2020-04-17

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Friday, April 17, 2020

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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Students in lab courses experience impact of loss of in-person instruction, experiments Transition to remote learning prompts drastic changes in laboratory classes AYSE ELDES

Daily Staff Reporter

LSA freshman Ishi Shukla felt lucky to have had her Biology 173 lab section earlier than others. Her group had finished the wet lab portion of an assignment to examine their own fecal matter before other sections later that day.

So when the University of Michigan announced the suspension of in-person classes on March 11, Shukla and her classmates had the data they needed to complete the assignment. Others did not.

“For other lab sections of (Bio 173), it was definitely more tricky,” Shukla said. “Honestly, shout out to all the professors who have had to put in all this extra time to get classes in this type of virtual mode because they only had two days to do it.

It’s pretty impressive.”

As a result of transitioning classes to online platforms, lab courses have been faced with the challenge of administering the physical components of their curricula virtually. In an email to The Michigan

DESIGN BY ERIN RUARK

Daily, Tim McKay, physics, astronomy and education professor and LSA associate dean for undergraduate education, explained how the University is adjusting to these

changes.

According to McKay, there are a variety of approaches among lab courses. The most common is for graduate students to perform labs

through video presentations and then for students to analyze the data produced. McKay gave Ginger Shultz, assistant professor of chemistry, as an example: With less than a week

Event hosts SoulCycle, Fendi execs Michigan Fashion Media Summit features leaders of famous brands virtually

SoulCycle in 2017 after falling in love with the brand.

REMY FARKAS

Daily Staff Reporter

The Michigan Fashion Media Summit held its annual conference on Thursday via Zoom webinar. MFMS had rescheduled their original in-person event as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The student-run group was set to host more than 650 people at the Ross School of Business featuring 16 speakers on March 20. Thursday afternoon’s webinar hosted Caroline Gogolak, vice president of retail at SoulCycle and co-founder of Carbon38, and Tenley Zinke, vice president of marketing and communications at Fendi Americas. Amy Tara Koch, an author, journalist and U-M alum, moderated the event.

Gogolak said her interest in fashion was spurred from a class

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KELSEY PEASE/Daily The Michigan Fashion Media Summit, originally planned to take place at the Ross School of Business, was held via Zoom Thursday.

she took at Parsons School of Design. After working at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs,

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she co-founded the company Carbon38, a luxury activewear lifestyle brand. Gogolak joined

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“I thought that retail, although it was a somewhat small business at that point, had an opportunity to grow,” Gogolak said. “It also enabled me to really continue to just operate and learn more in a retail business and also learn about brick and mortar since most of my business, most of my background had been in e-commerce. SoulCycle has just under 100 locations, so I knew I would quickly learn that side.”

Gogolak oversees merchandising, planning, allocation, product development, supply chain and e-commerce at SoulCycle. She described how she is adapting to the current COVID-19 climate.

See FASHION, Page 3

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INDEX

Vol. CXXIX, No. 108 ©2020 The Michigan Daily

to move her Chemistry 211 course online, Shultz and three graduate students recorded four weeks of experiments in one day for her 771 students.

See LAB, Page 3

ANN ARBOR

Candidates talk housing, environment City Council hopefuls convene in online forum BARBARA COLLINS & JULIA FORREST Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter

University of Michigan students enrolled in Public Policy 456/756 hosted candidates for Wards 1, 2 and 3 of Ann Arbor City Council in an online forum Thursday afternoon.

Students asked candidates about transportation, affordable housing and climate change.

Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1, is running to keep her current seat on City Council and is challenged

by Lisa Disch, a professor in the political science and women’s See CITY, Page 2 NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 SPORTS.........................7

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Senators Stabenow, Peters address COVID-19 crisis

Officials discuss equipment shortages, support for college students VARSHA VEDAPUDI Daily Staff Reporter

Sens.

Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., participated in a virtual town hall meeting hosted jointly by WDIV Local 4, WXYZ 7 Action News and WJBK Fox 2 Detroit Thursday evening. The two senators answered questions from Michiganders about the current COVID-19 pandemic on topics ranging from the personal protective equipment shortage in the state to the importance of robust COVID-19 testing.

Anchor Devin Scillian from WDIV Local 4 stated before the town hall began that there is no getting around the fact the town hall would only feature representatives from the Democratic Party.

“We live in times that are politically charged,” Scillian said. “Our goal tonight is to steer clear of politics.”

