and Johnson both stepped up over the sixgame stretch and the Wolverines were playing as well as they had all season, Sunday against the Scarlet Knights the injuries and fatigue finally caught up with them.

Brown scored just four points on 1-for-9 shooting — 1-for6 from deep — in 31 minutes.

Johnson scored just three points on 1-for-8 shooting in 36 minutes. Behind these performances, Michigan played its worst game of the season. It shot just 30 percent from the floor and got out-rebounded by Rutgers, issues only magnified by a less-than-full-strength Naz Hillmon totaling five points and four rebounds.

“There’s definitely a fatigue,” Barnes Arico said Sunday.

“When you look at the minutes that we’ve accumulated this week, and haven’t really had a day off, and I just think it was the wear of Rutgers too. It’s a credit to them, too. We couldn’t get

anything to get going offensively, and then rebounding, they really dominated on the glass, which last time we beat them on the glass.”

The Wolverines could have used Robbins’s ability to get tough baskets when not much else is working for the offense.

They could have used Rauch’s energy to motivate them at a time when they didn’t have much.

For the first time all season, it was clear that Michigan missed Robbins and Rauch.

Going forward, while Michigan’s schedule gets easier, the team doesn’t have much time to recover between games.

With just two days off between Sunday’s loss and a Wednesday night game against Illinois, the Wolverines don’t have much time to rest up and get their legs back. Hillmon doesn’t have much time to get back to 100 percent.

When Robbins and Rauch went down, Michigan knew fatigue would become an issue.

For a while, the Wolverines won despite it, but Sunday showed that they can’t always rely on players like Brown and Johnson to play nearly 40 minutes of high-quality basketball.

And if Michigan’s season is going to end in a tournament bid, it is going to come despite a lack of depth. Because with Robbins and Rauch not coming back, the problem is likely not going away any time soon.

Prior to Sunday, the Michigan women’s basketball team had lost just two of its six games without senior forward Kayla Robbins — both to No. 18 Northwestern, both by single digits.

Without sophomore guard Danielle Rauch, who suffered a hand injury in practice three games after Robbins went down, the Wolverines had won two of three.

But with the absence of Robbins and Rauch, almost every other player on the roster had to play significantly more minutes than they had before. While many players were able to handle playing more for a while, fatigue clearly hurt Michigan in a 62-41 loss to Rutgers on Sunday.

Junior forward Hailey Brown played over 35 minutes in three of the first six games without Robbins, and only played less in the others due to foul trouble.

Prior to Robbins’ injury, she rarely ever played 30 minutes.

But despite playing more than she ever had, Brown was just as effective, shooting 37 percent from 3-point range over this stretch.

Senior guard Akienreh Johnson averaged 33.5 minutes over the six games, a six minute increase over her per-game average with Robbins and Rauch healthy. And with her uptick in minutes, she was playing her best basketball of the season, averaging 13.8 points and 8.3 rebounds per game, all while guarding opponents’ biggest perimeter threat.

“My role has stepped up where I have to bring more energy,”Johnson said after a Jan. 26 win over Rutgers. “I have to bring the steals that (Robbins) got, bring the charges that she got, defend the best player like she did, get offensive rebounds like she did.”

But Barnes Arico knew that the players wouldn’t always be MILES MACKLIN/Daily able to handle playing so many The Michigan women’s basketball team lost to Rutgers, 62-41, on Sunday.

NICHOLAS STOLL Daily Sports Writer

Michigan is perfect — in record, at least.

The Wolverines are 9-0, ranked No. 8 in the country and have outscored their opponents by a total of 25 runs. Three of the nine wins have come against ranked opponents. At first glance, the numbers are impressive; signs of a team playing elite softball, even against high tier opponents.

But it’s not good enough.

Not for coach Carol Hutchins.

The team needs to improve.

And it has plenty to improve upon, according to its coach.

“I didn’t think we were very sharp,” Hutchins said.

“We missed at least four or five opportunities that were all but routine pop f lys. And bunts. We made a couple errors there.”

The miscues were mainly attributed to lack of communication and lack of experience. Michigan has a new catcher, a new second baseman, a new first baseman and a new third baseman. On top of that, juniors Lou Allan and Taylor Bump are splitting time at first and third base.

The only returning starting infielder is junior shortstop Natalia Rodriguez.

The remedy to the inexperience: live situations.

Hutchins noted that live drills have been an integral part of practice this week to address the errors in the field.

They forced the players into communicating and making plays together, gearing them up for the upcoming weekend.

While fighting through the growing pains, the infield has looked to Rodriguez, its pillar of consistency.

“I’m going to have a lot of voice in the infield,” Rodriguez said. “Taking charge on plays and stuff like that. Some of my teammates say I’m like a

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Junior shortstop Natalia Rodriguez is Michigan’s only returning infield starter.

common presence, so I try to maintain that on the field.”

As a member of Hutchins’s designated leadership team, this is expected of Rodriguez.

Notching nine putouts and 11 assists in Michigan’s first nine games with a 1.000 fielding percentage, she leads through her play as well as her voice.

Knowing this, Rodriguez takes it upon herself to help her teammates improve.

“I look to push my teammates,” Rodriguez said.

“It’s good for a competitive drive. I want the people next to me to excel in their game.”

While Rodriguez helped to answer the team’s fielding problems, Hutchins was also working on the other side of the ball.

“I think offensively we keep trying to get better,” Hutchins said. “I don’t think we’re hitting as well as we need to hit. We let a lot of pitches get away from us.”

The struggle has led to run droughts and close games for Michigan. Four of its nine

wins were only by one run.

One of those was a 1-0 win against Fresno State in the ninth inning, a game that could easily have been lost without dominant performances from junior left-hander Meghan Beaubien and sophomore right-hander Alex Storako.

Hutchins believes the Wolverines need to improve every pitch.

She’s preached her one pitch mentality to her team the entire season.

She’s materialized the mentality in practice, having the batters take single pitch at bats. A ball or a hit? You win.

Anything else? You’re out.

The Wolverines are staring down the pipe at matchups against five top 25 teams in the next two weeks, including the No.1 and No. 2 teams — UCLA and Washington, respectively.

As Hutchins sees it, Michigan will have to be better.

The path to this improvement is known throughout the team.

“You’ll hear Hutch say it over and over again,” Bump said.

“One pitch softball, one pitch softball, one pitch softball.”

You hear Hutch say it over and over again. One pitch softball.

Clay’s six goals lead ‘M’ to 16-8 win Team effort leads Wolverines to win SAM BERNARDI

JOSH TAUBMAN

It took nearly the entire first quarter, but once Michigan’s offense clicked, there was no turning back.

The Wolverines had mustered only two goals for a majority of the first quarter until they finally erupted for four in the final 80 seconds.

Their hot start propelled them to a 16-goal outburst. Led by dominant performances from the attack line, the Michigan men’s lacrosse team (2-1) was able to cruise to its second victory of the year, throttling Canisius (0-3), 16-8.

Junior attackman Kevin Mack — who recorded a first quarter hat trick — ended with four goals on the day. Freshman attackman Josh Zawada has continued to excel early on in his career as he produced two goals and four assists. Zawada is now tied for the team lead in points with sophomore attackman Bryce Clay.

Clay, who boosted his season total to 13 points, had no problems finding the back of the cage either as he netted six goals. This performance not only set his career high, but matched the Michigan record for goals in a single game.

Despite his successes, he has his eyes set on bigger things.

“It was pretty cool,” Clay said. “But I’m gonna focus on the team win.”

That focus was exactly what allowed the Wolverines to dictate every facet of the game. They were set up with a barrage of opportunities early on, largely due to their ferocity in the riding game. The Golden Griffins managed to clear only two of their six chances and were plagued by turnovers.

“The ride really triggered our offense,” Michigan coach Kevin Conry said. “We weren’t clicking on all cylinders in the first quarter, and then a couple good rides were able to fuel the offense.”

Canisius was able to get on the board early in the second and cut the lead to 7-2 by a pair

One step at a time.

It was a simple approach but it was all that sophomore Maddie Mariani needed to propel herself to a career best performance on the beam. She earned a 9.900 for her routine, but none of it came as a shock to her coach.

“Those routines I see from her in the gym every single day,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “I was just glad that she was able to get up there and compete.”

And it wasn’t just Mariani.

All the Wolverines stepped up to lead the No. 7 Michigan women’s gymnastics team (7-0 overall, 5-0 Big Ten) to a 196.800-195.975 win over Iowa (4-6, 1-4) Friday night.

“This team has just been focused all year,” Plocki said.

“Overall, I’m happy with our performance.”

Michigan led off on the uneven bars and got out to an early lead, 49.250-48.875. They were paced by freshman Sierra Brooks, who earned a 9.900 — her best mark in any of the four events. Brooks compiled a 39.475 to take the all around

For The Daily

Daily Sports Writer

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Attackman Bryce Clay tied a Michigan record with six goals in Tuesday’s win.

of goals by Mathi Boissonneault.

This run was immediately put to rest by back-to-back goals

by Zawada to Clay, giving the Wolverines a commanding 9-2 lead.

They would extend the lead to 11-3 and head to the locker room in a comfortable position.

One of the biggest factors behind their overwhelming first half was senior face-off specialist Matt Dellacroce. He won a remarkable nine of 10 at the center x and scooped up six groundballs before the break.

While Dellacroce was happy with those accomplishments, perhaps the most memorable one came in the first quarter when he buried his first career goal.

“It’s incredible, it’s a long time coming,” Dellacroce said.

“But, I just have to credit that to all the practice we’ve done.”

The face-off group has been instrumental in his success this season.

“We’re all super close,” Dellacroce said. “But when it comes down to it in practice, we’re probably one of the most competitive groups on the field.”

Michigan would tack on five more goals in the third quarter.

The Zawada to Clay connection remained unstoppable and senior midfielder Christian

Ford contributed a career-high two goals.

By the start of the fourth, the Wolverines were in cruise control. Their 16-5 lead allowed Conry to incorporate some of his less experienced players.

Canisius would outscore Michigan 3-0 in the final period, but the game had been long decided.

Even though the Wolverines were comfortable throughout, there is still room for growth.

“I just think playing for 60 full minutes,” Conry said.

“Especially a young team, we have to keep the same intensity and the same tempo throughout an entire 60 minutes.”

This will be crucial for the Wolverines moving forward as the schedule ramps up.

The team faces national powerhouses Yale and Notre Dame in the non-conference and will have to go through the gauntlet that is the Big Ten. “Not letting up off the gas pedal,” Clay said. “Especially playing in the Big Ten, it’s gonna be a dogfight the entire game.”

Until then, Michigan has its eyes set on a date with Merrimack this Saturday.

These early tests will serve as building blocks for the team and its young core.

A couple good rides were able to fuel the offense.

title, her third of the season.

The team moved to the vault and continued to put the pressure on. A trifecta of Wolverines earned scores of 9.875 to share the vault title.

Among them was sophomore Abby Heiskell, who scored a career best in her first vault routine since the opening meet.

Michigan remained ahead 98.525-97.875 through two events.

The Wolverines headed to the floor in what turned out to be their strongest showing of the day. Freshman Gabby Wilson danced and tumbled her way to a 9.900 to lead the field.

Michigan claimed four of the top five finishes on floor and had an overall score of 49.300.

The Wolverines extended their lead to 147.825-146.800 as they switched to their final event — the beam.

“Before beam we had a team meeting,” Mariani said. “We all felt super confident going into (it).”

It was there that Mariani thrived. She blew past her previous career high of 9.875 and flipped her way to a 9.900.

Her approach was the same as always. This time, the execution was just better.

“I didn’t do anything differently.” Mariani said. “I just felt more confident going into it.”

Her performance sealed the deal for Michigan and the Wolverines took home the win, 196.800-195.975.

They remain undefeated and took down another Big Ten opponent, now turning their attention to the Big Five meet next weekend, where they’ll look to finish unbeaten in conference play for a second year in a row.

“We love our record of dominance in the Big Ten,” Plocki said. “We want to keep that string going.”

Added Mariani: “I’m feeling really great about the team.

We’re definitely coming for that regular season title.”

We’re definitely coming for that regular season title.

ASHA LEWIS/Daily

Sophomore Maddie Mariani earned a career-best 9.900 on the beam Friday night, helping Michigan defeat Iowa.

Sports

8A — Wednesday, February 19, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Injuries pave way for improved depth Mann thrives in sweep of Spartans ROHAN KUMAR Daily Sports Writer

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily

Sophomore forward Brandon Johns, Jr. has been part of a revamped bench for Michigan in recent weeks.

ABBY SNYDER

Daily Sports Writer

At the beginning of the Michigan men’s basketball team’s season, roster depth was a serious question swirling around these Wolverines. It seemed as if three players — junior forward Isaiah Livers, senior point guard Zavier Simpson and senior center Jon Teske — would have to carry the team.

That hasn’t exactly gone according to plan.

Livers was sidelined with a groin injury in late December and reaggravated it against Illinois a month later. On Sunday against Indiana, he appeared to injure his ankle — he’s currently wearing a boot as a precaution, and it’s unclear whether he’ll play at Rutgers on Wednesday.

Simpson was given a one-game suspension at the beginning of the month for a traffic violation.

Teske has been slumping lately, putting up double-digits just once in the last five games and shooting 30 percent.

Early in the season, any one of these could have been a major problem for Michigan.

Now, while missing production from one of these three is still less than ideal, the Wolverines have figured out a way to get by — and then some, thanks to their bench play.

“Now that the season has progressed, and we’ve dealt with injuries and suspension, guys have to step up,” Michigan coach Juwan Howard said.

“That allowed guys like Brandon Johns, David DeJulius, and others — Austin Davis, too — to have a larger role with the team. I’ve felt we were deep from the beginning.”

To bolster the interior offense amid Teske’s struggles, Michigan has turned to his fellow senior center, Austin Davis. Though this is the first season in which Davis has seen significant playing time, he’s been making his presence known in the last few games.

“Big Country is hooping,” Livers said, grinning, last week, referencing Davis’ nickname.

Davis notched nine points against both Indiana and Northwestern and a careerhigh 11 against Ohio State at the beginning of the month.

He’s also usually good for somewhere between three and five rebounds in around 10 minutes a game.

“He’s improved so much,” Teske said.

“He’s always been there. He works hard every day, and you just want to get him attempts here and there.

“I’m so proud of him and happy for him. To be able to get his chance now — he’s been taking with it and running with it. These last couple games, he’s been our sparkplug. I’m so proud of how hard he’s worked and what he’s done so far.”

When Livers has been sidelined, sophomore forward Brandon Johns, Jr. has stepped into the starting role. It was a bit of an adjustment, but Johns has been finding his stride lately.

He scored 14 points against the Hoosiers on Sunday and put up a career-high 20 two weeks ago against Rutgers in New York, a performance Michigan will hope he can repeat when the Wolverines travel to Piscataway to face the Scarlet Knights again on Wednesday.

Howard has been preaching confidence to Johns all season, and the results have been clear in Johns’s game lately. It’s in the way he carries himself, both on and off the court: shoulders squared, head high, eyes clear.

He’s self-assured, and he has every reason to be. He’s taking more shots, and more of those shots are falling.

“He’s been solid all year, man,” Howard said after the Indiana game on Sunday. “He has one of the prettiest jump shots. I wish I could shoot the ball back in the day like Brandon.

He’s another guy that comes in practice and is always trying to look for ways to improve. We’ve

seen the guy, this season, he’s just blossoming, game after game.

“With this energy and effort, the way how he attacks the glass, with his force, his athleticism, and now he’s flying around, being active, that’s him. That’s who he is. He’s our energizer.”