Stabenow mentioned it was difficult as a state to acquire personal protective equipment for health care workers as well as for those who work in densely populated areas.

CITY From Page 1 studies departments at the University.

Linh Song, board president of the Ann Arbor District Library, is the sole candidate for Ward 2, the seat currently held by Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2. In Ward 3, Travis Radina, an LGBTQ+ activist, Anthony Brown, the digital distribution manager at WDET and Evan Redmond, a targeting analyst are running for the seat currently held by Zachary Ackerman, D-Ward 3. Ackerman is not running for re-election.

Disch, Song, Radina and Redmond all participated in Thursday’s forum.

“It’s been really hard, very chaotic in the beginning, but we are working with the governor’s excellent team to make changes,” Stabenow said.

Peters addressed the challenge of scaling up the 15-minute tests that are being used in the city of Detroit. He said he is in talks with a number of companies in order to ramp up production in the private sector.

“You have to be able to quick test folks,” Peters said. “So if you have a person who tests positive, their coworkers (who are first responders) can get this test and stay on their essential job.”

One concerned Twitter user addressed relief for college students who have lost their jobs. Under the current stimulus package, college students over the age of 18 who are classified as dependents under their parents are not eligible for any relief.

Stabenow said she and Peters are working on a bill that would allow college students to receive a stimulus check of $500 if they are currently dependents

of their parents. She also said student loans can be deferred in most cases by six months.

“There’s a lot more that needs to be done, and I’m hopeful that it’s done in the next package,” Stabenow said.

One individual asked what the federal government can do to reduce the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus illness and deaths in the Black community. Peters linked the problem to a higher incidence of people who had not received any type of health care over the years and who are thus more likely to have underlying medical conditions, making them more susceptible to COVID-19.

According to Peters, opening up enrollment for the Affordable Care Act is important so citizens have the resources they need to keep themselves healthy.

“We are in a health care crisis of unimaginable proportions right now,” Peters said. “This pandemic has exposed the inequities we have in our society in a dramatic way.”

Daily Staff Reporter Varsha Vedapudi can be reached at varshakv@umich.edu

Candidates for Wards 4 and 5 participated in a forum last Tuesday.

Elections for City Council candidates will be held Aug. 4 along with other statewide races.

Lisa Disch, Democrat for Ward 1 Disch said she was compelled to run for City Council due to her concern for issues such as climate change and housing justice shared by many other community members in Ann Arbor.

She said the creativity and quirkiness in the community make Ann Arbor an engaging place to live.

When asked about housing developments in Ann Arbor, Disch said student apartment developments

are bringing significant amounts of revenue into the city’s budget. She said she supports the creation of a tenant’s union and renter’s commission to provide support for student renters.

“When we talk about development, we need to recognize what development does for us and how dependent we are on it and how fortunate we are to be a place where people want to work and want to live,” Disch said.

If elected to the council, Disch said she will advocate for the city’s new climate initiative A2Zero, which launched March 30 and aims to achieve carbon neutrality in Ann Arbor by 2030.

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LAB From Page 1 “Instructors always have a great deal of autonomy in the design and delivery of their courses, and the pandemic hasn’t changed that,” McKay wrote. “Sometimes, we have to make a big collective decision, like moving all courses to remote instruction and Pass/No Record COVID grading. But the instructional team for each course is responsible for deciding what course adjustments would be best and how to make them.”

LSA freshman Sharon Shaw, who is taking both Biolog y 173 and Chemistry 211, said the ease of adjustment was different for the two courses. Shaw emphasized that the consistency of her professors’ communication and assignment uploads determined the success of the online transition.

“For Bio 173, it has kind of been confusing,” Shaw said. “Because everything is online, professors can technically upload anything anytime they want, and this past week my professor hasn’t uploaded anything.”

FASHION From Page 1 “It’s been an incredibly wild ride, especially during these crazy times the world is going through,” Gogolak said.

“But I’m very grateful to be a part of their leadership team and to help the company through this.”

Gogolak said adapting the company to the current situation is about communication.

She said she has daily calls, and the company has realized they need to expand on their digital strategy in order to keep riders engaged through email and social media.

“We’re giving our riders the ability to be a part of our community while being off the bike,” Gogolak said. “We’re actually excitingly launching our own retail e-commerce on a new platform, which will be really supporting the fantastic visuals and photography that we have been working on, up since the pandemic.”