Of the three starters, Simpson perhaps least requires a capable backup. It’s not uncommon for him to play the entire game, or close to it.

But that hasn’t been happening as much lately, as sophomore guard David DeJulius has taken on a bigger role — he started at Nebraska when Simpson was suspended — and more minutes; he’s averaging a little over 20 minutes per game.

DeJulius is making the most of that time. He’s finding opportunities for himself, putting up 10 points against Michigan State while facing Cassius Winston, one of the best point guards in college basketball. But in true point guard form, he’s also starting to find them for his teammates; he had seven assists at Northwestern last week.

“I’m trying to make improvements each and every day,” DeJulius said. “Being more confident in that leadership role, just in case (Simpson) goes down, or gets in foul trouble, or for any reason, it’s just being able to be prepared for the moment. I feel like being able to make plays not only for myself but for my teammates has always been my game.”

Obviously, Michigan would like to have Simpson, Livers and Teske at their best. But going forward, if that’s not the case for whatever reason, the Wolverines are in good hands.

This bench, shaped by the adversity of a midseason slump, is more than prepared to bolster the team going forward.

I wish I could shoot a ball back in the day like (Johns).

Monday night at Little Caesars Arena, Michigan coach Mel Pearson took his seat at the podium of the media room and got right to it. Not long before, the Michigan hockey team raised a trophy in celebration of a three-goal victory over Michigan State at the Duel in the D. But with the red carpet rolled and put away, Pearson became critical and turned to his team’s fortune.

“I’ll just start off by saying that I thought we were fortunate tonight,” Pearson said. “I didn’t think that was one of our better efforts, but we found a way to win the game.”

And behind the Wolverines’ fortune was Strauss Mann.

Despite Michigan’s 4-1 win, the sophomore goaltender’s stellar performance was critical. He faced 32 shots and saved all but one. There were moments Monday where it seemed he could stop just about anything.

With under seven minutes to go in the second period, the Spartan’s defenseman Cole Krygier fired the puck at the left side of the net. The low slot was crowded, yet Mann blocked the shot. The puck immediately bounced to forward Brody Stevens near the right side of the crease.

A goal looked inevitable, as Stevens stared at the gaping right side. But just as Stevens swiped his stick at the puck, Mann fully extended his left blocker to deny the goal.

And then a few minutes later Mann was at it again, this time with an even more sublime save.

Forward Nicolas Müller got the puck at the far right side of the low slot. Mann hovered at the right edge of the crease, waiting for the shot. When it came though, sophomore forward Garret Van Wyhe

extended his stick to def lect it.

The puck slid to forward Josh Nodler at the other side of the slot. Because of the sudden def lection, Mann was totally out of position. Everyone awaited the buzzer, but it never came. As soon as Nodler released his shot, Mann dove across and blocked it with his stick.

The puck then ricocheted off his own helmet and headed back towards the net. It clanked off the right post and was just about to slide past the red line when Mann, who lay f lat on his chest after the initial dive, and sophomore forward Nolan Moyle cleared it away.

“Strauss Mann making a hell of a save for us,” senior forward Jake Slaker said. “So that’s good to see.”

Added senior forward Will Lockwood: “I don’t know how it stayed out, honestly. He does that at practice day in and day out, so you know, we’re kind of used to it at this point. But you see it live like that, it’s pretty spectacular.”

Mann’s .935 overall save rate has him ranked sixth in the nation. As one would expect, that average has had its variation. He started the new year hot, saving 95.8 percent of shots through five conference games — the series against Notre Dame and Penn State

plus a Friday game against Ohio State.

Through the Saturday game against the Buckeyes plus the following weekend’s series against Wisconsin, Mann struggled a bit. He gave up 10 goals over those three contests, saving just 90.3 percent of shots.

In the most recent series against the Spartans, though, Mann was back at the pinnacle of his game and notched a stellar .966 save rate. And it came at a crucial time.

Pearson mentioned that Michigan State arrived in Detroit the night before, giving the Spartans time for a practice skate to be fully prepared come game time. Michigan, on the other hand, did not come early — some of the players were even taking tests Monday morning. Thus, switching into a hockey mindset became more difficult. Perhaps a result of this, the Wolverines struggled with puck possession at times during the game, especially on the defensive end.

They were all the more fortunate to have Mann there to back them up and lead them to a signature sweep.

“This has been his best performance of the second half tonight,” Pearson said after Monday’s game. “And we needed him.”

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily

Sophomore goaltender Strauss Mann has excelled in Michigan’s hot stretch.

Hajjar shows value in quality start LILY ISRAEL

Daily Sports Writer

As Steven Hajjar boarded the bus for the half hour drive between Salt River Fields and the Phoenix Municipal Stadium, his adrenaline was pumping and his nerves were racing.

The left-handed redshirt freshman had waited a year for his first start after a knee injury sidelined him last season, but on Saturday he was given only 30 minutes to prepare.

Because the Michigan baseball team made an already challenging week even harder by adding a game against then-No. 3 Arizona State, the Wolverines were forced to expedite their pregame routine and skip their scouting report.

“I was waiting a long time to go out there and play with the guys,” Hajjar said. “(I) got to watch all last year all the success.

It was great to finally be a part of it and be out there with the guys. Obviously Arizona State is a really good team.”

The odds were stacked against Hajjar. He was facing a team with some of the top hitters in the country in his first collegiate start while the defense behind him was about to play in the second game of a double header.

Hajjar was nervous — and rightfully so.

But the lefty delivered a performance that put all of his prior nerves at ease.

In his first opportunity to prove his worth and show his potential to earn a spot in the

rotation, Hajjar pitched six innings and did not allow a single run.

After the Sun Devils got three quick outs in the top of the first, Hajjar struck out the first two batters he faced — two up, two down.

Even more impressive given who the second batter was — Arizona State’s junior Spencer Torkelson. He is also known as the No. 1 college prospect in the 2020 MLB draft, according to Baseball America, and a twotime unanimous All-American.

The Pac 12 home run leader from a year ago struck out swinging.

Arizona State’s biggest threat was neutralized.

All said and done, Torkelson would go 0-for-3 on the day with a walk.

With the help of what Hajjar described as an “absolute brick wall” of a defense behind him, the first inning was over. The nerves were lessened and Hajjar began to grow more and more comfortable with each inning.

Despite growing more relaxed throughout his outing, his game plan remained steady and simple.

“I just try and go out there and throw strikes as best I can and compete,” Hajjar said.

A simple game plan, but one that he followed with great accuracy. Over the course of six innings, Hajjar faced 23 batters

and only threw 87 pitches. That’s good for an average of 3.78 pitches per batter.

After losing starting pitchers Tommy Henry and Karl Kauffmann last year — putting a major hold in the pitching rotation — Hajjar proved that he has the ability to get outs against some of the best hitters in the country in a high-pressure environment.

The biggest question coming in to the season is replacing the second spot.

Hajjar isn’t expected to become Michigan’s ace, a spot most likely saved for junior right-hander Jeff Criswell, but he showed on Saturday that he has the abilities to be a solid weekend starter and possibly become the No. 2 guy.

The first inning went as well as anyone could have expected. But the true impact of Hajjar’s debut came when he faced adversity in the later innings. In the second inning, allowing a walk and a hit with two outs, Hajjar earned his third K of the day, stranding two runners on base.

In the fifth inning, with the Wolverines leading 2-0, Hajjar allowed two singles and a sacrifice bunt to advance both runners into scoring position with only one out. However, the Sun Devils were unable to make strong contact with the ball. The next two batters flew out to end the inning.

Hajjar’s seven strikeouts and three hits propelled him to win his first Big Ten Freshman of the Week and Big Ten Pitcher of the Week awards. His four pitch repertoire of low 90 MPH fastballs, slider, circle changes and curveballs proved to be nearly unhittable for some of the best batters in the country.

With only 30 minutes to prepare, Hajjar couldn’t have asked for a better start. There’s no telling what his ceiling might be given more time to prepare.

I was waiting a long time to go out there and play.

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Erik Bakich received a boost with Steven Hajjar’s quality start Saturday.

Was Michigan an answer to the ‘Jewish Problem’?

HUGH GRANNUM/Bentley Historical Library

Hill Passover seder on April 1, 1942

statement T H E M I C H I G A N DA I LY | F E B R UA RY 1 9, 2020

2B Wednesday, February 19, 2020 // The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | FE B RUA RY 19, 2020

Managing Statement Editor Magdalena Mihaylova Deputy Editors Emily Stillman Marisa Wright

Designers Liz Bigham Kate Glad

Photo Editor Keemya Esmael Editor in Chief Elizabeth Lawrence

Copy Editors Madison Gagne Sadia Jiban

Associate Editor Reece Meyhoefer

Managing Editor Erin White

Am I a memory hoarder?

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n March 2019, I found a YouTube video titled “How to Remember Your Life” that proposed the unthinkable: The only way to remember your life is to delete your photos. Instead of keeping hundreds of vacation photos, you whittle them down to a few and turn your camera roll into a highlight reel. Each photo becomes more precious than before, a real documentation of your memories rather than a dump of disconnected moments.

I felt increasingly anxious as the video progressed. I’ve accumulated thousands of photos and videos over the years, documenting every fleeting moment, and even the thought of deleting them seemed insurmountable to me. It would feel like erasing my own life.

Deleting photos felt like cleaning my bedroom as a child when I hoarded anything that resembled a memory — even if it was a broken doll part or an expired gift card. Once in fifth grade, when my floor was covered by at least four layers of clothes, my mom marched upstairs with a trash bag and waded through the mess to throw things out. Years-old receipts, paper snowflakes and scrap fabric all mercilessly went in the bag. I sobbed and told her I was saving them for something, though I wasn’t sure what, and wrote a scathing entry in my diary: “My life is ruined.”

Though I believed I’d grown out of my hoarding phase, finding that YouTube video made me realize I’m still in it.

Even today, I would feel as if my life was ruined if I lost my pictures. But it isn’t just about the photos, just as my hoarding as a child wasn’t about keeping paper scraps — it was the fear I’d forget the moments associated with them. It wasn’t about the objects, it was about the memories. think I’m a memory hoarder. This means I collect memories like inanimate objects, clinging to them out of fear of forgetting my life. I need to document everything as accurately as possible in case I want to experience it again — otherwise, my life would feel like a collection of single-use moments, waiting to be thrown away after living them just one time.

I’m a photographer, which makes it much easier for me to hoard memories. I can capture moments closely to how I experienced them, find the right angle and edit them to match reality, then re-visit the photos as many times as I’d like. I regret the shots I don’t take if I have the chance.

But my position creates a paradox: Does taking a picture help you remember a moment, or does it distract you from experiencing it?

I lived in Costa Rica this past summer and brought my professional camera everywhere, including when my friends and I went horseback riding. As our horses twisted their way up the green hills of Monteverde, I gripped my camera, leaning back in my saddle and steadying my hand despite the gallop of my horse. I put my eye to the viewfinder and searched for the perfect angle.

When we got to the top of the hill, I got about two minutes with the full, magnificent view — and spent the entire

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BY HANNAH BRAUER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST time taking photos. I was desperate to capture the scene correctly, to finally get to enjoy the ride, because the only way I can stay in a moment is if I know I’ve captured it already. But by the time I got the shot, the ride was over.

By now, I’ve spent more time looking at the photos from horseback riding than I did actually experiencing it. Though I can still picture the scene from how my eyes authentically saw it, those memories are slowly being replaced with the photo representations. My fear of forgetting, it seems, might actually stop me from remembering. n the 2012 movie adaptation of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Walter Mitty finds Sean O’Connell, a traveling film photographer, searching for a rare snow leopard in the Himalayas. When it finally walks in view of his lens, Sean leans away from the viewfinder.

Walter asks when he’ll take the photo.

“Sometimes I don’t,” Sean responds. “If I like a moment ... I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.” The leopard passes without any documentation.

The scene frustrates me each time I watch this movie. Isn’t there a way to capture the moment and still experience it? Doesn’t he want proof?

Still, I identify with his distaste for the distraction — I wish I could have taken photos in Costa Rica without having to sacrifice the experience of those moments.

I’ve dreamed of the day when I can take a picture with just my eyes, like the episode of “Black Mirror” where humans have cameras in their brains. In the show, though, this leads to their downfall as they obsessively watch their lives over again, to the point where it’s difficult to justify creating new memories.

Though we don’t have the technology to make this a reality yet, it seems as though the concept is already a trend — we aren’t shooting on film with 24 shots to a roll, but instead, we have phones with increasingly high-quality cameras, connected to the seemingly-infinite storage of the internet. We have GoPro travel videos and 20-minute daily vlogs generating quick clicks for influencers. The urge to capture is always there because the bounds are limitless for what we can remember.

I began using social media as a way to create a highlight reel of my favorite moments without having to sort through my camera roll. But now, it’s transformed into something different; memories become capital to be liked and shared, or to appear on Timehop and be reminded of past memories. In a way, it isn’t just the camera that distracts you, but reviewing those moments is also another distraction.

Maybe memory hoarding is just the norm now, and it’s

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PHOTO COURTESY OF HANNAH BRAUER

better to miss some moments if it means you’ll have a digital archive of your life. Or maybe it’s just the new nostalgia, more enticing to capture than not, and we’ll never know how much our digital memories will paint over the analog. uring my last week in Costa Rica, I had to leave my camera behind when I went snorkeling in a coral reef. I remember almost every minute of those two hours swimming with my face in the water, drifting past sea urchins and vibrant fish as if I was part of their habitat. I was immersed — the only filter between my eyes and the water was my goggles, not the viewfinder of a camera. I was free to absorb the scene without inhibition.

Though I don’t have a photo to relive the experience, it’s still a vivid memory. Maybe I should have tried to bring my GoPro, or maybe it’s better to let the memory live and die organically. Sometimes you want the distraction of the camera, and sometimes you have to let the leopard walk by.

Either way, the best memories will always find their way in.

You just have to let them.

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Wednesday, February 19, 2020 // The Statement

3B 3B

Paradise and reality aren’t so far apart

BY ANNIE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

Content warning: This piece contains graphic descriptions of gender-based and sexual violence. er mother said she was sorry that she hadn’t been there to protect her daughter, and that, of all the places she had warned her about, the post office wasn’t one of them,” read a news report of her death.

On Sept. 4, 2019, about 2,000 people dressed in black were gathered in the University of Cape Town’s plaza.

Directly below Devil’s Peak, one of Cape Town’s most iconic features, the space usually hums with students eating lunch or taking a break between classes. And if they’re lucky, the sun is still high over the mountain. That day was sunny — I remember because I’d worn my only black pants and they stuck to my legs — but on that September afternoon, the plaza was the site of a vigil.

Uyinene Mrwetyana was a first year at UCT who, like thousands of women across the world, was a victim of femicide, or the killing of a woman on account of her gender. She’d gone to a post office to pick up a package and instead was locked in the office, raped by the post office worker, beaten with a set of postal scales when she wouldn’t stop screaming, then hidden in the trunk of a car until her burned body was dumped in a township outside the city.

I’m not sure I have ever written a more horrible sentence. Maybe this one is worse: This kind of violence is not uncommon in South Africa and elsewhere.

The statistics are horrifying. South Africa has one of the highest rates of rape in the world, and it ranks fourth, out of 183 countries, for femicide. About every three hours, a woman is murdered within the country’s borders.

Uyinene — or just Nene, as her friends called her — had been missing since Aug. 24. Someone had posted flyers around campus, and I wish I could say that I’d done something when I saw them — that I wasn’t just another person who glanced at them and moved on. But I was.