She defined this digital movement as a “cultural phenomenon” with regard to what SoulCycle is able to deliver on the content end.

Gogolak answered a question from an attendee regarding how she addresses industry competitors in the retail sector. She said the company tries to look at more general fashion trends as opposed to monitoring the products of competitors. From a brand standpoint, she said, SoulCycle has a very different business

CITY From Page 2 “I will do my best to continue to be a conduit of communication between the University and the city and also to put pressure on the University,” Disch said. “I think that the first kinds of things I would like to do as a member of City Council is to take the pieces of that plan that we can enact without spending enormous amounts of money and enact them.”

Linh Song, Democrat for Ward 2 Song is a University alum and lecturer in the School of Social Work. She was appointed executive director of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to distribute funds to area public schools, in 2014.

Song said it is important to look at models of development across the country when looking for affordable housing solutions.

“For me, I stayed here because my neighborhood is a family,” Song said. “We would all benefit from a bigger, familiar, bigger neighborhood. We should welcome folks here.

News

Friday, April 17, 2020 — 3

Shaw said she feels her lab courses are less rigorous without conducting experiments and collecting data.

She said she misses the in-person interactions with her labmates and worries she is not learning skills that come with hands-on experience.

“I’d totally rather drag myself to an 8 a.m. lab,” Shaw said. “I know it sounds horrible, but I would much rather do that and actually see what’s going on in lab and collect my own data than just take other people’s data.”

Engineering freshman Chase Hartley’s Math 215 lab still allows students to work in groups with their former labmates. However, group projects for his Engineering 100 and Physics 141 courses have been replaced with individual work.

“It’s been a little bit of a struggle trying to do physics lab by myself, since I’m so used to collaborating with other people,” Hartley said. “That’s been the toughest part. You just have to get into a routine and then figure it out.”

According to McKay, grading procedures are “very contextual” for these courses. He wrote the

University has encouraged creativity and cooperation among instructors and students to solve challenges in making both large and small changes to assignments.

He wrote that each instructional team determines how grading guidelines change if needed. Looking to the future, McKay wrote spring and summer courses will show the lessons learned from the winter semester.

“These spring/summer courses will incorporate a variety of improvements, all made possible by the fact that we have more than a weekend to spend designing them,” McKay wrote.

McKay wrote creative ideas were emerging in preparation for these semesters, including geolog y classes where students will be asked to do local fieldwork and contribute to a class-wide data set.

LSA freshman Heather Sherr did not initially consider remote learning when planning her schedule for next fall. She is currently registered for two courses with lab sections, but is concerned about how they would be impacted if courses were to remain online.

As a pre-medical student, Sherr plans to get other requirements out of the way and delay taking courses with lab components if remote learning continues. She feels that this semester has helped her work on her weaknesses as a student.

“I’m learning to be more independent with how I get my work done and be on my own clock,” Sherr said. “I’m setting time management skills and setting my own routine … and learning how to communicate better with my peers.”

McKay echoed this sentiment.

He wrote students should see their responses to this challenge as a success.

“As the end of this term approaches, we hope you will be proud of all you’ve done to help the community get through this, know that this is a term we will all always remember, and be prepared to continue to help the University, our many communities, and the world work through this pandemic,” McKay wrote.

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

strategy than its competitors.

“We’re always keeping our finger on the pulse,” Gogolak said. “It’s an in-person experience. It’s, you know, in a room that’s candlelit with 60 people on a bike and so that is a very different experience. But we have recently launched our at-home content through Variis through Equinox, which is an amazing experience.”

Gogolak said with more people working from home, activewear will be considered as everyday wear. She said she believes activewear is resilient and seasonless and, as a result, it has a lot of room to grow.

“I think that people are dressing differently today,” Gogolak said. “I think (retail is) going to be less about working out and more of ‘how do I outfit this with the ready-to-wear that I already have in my wardrobe.’”

Finally, Gogolak said SoulCycle’s vision for the company is very similar to its original 2020 operating plan, but they have changed the way they are operating to reach that goal, especially with regard to their digital plan.

“We’re trying to bring the digital piece out,” Gogolak said. “It was almost like perfect timing when all of this happened and I think at this point, when we come back into business …

I’m really excited to see how our studios light up and how people are, you know, going to be craving going to their favorite instructors’ class with their friends, even though we’re going to have to be operating with social distancing

in place … I think that that fire will be super special when our doors reopen.”

Zinke began her talk by providing advice for those interested in going into the industry. She described the industry as a meritocracy and said it is possible to work your way up through hard work.