The school sent out a string of emails over a few days: It was confirmed that Nene was the victim, that memorial services would be held on campus and later, when the administration realized how angry the student body was, classes would be canceled the rest of the week.

My literature tutor, UCT’s equivalent of a GSI, emailed us: “Tomorrow’s schedule has officially been suspended by Prof.

Phakeng. Take this time to mourn, heal, and protest if you are able to. As students of the Humanities, you are in a position to bear witness to and take action against human rights violations. I encourage you all to engage, in whatever capacity you are able to, in the events planned in Uyinene Mryetwana’s memory tomorrow.

“Take care of yourselves and be safe, especially if you are going to Parliament.

Wear sunscreen, bring plenty of water and

H

ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT

snacks, and charge your phones.”

My friends gathered in our living room to decide what to do. In Ann Arbor, news like this would fly through GroupMe and Slack threads; I imagined the explosion of all the WhatsApp groups we weren’t in.

My housemates Dinte, Hannah, Maaike and I found an Instagram story with plans for a march on Parliament and a memorial at school. Wear black, it said. It’s OK if you’re angry, or grieving, or too upset to come at all. n the day of the memorial, I stood in the plaza, on the right edge of the crowd. Sunflowers, proteas, calla lilies and a hundred other flowers spilled off the corner of the stage, the only bright spot in a sea of black. The crowd began singing in Xhosa and Zulu as we waited for Nene’s family to arrive.

My Dutch friends and I swayed to the beat of songs we couldn’t understand. As outsiders to this group, our presence was the only thing we had to give.

University students, faculty, administrators and Nene’s family all spoke that day. After the memorial ended, a protest began. Girls read speeches and poems, most of them while crying, but then something shifted. The sadness became outrage. The whispering became yelling. Gone was the murmuring from the crowd — it was time for anger. Girls began sharing their stories of assault and harassment with the crowd. They spit their most private, horrifying moments into the microphone: having to jump out of an Uber after being groped, boyfriends

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thinking their relationship was a free pass to their bodies, running across campus at night after exams.

We watched woman after woman cry at the podium, then pull herself together because people needed to hear what happens to women every day, in public and in private. I pulled out my phone to record a girl describing when her Uber Eats driver told her to come get her food from the car, only for two of his friends to jump out of bushes, trying to drug her. She ended up in the intensive care unit. I saved the recording, whispering to Dinte that I was going to play it for Nico and Jonathon, the rest of our group of friends, who’d spent the day surfing. I was angry with Nene’s attacker, with rape culture and with them for not caring. We sat in the sun for four hours and listened to these women because that’s all we could do. They needed to know someone cared about them and their story, so we stayed even after most of the crowd had gone home. I didn’t want to watch another woman cry, but I knew that if I were in her position, I’d want another person quietly watching, giving witness while I spoke.

When it was finally over, we walked down the steps, watching students dressed in black disperse across campus. Most went to the bus stops, some walked to Lower Campus, the rest got in cars or, like us, called Ubers. When our car arrived, pulling up at the bottom of the steps, we checked the license plate numbers before getting in. He noticed our black clothes and asked about the protest.

“My daughter knew Uyinene,” he said.

“She hasn’t come out of her room.”

We told him we were international students, that we didn’t know many people there but needed to go to the protest. In the passenger seat, I thought about how small the world is. In a city of nearly half a million people, our Uber driver’s daughter knew Nene. In a world of over seven billion, gender-based violence preys on women everywhere.

He dropped us at Cafe Ganesh, a little restaurant in our neighborhood. We quietly ate roti and falafel salads, reaching across the table to share food. Dinte, who always knows what to say, stayed silent, and I noticed her eyes pooling with tears.

She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes, already apologizing.

“Today was hard. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.” She told us a story about her and her boyfriend. The details are hazy and they aren’t mine to share. We sat in silence as she cried, and then Maaike broke it with her own story. I offered one and Hannah followed. All four of them were different, but every girl has something.

While I waited for the news to go international, I debated telling my parents.

Photos of Uyinene, the protests and anger choked my Instagram feed, but on the other side of the world, it was silent. I told a couple of friends about the attack when they asked how I was doing, then regretted saying anything. It was overwhelming to explain and underwhelming to read their responses. What is anyone supposed to say?

I decided there was no point. I was being as safe as I could. The next time I had to run errands, I asked my friend Jake to come with me — Jake, who was tall but gangly, and better at cracking jokes than intimidation. Coordinating two schedules just to go pick up my hiking boots my mom had mailed was frustrating. Knowing I was only safe if an attacker thought I was another man’s property was more so.

After Nene, though, it was foolish to go anywhere alone. Even such a public place as a post office.

These attacks don’t happen because women aren’t being safe, they happen because men choose to attack women — no matter where they are, what they’re doing or time of day. My parents were 8,000 miles away. Half of me figured that if it was going to happen to me, it would, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. The other half knew my privilege, especially abroad.

When I went to catch a campus bus and realized they’d gone on strike, I could afford to call an Uber in seconds. My house had a gated door. I could leave the country at any moment, if need be. I felt safe in my own home and was surrounded by people I trusted. I’m white.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

4B Wednesday, February 19, 2020 // The Statement

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 // The Statement 5B

Was Michigan an answer to the ‘Jewish Problem’?

BY MAX MARCOVITCH, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

T

he words poured over the crowd gathered on the Diag like a warm blanket, our collective voices growing in volume and conviction: Bless those in need of healing with re’fuah shlemah the renewal of body, the renewal of spirit and let us say, amen.

The Mi Sheberach — a Jewish prayer — pleads for complete physical and spiritual healing. It is sung to help those we know and

those we don’t. It is sung for Jews and nonJews. My aunt sings it every time she sees an ambulance speed by. It’s a hymn of immense pain and effortless beauty, and in that moment on the Diag, as hundreds gathered to mourn an event that had shaken many of us to our core, it fully embodied both.

One day prior, on Oct. 27, 2018, Robert Bowers, a white supremacist, walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire, killing 11 people and wounding six others. After he was apprehended, Bowers

INFOGRAPHICS BY JONATHAN WALSH

reportedly told officers “that he wanted all Jews to die” and that “(Jews) were committing genocide to his people.”

“Screw the optics,” Bowers wrote on Gab, a social media platform popular among white supremacists, hours before the attack. “I’m going in.”

I was born over 50 years after the end of World War II, when the height of fascism in Europe led to the systematic extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust. In the time immediately following the war, antiSemitic attacks dissipated. For many in my generation, anti-Semitism was more theoretical than reality; we heard about it, read about it, knew it existed but rarely saw it in our day to day lives.

We are taught from an early age, in books and history courses, that learning about our collective past informs the present and predicts the future. It’s a truism in our culture. But perhaps we cannot understand the value of this currency until we’ve lived it. The turbulent history of Judaism follows a through line of oppression and bigotry. To count the groups that have sought to exclude or remove us would be a tireless task.

I knew this history. I attended Jewish day school for nine years, participated in Jewish youth groups throughout high school, joined a Jewish fraternity upon arriving at the University of Michigan and held Judaism central to my identity along the way.

The Pittsburgh shooting was a glassshattering moment for me — an abrupt confrontation with the lively threat of Jewish hatred. Nationally, it was an awakening to the rise of modern anti-Semitism in the U.S., much of which is subtle, some of which is not.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the jump in anti-Semitic attacks from 2016 to 2017 was the largest increase in American history, from 1,267 anti-Semitic “incidents” to 1,986 “incidents.” That number has largely leveled off in the years since, establishing a startling norm. The incidents ranged from swastikas painted in public spaces to shootings at Jewish centers. Bowers’s attack was the most extreme, but it was not an outlier.

The best way to remedy this pain is through community, a central aspect of Jewish culture. That was how I found myself on the Diag that day, holding up my phone flashlight in the cold, dreary drizzle. I looked around and saw dozens of my friends. We hugged. Some cried. It was brief, but healing.

As such, I knew why I was on the Diag mourning the loss of people I did not know, alongside our shared community. Though unofficial, the University of Michigan Hillel website estimates there are approximately

6,500 Jewish students at U-M, accounting for roughly 14 percent of the student body.

In the United States as a whole, Jews make up just 1.9 percent of the population.

What I did not know was how: How, exactly, did the primary state school in Michigan, which has the 23rd-highest percentage of Jews in the nation, become a hub for Jews all over the country? How did this random Midwestern school find itself on lists of top Jewish schools?

What I came to understand through researching this central question in books, articles, interviews and documents was that simply learning that history was too narrow.

We all must confront a more uncomfortable question, one that extends beyond understanding where we come from.

Why should we care? early 100 years ago, Harvard University President Abbott Lawrence Lowell sat in an office somewhere in Cambridge, Mass., and pondered a solution to his “Jewish Problem” — a phrase with deep historic origins.

“The essence of the ‘Jewish Problem’ was how to control the influx of Jews into areas of social activity that were predominantly Protestant,” wrote Stephen Steinberg in Commentary Magazine.

Higher education, to that point, was one of those spaces.

By 1922, Jews made up over one-fifth of Harvard’s freshman class, with some reports indicating that number reached as high as 27 percent by the mid-1920s. There were just over three million Jews in the U.S. at the time, accounting for less than 3 percent of the population. Families who fled from pogroms and anti-Semitic violence across the globe in the late-1800s and early-1900s had begun to place a foothold in the system of higher education.

That influx led to an unease within the education system. Leaders like Lowell worried about the disruption a disproportionate Jewish population at elite universities might cause.

“We learned that it was numbers that mattered; bad or good, too many Jews were not liked,” Harry Starr, an undergraduate at Harvard at the time, recalled to the Jewish Virtual Library. “Rich or poor, brilliant or dull, polished or crude — (the problem was) too many Jews.”

What ensued was an informal but systematic quota system created to quell Jewish enrollment at Harvard and other Ivy League schools. According to a 2005 profile from Malcolm Gladwell titled “Getting In,” the Harvard admissions office poured through its student records in the 1920s to assign its students a designation — “j1” for someone who was “conclusively” Jewish, “j2” where there was a “preponderance of evidence” of Jewishness,

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“j3” for the “possibility” of Jewishness.

Gladwell writes that Princeton sent representatives to competitive boarding schools in order to rate potential candidates from 1 to 4 on “desirability” based on physical appearance and other subtle factors that could hint at a Jewish background. Yale began to center physical appearance with its applicants. Masculinity. Height. Charisma.

Background. All euphemisms, all deliberate.

The process was quiet but effective. In order to limit Jewish overflow, these schools had to change the definition of merit entirely.

By the end of Lowell’s term at Harvard in 1933, Jewish enrollment had dropped to 15 percent. Yale cut down to 10 percent.

In 1986, Yale publicly admitted in a book titled “Joining the Club” that it perpetuated discrimination on the basis of religion for several decades. A memo from the admissions chairman in 1922 titled “Jewish Problem” implored limits on “the alien and unwashed element,” according to a New York Times article. It also solidified prior historical understanding that Yale limited its student Jewish population to 10 percent for over 40 years.

“There were vicious, ugly forms of discrimination at Yale, as with the larger society,” the then-University Secretary at Yale, John A. Wilkinson, told the New York Times. “It’s part of our history, and we should face up to it.”

During the same time frame, the University of Michigan’s Jewish population began to grow rapidly. Though U-M has never asked about religious affiliation directly on its application or campus surveys, University of Michigan Hillel and academic estimations shed light on this growth.

From 1915 to 1936, the timeframe in which many Ivy League schools were believed to be implementing Jewish quotas, U-M’s Jewish population grew from just over 200 students to nearly 1000, according to the Ira Smith Papers and Student Christian Association.

That amounted to an increase from 5 percent of the student body to 10 percent in a relatively short period of time.

So it’s intuitive to connect the growth of the Jewish community at U-M, the one that gathered in the Diag after the Pittsburgh shooting, to the discrimination at Ivy Leagues: The community I’ve socialized with, lived with, cried with, sung with.

It’s logical, given that context, to lift the University on a pedestal; to laud a history of tolerance and perseverance; to exude unabashed pride. This is a reputation the University touts. The Michigan difference.

Leaders and the best.

Tossed in the middle of the fourth paragraph of the “History” section of the University of Michigan’s Wikipedia is a lofty sentence along those lines: “The University became a favored choice

for bright Jewish students from New York in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Ivy League schools had quotas restricting the number of Jews to be admitted.”

“These schools are suddenly seeing all these Jewish students and saying ‘We don’t want this many Jewish students,’ ” Karla Goldman, a Judaic Studies professor, told me.

“So do they come to Michigan?”

Then a pause and a sigh.

“Um…” oldman sits in the back corner of her fourth-floor School of Education office and pores through spreadsheets. She shows me yearbooks from the 1930s, in which she scours home addresses, parental information and occupations in order to establish highlyeducated guesses about who was Jewish.

Documents and books line the walls, her computer tucked in the back left corner, enclosed by a fortress of miscellaneous papers. It’s got a real Robin Williams’s-officein-“Good Will Hunting” kind of vibe.

But Goldman’s focus is narrow. She’s spent months researching the very question I’ve come to ask her: Is there definitive proof that U-M’s robust Jewish community originates directly from the quotas at Ivy League schools in the early to mid-20th century?

And before those words can even depart my mouth, she dives in.

“There is some part of University of Michigan oral history lore, when it talks about itself as a diverse institution, that points to that time. That while these Northeast elite schools were excluding Jewish students that Michigan welcomed them,” Goldman says, careful to leave causation at an arm’s length.

“It’s kind of an informal history, so people will mention that.”

She continues.

“I think it’s very likely that the quotas at a lot of northeastern schools created a movement of northeast Jews, in particular, sort of looking farther west than they otherwise would have — that’s likely. The thing we don’t know is: What was the status of Jewish students at Michigan? Are we assuming there weren’t quotas? There’s not the same kind of smoking gun evidence thus far.”

It’s clear she’s spent a considerable amount of time in search of that “smoking gun” evidence, and is as disappointed to share as I am to hear that no such evidence exists.

“I mean, it was really serious work they did at Harvard, Princeton and Yale to keep Jews out, and many other schools,” Goldman said. “We don’t see that effort here. That’s interesting. (And) it’s not that we don’t see anti-Semitism. We see it.”

One such area in which anti-Semitism crept into the admissions realm was graduate school applications. While, again, there was no direct invocation of religious affiliation

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on the application, it is clear Jews were at a disadvantage given the large number of Jewish applicants U-M’s graduate schools received annually.

In one case, now publicly available, a recommendation for a Jewish dental school applicant makes explicit reference to that double standard.

“Mr. (redacted) is Jewish but not the loud offensive type of Jew,” the recommendation said. “He is courteous, pleasant, courteous of others and very hard working. … So I am hoping that he will be admitted in spite of his Hebraic origin.”

In 1935, two students were expelled for something the school categorized as “radical behavior.” Both students were from the New York area. It’s widely understood, though not explicitly stated, that both were Jewish, according to Goldman. The expulsions sparked an internal discussion about forming a quota at U-M, limiting the number of students from New York and New Jersey — the backbone of the out-of-state Jewish population at U-M. “And it’s clear they were discussing: Should we limit these Jewish students who come here and tend to be radical?” Goldman said. “They decide not to do it.”

At this time, the same infrastructure of the Jewish community that exists today began to take shape. The University of Michigan Hillel — the central hub for Jewish social and academic programming — was founded in 1926, becoming the third Hillel on the continent. At the time, Jews were isolated to the same dormitories (often MosherJordan Residence Hall). Jewish fraternities and sororities formed, as the sole source for Greek life inclusion for Jewish students. In the 1933-1934 school year, for example, the 84 students who self-identified as “Jewish” in Greek life were the sole members of seven fraternities on campus. In the 41 other fraternities, not a single member identified as “Jewish.” Alignment of sorority members followed a similar spread.