“You really have to be prepared to work extremely hard and demonstrate that you want to make the cut,” Zinke said. “You want to really make a contribution to something that is a group effort, a collective effort. And if you are able to do that, and you do get the recognition of the people who are the creators in the industry, I would say the ones who also worked their way up, then … the sky’s the limit.”

She said, however, the business is not possible without the people behind the big fashion names. At the same time, she referenced the fact that the industry requires self-direction with regard to career development.

“I’m usually one of the people who are helping to make things happen,” Zinke said.

“And I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t doing a good job at that, and it’s many years in the making. But I’ve also had to be very proactive in my own career development because it’s not an industry that really has a great clear directional path that you follow to get from point A to point B. You have to be very selfmotivated.”

Zinke compared her experiences working at American and European brand headquarters

and regional offices. She referenced her work at Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co. as well as her roles at LVMH in Europe. She discussed how she flows between a regional sales role to a broader macro and global perspective of the fashion industry.

“I kind of like to toggle back and forth,” Zinke said. “I think it makes me a betterinformed business person. And I can really speak to my colleagues on the other side of the table from a more informed standpoint because I’ve been in both regional roles and global roles.”

MFMS co-president Delaney Walker, an LSA senior, said MFMS was disappointed they had to cancel the in-person event but were determined to fulfill their mission of providing opportunities for students interested in the fashion industry.

“We were devastated when we had to cancel the MFMS,” Walker said, “We were upset that the 600 attendees would not be able to hear our speakers and our 54-person student planning team would not be able to showcase their hard work. But we made a promise to educate students on opportunities in fashion, so there was no doubt in our mind that we would find a way to do it. It was amazing transforming it to a webinar because we got to reach an even larger audience and learn how to pivot our organization in times of adversity.”

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

And I think we should think creatively and not have to rely on developers to fund the work.”

When discussing student voting, Song said important public policies come from the people within a community. She said she hopes student voter turnout increases in the coming years, specifically in local elections.

“This is where elected officials are accountable to the voices of not just complaints and really narrow issues advanced but actually formulating them,” Song said. “So I’d hope for greater student participation on all levels of local government.

More students should be at the table, deciding Ann Arbor’s future.”

Travis Radina, Democrat for Ward 3 Radina, who is president of the Jim Toy Community Center and the LGBTQ liaison to the mayor’s office, said he hopes to be an agent for change for affordability issues in Ann Arbor.

He said he believes political leaders should be careful in their use of the term NIMBY, meaning “Not In My Backyard,” which refers to residents who oppose proposed housing or parks development in areas close to where they reside.

“While I do believe there is widespread public

consensus in support of smart growth and density here in our community and I believe that an anti-growth mentality would harm our city’s future, I don’t believe that all of our neighbors who voice concerns about specific development projects are motivated by so-called NIMBYism,” Radina said.

Radina said he thinks the city’s budget solutions should be creative so Ann Arbor is able to maintain a commitment to providing basic services while also avoiding layoffs and preventing outsourcing and privatization of work, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Radina is also a University alum and currently works as a senior global engagement manager at the University’s Alumni Association. During his time on campus, Radina was involved in College Democrats and said he participated in many political movements on campus. He addressed issues of gerrymandering in Ann Arbor. Radina said he remembered the student voice was broken up while he was a student when the ward system was introduced in 2015 and students found themselves split fairly evenly between five

wards.

“I think it’s really important for not only council members but candidates for council to continue participating in activities just like this one so that we continue to have open dialogue with students,” Radina said.

Evan Redmond, Democrat for Ward 3 Redmond, also a U-M alum, now works at a marketing analytics firm. He said he plans to focus a lot of his platform on climate change initiatives and on getting Ann Arbor to 100 percent carbon neutrality in the future.

“Climate change is key,” Redmond said. “Right now DTE is a huge obstacle blocking the city from getting 100 percent renewable energy, but what we can do is establish a publicly owned electric utility.”

Redmond also talked about how he plans to get the University involved in his goals to get Ann Arbor to become carbon neutral and place it on 100 percent renewable energy sources.