Slowly, overt anti-Semitic acts that were once commonplace began to dissipate.

Jewish quotas, anecdotally, ceased to exist by the 1960s. As campuses continued to diversify demographically, Jews began to pass as white, gaining many of the privileges that come with it. Harvard in the 1920s, for example, almost exclusively comprised of white Protestants and Jews. As colleges become a melting pot for people of all races, ethnicities and religions, it became harder to stigmatize Jews as “the other.”

Anti-Semitism in the modern context exists more subtly. Many of those flashpoints on campus manifest through the blurred lines of good-faith critiques of Zionism and badfaith swipes at Jews writ large. The Trump administration’s Executive Order, one issued under the guise of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, complicates those matters by blanketly conflating all anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, and by unilaterally categorizing Judaism as a race.

These defined identities only muddle

conversations, much of which manifests in campus environments.

“I’ll tell you what my hope is, my wish is, for a college environment,” Goldman said.

“Instead of being the place where we have these flashpoints of conflict, we’re actually all here together, could this be the place where we actually are able to engage each other in ways that aren’t possible elsewhere in society?” n academic terms, Goldman’s venture is a noble one. The history of the Jewish people — one littered with oppression and perseverance — extends to the higher education system some take for granted today. She wants to know whether U-M’s self-image of acceptance holds true.

She’s interested in proving whether the causal claim at the core of Jewish community at U-M passes muster. I am, too.

But why should students who may not have grown up in New York or New Jersey, or may not be Jewish, care about the origins of the strong Jewish community at U-M? That was the question I posed to Goldman near the end of our conversation, and one I’d grappled with plenty.

“It both reshapes our sense of what that time was, the presence of anti-Semitism in spaces that we’re used to thinking as very comfortable, very easy presence,” Goldman said. “So there’s that. We also tend to think of the university as a very static thing. But it’s not, it’s changed so much.”

“And then when you begin to think of inclusion now and exclusion. … You have to think about, well, in what sense is university meant to be an institution for privilege — a place to perpetuate privilege, which it is.

But also, to what extent is it meant to be a place that creates opportunities as a point of access for people who start without a lot of privilege.”

That last point stuck with me. In 2018, a group sued Harvard for discriminating against Asian students in admissions processes, claiming it weighted race too heavily in admissions processes at the expense of merit. It was, once again, a challenge of affirmative action. The suit, though hardly a facsimile of the claims about Jewish quotas in the 1920s, resurfaces difficult questions about merit. Who belongs?

Who does not? Who gets to make that distinction? We are all here, on this campus, because that determination about us was made in the affirmative. Acceptance. Are we willing to grapple with why?

These difficult questions are ones those with the privilege of existing in higher education are not forced to confront. They are questions that have persisted for decades and will continue for many more.

They are not questions I, nor my peers, considered on the Diag when we sang, reveling in the intense healing of community.

But we’re here and we’re singing the Mi Sheberach and that, in itself, is an immense luxury.

If only for a moment, all that matters is not where we’ve been, but where we are.

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6B

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 // The Statement

Just a number?

BY CHELSEA PADILLA, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

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t was early February, and a woman with short brown hair was leading me through a long, twisting hallway in the Student Activities Building. I held my coat in my arms, feeling stunned until we arrived at an empty office with just a chair and a sad, barren desk. Once inside, the woman directed me to sit at a small, round table as she took her place in the chair at the desk behind me, watching.

“You have one hour,” she said. It seemed like a short time to look at everything and take notes by hand, as phones were prohibited during this process. Before I could get a word in, a stack of papers was placed in front of me: my college admissions file.

I had this meeting in my calendar for a month, and I had been anxiously awaiting it. When the semester started back up in January, I heard whispers about University of Michigan students requesting to view their admissions file, sparked by a YouTube video uploaded by a student at the Ross School of Business.

I was intrigued and wanted to investigate further, so I let myself fall into a dark hole of YouTube videos and Reddit threads.

Similar videos existed of students from other schools reacting to their admissions files, and reactions across them were mixed — there were both positive and negative evaluations. Reddit threads vaguely described the process, with some users warning others about imposter

ILLUSTRATION BY NOAH FINERRR

syndrome. I felt apprehensive and considered avoiding this whole process, but my curiosity was too strong. When I came out of my mini investigation, I came to a decision: I was going to request to see my admissions file.

The ability to view college admissions files is nothing new. Through the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — more commonly known as FERPA — schools are required to provide students who currently attend the school with access to their educational records if they request it. This includes law enforcement records, employment records and, of course, admissions files. Once a student requests these records, FERPA’s guidelines require the school to comply within 45 days.

Though FERPA was signed into law

by President Gerald Ford in 1974, I didn’t know much about the process until stumbling upon Jack Liu’s video earlier this year. Last year, my senior year of high school, college seemed so far away. The possibility of seeing my admissions files was something I hadn’t thought about until I was on campus.

When I was in the process of applying, college admissions always seemed like a secretive process, but the lawsuit filed by a group of Asian American students against Harvard University re-opened the conversation around the college admissions process, especially since it has forced

Harvard to reveal the factors that their admissions office considers. Additionally, ever since a group of anonymous Stanford University students came forward and urged others to request their records through FERPA in 2015, students have grown more curious — the University of California, Berkeley, for example, reported that they had experienced a spike in file requests shortly after the Stanford news. In recent years, there has been more and more coverage that details how FERPA allows students to request their admission files, which has likely led to a rise in requests.

The decision to see your file is a hot topic, too. While many students on the internet, like University of Pennsylvania student Christy Qiu, appear to recognize that the act of viewing their admissions files was revealing to an extent and promotes transparency, there are still those who caution people from doing so.

Many of the comments I read on Reddit warned fellow students from viewing their files because it might lead to feeling demoralized. Seeing yourself on paper, evaluated by people who have most likely never met you, can be a disheartening process.

When I spoke to some University students about the admissions process, it was clear students felt similarly. “The college admissions process gave me a ton of anxiety,” LSA freshman Anya Dengerink-Van Til said. “I don’t want to reawaken those anxieties.”

I’ll admit that even though I felt confident about wanting to see my file, I was still nervous about it. There was definitely something terrifying about reading what people thought of me. After all, I find even regular criticism to be hard to accept at times; I even get hurt when my mom tells me she doesn’t like the sweater I’m wearing. But there was a part of me that feared something beyond criticism — a part of me that wondered if I was somehow lesser than those who had been accepted before me, especially because I had been deferred.

There was one thing that pushed me to go forward with seeing my application. I was far enough away from that version of myself to view the file somewhat objectively; even if it was only a year ago, I felt different from the girl who had filled out all those forms and written all those application essays.

A year ago, I was insecure, and more than anything, I cared about how I looked in comparison to other students.

I wanted to seem like the best. Passions came second. But a lot has changed between then and now. My mentality about school is completely different — I attend class because I want to learn, and I pick my organizations because I genuinely care about them.

Back at that small, round table, I flipped

through the papers anxiously. Any actual evaluations made by the admissions office were at the bottom of the stack, compiled into two pages; the majority of the papers were printed pages of my Common Application. My extracurricular activities, grade point average and test scores were listed multiple times throughout the file, accompanied by a few handwritten comments. One admissions officer in particular had specifically pointed out two of my extracurriculars, in which I held a position of leadership in, specifically: Model United Nations as head delegate and National Honor Society as an officer. Both of these, from what I could tell, seemed to be good examples of leadership, which made me an “EXC stud.”: Excellent student.

This was something that struck me. In high school, Model UN was important to me. It was one of those clubs that helped me grow more confident with publicspeaking, which I’d always felt insecure about. NHS, on the other hand, never felt personal to me. Sure, I was proud to have been elected as an officer by my class, but it felt obligatory — especially at the time — and I had never experienced personal growth in NHS like I had in Model UN. Seeing those two extracurriculars next to each other as if they were equal felt absolutely bizarre to me. Yet, they were there, right in front of my eyes and printed in ink.