“As you know, the University is a state institution, so there’s little direct power that the Ann Arbor City Council can put on the University,” Redmond said. “We also know the

Opinion

4 — Friday, April 17, 2020

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EVAN STERN | COLUMN

What we can learn from the H1N1 pandemic

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RILEY DEHR | COLUMN

The South’s stubbornness is why federal action is needed

A

fter four hours of driving from my overnight stop in Des Moines, Iowa, I crossed the Big Muddy into my home state of Nebraska. The leafless gray trees paired with the overcast sky made the usually lush riverbank appear strikingly different from how I had always seen it driving to and from my mom’s apartment in Denver. The view was yet another change brought on by the coronavirus’s dizzyingly rapid transformation from something restricted to distant news reports to sending me home from school months early. After Spring Break, I watched my semester and summer plans topple like dominoes as the virus spread uncontained. By the time I left Ann Arbor with my life hastily packed into the back of my Mini Cooper, there was only one plan left standing in the way of the pandemic completely canceling my summer: my 21st birthday. While I knew the day of my birthday would almost surely be spent locked in the apartment, it was my mother’s present to me, a four-day trip to New Orleans, that held my excitement.

Planned for late May, enjoying the bountiful bars and history of New Orleans was my final foolish hope.

Defying health officials’ suggestions and government orders aimed at reducing the number of people predicted to swamp Louisiana’s health care system, a group of 1,200 people gathered in the state capital of Baton Rouge. Shoulder to shoulder, the congregation at Life Tabernacle Church listened to pastor Anthony “Tony” Spell. “We’re free people.

We’re not going to be intimidated.

We’re not going to cower. We’re not breaking any laws,” he preached.

In response to the backlash, Spell says his congregation has a “constitutional right to congregate” and they believe that the coronavirus is “politically motivated.” As they defiantly and foolishly gathered to pray, COVID19 cases in Louisiana reached 3,540 on Sunday afternoon. In late February, when the confirmed number of cases in the United States numbered in the 50s, over a million people flocked to New Orleans to partake in the city’s 321-year-old celebration of Mardi Gras. After experiencing the fastest increase in COVID-19 cases in the world in the final weeks of March, the seeds

of this disaster seem to have been sown on Bourbon Street.

A city still suffering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina from 15 years ago, New Orleans is bracing to be ground zero of yet another natural disaster. While the number of cases in New York far outweigh those in New Orleans, the death rate of COVID-19 patients is seven times higher than in New York. The reason is simple: “we’re just sicker,” explains Rebekah Gee, former health secretary for Louisiana. Of those who died of the disease in the city, 94 percent had a pre-existing health condition, and New Orleans’s population exceeds the national averages for obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. Health officials fear that the rapidly declining situation in New Orleans is just an early taste of what’s to come throughout the South.

A region known for its infamously decadent cuisine, high rates of heart disease make this region of America the most susceptible to the deadly effects of COVID-19. While grandma and grandpa have been painted as the likely victims of this pandemic, pre-existing conditions make anyone that has them — no matter how young — susceptible to the deadly effects of the virus. These groups of individuals are the people that other governors have acted so proactively to save.

Despite this alarming information, many of the region’s state governors have been the most stubborn to implement public health measures. Outside of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ quick, foresightful actions, almost every other governor in the South has been a role model on how not to act during a global pandemic. Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, admitted that he had just learned about asymptomatic carriers on April 2. While his ignorance is seemingly the most inexplicable, others have been equally resistant toward letting facts steer their decision-making through this crisis.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., drew criticism the earliest when thousands of students on Spring Break were filmed crowding beaches. Despite early warnings that the state would become a “hotspot” if measures weren’t taken quickly, DeSantis languidly issued a state-wide stay-at-home mandate to his 18 million citizens

on April 2, after 30 other states had already implemented precautionary measures.

This inaction by Southern governors puts those with preexisting health conditions at high risk. Because of existing health disparities that make racial minorities more likely to have these risk factors, the burden of this disease will not be shared equally among citizens. The disparities can be seen far outside the South in our own state of Michigan, where African Americans make up 70 percent of COVID-19 fatalities in places like Chicago and Louisiana.

Similarly, Native Americans, who have the highest rates of preexisting health conditions, are seriously concerned for the survival of their communities. “When you look at the health disparities in Indian Country… we could get wiped out,” said Kevin Allis, chief executive of the National Congress of American Indians.

With the response to this disaster now in the hands of the states, there is no way to ensure that these disparities will be accounted for in our responses to coronavirus, greatly exposing the need for federal action that lawmakers and governors struggling with this crisis have been requesting for weeks. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called for the federal government “to step up in a big way,” in addressing these potential inequalities, including access to testing and treatment.

While President Donald Trump has been infamous for trying to flex his executive power, he is refusing to do so at the most significant point in his presidency.

As the country braces for one of the worst nationwide disasters, my 21st birthday is likely to fall as another, altogether unimportant victim of the virus. While life in the “Big Easy” — New Orleans — is becoming more difficult by the day, it would be a lot harder if not for the swift action of their government.

Other cities throughout the South may not have it so easy thanks to their inept leaders. With cases resurging in parts of Asia that thought they had it under control, federal inaction could lead our nation to the same fate.

Riley Dehr can be reached at rdehr@umich.edu.

s the United States continues to battle the COVID19 pandemic, millions of Americans working essential jobs put their lives on the line every time they go to work. In particular, hospital and health care workers across the country have risked their lives daily, working to treat patients fighting the coronavirus without the critical masks and personal protective equipment they need. In a recent interview on “60 Minutes,” one medical worker from a New York City hospital described the scene inside the hospitals as “Hell on Earth.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic now claiming more than 30,000 lives across the nation — including a high but unknown number of health care workers who have succumbed to the virus — the coronavirus has set off a calamitous chain of events for our nation. Many Americans have questioned what the federal government has done over the years to prepare for the kind of event we find ourselves in today, along with the resulting medical and economic implications.

While our nation continues to grapple with the effects of the pandemic, it’s clear that our government wasn’t prepared to fight a highly contagious respiratory disease like the coronavirus.

If the proper steps had been taken — and our stockpile of N95 masks, personal protective equipment and ventilators had been maintained — our hospitals and health care workers wouldn’t be so overwhelmed right now. As one nurse said in the same 60 Minutes interview, “Every health care worker infection, every health care worker death is preventable.”

In response to the federal government’s clear lack of preparedness, the Trump administration, which currently oversees the nation’s response to COVID-19, has gotten the brunt of the blame. The New York Times wrote a recent article detailing what so many Americans believe to be countless missteps by the current occupant of the Oval Office.

It is true that President Donald Trump has had a lot to do with our country’s response to the coronavirus crisis. While many critics claim he should have taken action sooner, Trump has done the best job possible with the tools he was given by his predecessors and the data available at that time. The president has taken a number of common-sense steps that have protected millions of Americans from contracting COVID-19, as I detailed in my last column.

The truth is that in order to really look at our nation’s response to COVID-19, we have to look back in time. Long before Trump was elected president, history shows that our government had the chance to prepare for a pandemic like the coronavirus a decade ago, after the worst of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the H1N1 influenza virus was first detected in the U.S. in the spring of 2009. By April 2010, the CDC estimates that over 60 million people within our borders were infected while 12,000 people died. While the situation caused by H1N1 cannot be compared to the national shutdown we are currently experiencing today, this virus was considered a pandemic nonetheless.

In the midst of the spread of H1N1, which hit younger people who didn’t have the antibodies to fight off this flu strain harder, the federal government turned to its stockpile of critical medical supplies and equipment that is typically only used in extreme situations (like a pandemic). According to a study in the journal of Health Security, “75 percent of N95 respirators and 25 percent of face masks contained in the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile (100 million products) were deployed for use in health care settings over the course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic response.” Despite calls from medical experts to build up the national stockpile in order to prepare for the next pandemic, President Barack Obama’s administration failed to do so, according to a USA Today Fact Check in response to a Daily Wire article published in March.

The truth is that Barack Obama was president during a medical event similar to COVID-19. His administration knew the risks of failing to rebuild the national stockpile of masks and other equipment, but failed to actually replenish that critical stockpile. While this inaction is not solely to blame for the fallout from the coronavirus, it undoubtedly has contributed immensely to the calamity we are living through today. Sadly, our depleted stockpile, paired with this highly contagious respiratory disease, has created the perfect storm, a storm that was somewhat preventable.

Ultimately, our society has had enough warnings. We lived through the H1N1 pandemic and continue to confront the COVID-19 pandemic today.

Meanwhile, we remember other health crises that threatened millions across the world in the past, including SARS, MERS and Ebola. There will be another pandemic, sooner than later, that makes its way into our country. Before that happens, we owe it to ourselves and future generations to invest in medical supplies and prepare ourselves, so we don’t have to watch thousands die and millions risk their lives at the expense of our inaction.

OnceCOVID-19subsides,wemustbegin conversations immediately about how we will begin to rebuild our national stockpile of emergency medical supplies, because we cannot make the same mistake twice.