As I continued through the admissions officers’ evaluations, there was another comment that stuck out to me. Each admissions officer ranked me with a single digit number. It was printed next to my name, twice, above each section of their comments. To me, it was clear that it was a ranking. But there was no way of knowing what it meant. It didn’t say what the number was out of or if it was simply a doodle from a bored admissions officer.

Was it meant to be a score? Why was I that number and not another one? And was it a good thing, or a bad thing? There was no way of telling, and the uncertainty terrified me.

For some time after, I lingered on the number that haunted my admissions file for a bit. The mystery behind the number was somewhat uncomfortable, but I quickly realized and accepted there was nothing to be done about it. Besides, I reasoned, at this point it’s not as if it matters. Seeing that number hadn’t changed anything about myself in the present, and it’s not as if they had actually ranked me as a person with those numbers. They had ranked me as an applicant — an amalgamation of test scores and clubs and leadership roles.

Regardless of their comments, evaluations and rankings, I still have pride in who I am. I am still a thinker, a writer, a friend and a student. Regardless of admissions, I will continue to grow and establish my place here.

7B Wednesday, January February16, 19,2019 2020////The The Statement 7B Wednesday, Statement

On (a lack of) diversity in the arts I

BY ISABELLE HASSLUND, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

t was recital day, and all of my students were lined up backstage; these girls formed a perfectly straight line, no taller than my knee. I had been teaching dance since I was an adolescent so I knew what I was doing. My ballet teacher — whom I so badly wanted to impress, even though no matter how hard I tried, she would never compliment me — smiled at the sight. She loved lines, especially straight lines. She examined the girls as she approached me, and she invited me to admire how small all the girls were while they adjusted their frilly lavender tutus. She squatted with an exaggerated grunt to pick up one little girl with brown skin, big brown eyes and messy curly hair.

“This one,” she started, “this one is dense. Small, but dense.” She paused, waiting for me to agree. I watched in disbelief as this child, who looked a lot like me, cocked her head to the side in confusion, her limbs dangling like dead weight.

I knew what my ballet teacher meant. She picked out the girl with brown skin in a line of white faces, only to lift her up and down and mock her for her weight, and I could tell she had done it many times before with other girls. I wanted to cover the child’s innocent ears — she was four years old and already being subjected to the beauty, race and weight ideals of the dance world. I wanted to look at my teacher straight in the eye and tell her the damage she was causing, but I pretended I had not heard her comment while a hard lump formed in my throat.

I thought back to when my ballet teacher opened up about her past struggles with anorexia as a young dancer. Thirsty to achieve perfect lines in both her technique and her physique, she spilled every detail to us in between barre exercises about how she would not eat until her stomach growled with pain. When she said this, she looked straight at me.

There’s an unspoken truth in the performing industry, a long-kept secret that artists and producers discuss behind closed doors: The lack of diversity and visibility in the performance industry from body shape to ethnicity to gender. It’s pointed out by directors on admissions boards at the University and by top casting directors when they are thinking of quick fixes to the diversity problem. However, these problems can only be solved with systemic change and courage.

As a performer and arts journalist, I become increasingly frustrated every time I enter a rehearsal room or sit in a plush

theater seat to watch the same stories being told over and over again — stories of white suburban families, whitewashed stories of cultural happenings.

I grew up in dance studios where tight leotards clung closely to my newly formed curves, and the surrounding mirrors amplified my image and mocked me for my developing shape. My brown skin and curves stuck out from the pale skin and thin bodies of my peers. Unlike them, I felt like I had no one to look up to in the ballet or modern dance world. No one who looked like me.

As my physical body grew, so did my shame for the shape of my new womanly form; my body was a terrain with hills and valleys that no leotard from Capezio’s dancewear store would contain.

I entertained dreams of becoming a professional dancer — taking masterclasses with the Rockettes and with “Newsies” men — but there was a voice in the back of my head that told me there would be no way that I could make it in that world. It wasn’t made for me.

The professional performance world is where straight hair transforms effortlessly into a tight, neat bun atop one’s head. It is a place full of people who fit into any leotard they pick off the rack at Capezio. There is no room for girls whose first thought when choosing a leotard is, “My God, I hope this can hold in my boobs.” There was no room for my thick, curly hair that weighed down my messy bun, which gave me headaches and pulled me down during pirouettes.

I feared a world where I would audition for Joffrey or Martha Graham. I didn’t have

the lines they were looking for. The panel would take one look at the fat on my stomach and my breasts, scoff and not even bother to look at me dance. I accepted that as a fact because, as a young artist, everything seems so out of reach — so much bigger than only you.

I stopped dancing. In my mind, I was making the choice to stop living in a fantasy world where curvy, brown-skinned girls like me could dance in serious ballet or modern dance company stages. I love to dance, but every time I looked at myself in the mirror, it was a reminder of why I could never make it. was raised on Broadway and books.

I grew up getting lost in the magical “Wicked” soundtrack, felt love and

characters I read about or getting lost in the velvet seats of a Broadway theater, imagining myself on the big stage. Theater was the manifestation of the wonderland that existed in my head. Theater showed me there was a way to make all the stories I read about come to life — from “Alice in Wonderland” to “The Lords of Discipline,” anything could be made for the stage. There were no limitations to live theater; it was like seeing a book being read in front of me.

My whole life, I watched the experiences of others play out right in front of me; however, it wasn’t until I saw “In the Heights” in middle school that I finally felt heard.

Familiar characters who shared my cultural identity took the stage, and the sound of the clave echoed through the Richard Rodgers Theatre. I was ecstatic to see others around me having fun watching a reflection of my life on stage. The characters were finally articulating my own feelings: the experiences of being a Latina in New York City and a proud daughter of immigrants. For the entirety of my childhood, I never considered the possibility my own story was worth sharing on a Broadway stage.

Experiencing “In the Heights” helped me find my voice, literally and figuratively. I thought: I don’t have to be skinny or white to have a nice singing voice, right? Who said I couldn’t audition for Broadway? I auditioned for my dream school, a performing arts high school named Fiorella H. LaGuardia High School located in NYC. When I got accepted into the voice department, I knew it was my turn to tell others my story with my newly-found medium.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ISABELLE HASSLUND However, somewhere along the way in high school, I lost heartbreak through the musical journey of sight of the story I was supposed to be telling: my story, the one of a short, curvy, “The Last Five Years.”

The 2008 musical “Next to Normal” edu- Latina who gets cast as a lead in a Broadcated me about mental health issues and way show, or the first one of her kind to taught me that musicals do not all have to make it onto the Rockettes. Mine was sound like Disney princess movies with supposed to be the story of breaking the light, airy instrumentals and simple melodic mold, but as I found myself struggling to find a sense of belonging in a mostly-white motifs sung in a fluttery tone.

I buried my nose in the “Junie B. Jones” school, I no longer felt like I deserved to be books and turned to the philosophies of heard. It was like being back in dance class Dr. Seuss when I was in crisis. I constantly again, surrounded by people who look ransacked Barnes and Noble for the next nothing like me, who seem so carefree best book, where I was introduced to “One walking into audition rooms with confiHundred Years of Solitude,” the Greek clas- dence that you can only get from growing sics and random poetry books. Words rang up with money and never being told “no.” in my mind like musical lyrics. I learned that I hate Hemingway.

Read more at Those are the memories I hold closest to MichiganDaily.com my heart: reading a chapter book in my bed all day, unable to put it down, becoming the

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Wednesday, February 20, 2020 // The Statement

COLORS OF INDIA EXPLORED THE BEAUTIFUL COLORS, CULTURE AND NATURE OF GUJARAT, INDIA IN DECEMBER OF

2019 WITH THE BLUELAB INDIA PROJECT TEAM PHOTOS BY PAULINA RAJSKI

Read more online at

michigandaily.com