We have an obligation to learn from our inaction after H1N1 and prevent something like the current pandemic from ever happening again.

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.

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Arts

Friday, April 17, 2020 — 5

MUSIC REVIEW

Drain opens eyes with new album ‘California Cursed’ JIM WILSON

Daily Arts Writer

Given the current circumstances, the future for small music scenes like hardcore is uncertain. Gigs can’t be played and bands can’t be paid, so what are bands to do?

Recorded releases give a band an audience, but records are expensive and don’t pay the bills; performances pay the bills, and now bands can’t perform, leaving them with outstanding invoices, recording fees and unsold merchandise. Bands are making no money and their livelihoods may be at risk.

A good way to support your favorite artists during these times is to purchase their work or merchandise on Bandcamp, until they can finally start touring again. *** Sunshine has always been associated with good times and good moods. It’s a universal feeling, eagerly waiting for spring to come after a long, cold winter.

It’s impossible to have a bad day if it’s sunny, so we always look forward to the next day of sunshine. This isn’t exactly the case in places with continuous sun, like Santa Cruz, California. A sunny day is just another day, with no guarantees of a pleasant charm. Go-go vocalist Sam Ciaramitaro and the rest of his fun-loving wrecking crew, the hardcore punk band Drain, know that better than just about anyone.

The Santa Cruz-based band plays a brand of hardcore that’s distinctly them; their music is fast, aggressive and constantly on the verge of losing control, but most importantly, it’s an absolute blast

to listen to. They’re heavily inf luenced by ’80s thrash metal and incorporate that sound seamlessly with the typically slower paced leanings of hardcore. However, Drain sets itself apart from the fray with leadman Ciaramitaro, the band’s neonshorts-wearing fire-starter. In hardcore, many lyricists tend to focus on how the band isn’t like anything in ordered society and if you’re against anything they say, get the fuck out because you don’t get it and you never will. While Ciaramitaro’s lyrics have plenty of that, they have many heart-wrenching moments as well. Drain’s newest release, California Cursed, leans fully into these moments, simultaneously opening eyes and cracking skulls.

California Cursed plays out more as a confessional than a hardcore record.

Ciaramitaro wears his heart on his sleeve from the get-go, even though it’s difficult to hear when he’s shredding his vocal chords and bouncing off the walls at a million miles an hour. On lead single and early standout “Army of One,” a redux of a 2018 demo track, he talks about all the undesirable work he’s had to do just to scrounge up enough money to buy some groceries, and if you look down on him for it, you don’t understand what it’s like to struggle. “You weren’t broke with me / You weren’t naked with me / I had to wait for that sleazy man to give me my fuckin’ money,” he screams as the rest of the band lays down filthy bass lines, blazing guitar solos and thoracic cavity-crushing drum blasts, recounting the times he posed nude for a community college art class run by a perverted old man.

Album opener “Feel the Pressure,” on the other hand, starts on a much calmer note.

After hearing seagulls cackle for a few moments, someone crashes into the ocean and gasps for air as the band slowly comes into focus. Guitarist Cody Chavez chugs by himself for a bit, only for the rest of the band to join him and rip down the walls.

It’s a song made to be played live because it gives pit members just enough time to acquaint themselves with the atmosphere before the carnage begins. After a quick breakdown about halfway through, Ciaramitaro disapprovingly shrieks at his detractors, “I feel the pressure of a thousand eyes / Staring at me / They want to see me fall / HA-HA / Yeah right man!

You won’t see me at all,” in a moment made for two-stepping.

Drain only takes a brief mid-album break with the foreboding “Hollister Daydreamer,” meant to serve as both a relief from the carnage and a warning of what’s to come. The next three songs, particularly “White Coat Syndrome,” are all absolute shitrippers as the band kicks things into overdrive. Ciaramitaro touches on topics like mental health, self-corruption and the urge to do your family right even when the going gets tough. During a particularly powerful segment of “The Process of Weeding Out,” he tugs on the heart strings by exclaiming, “I can’t let down / The ones I love / I can’t let the ones I hate / Be right / I’ve got the strength / I’ve got the light.” The entirety of California Cursed serves as a build up to the album closer, the eponymous “California Cursed.”

“California Cursed” is a love letter to

Santa Cruz, even though at times it has been a source of such anguish for the band.

The project is Drain’s brand of hardcore executed to perfection as every member reaches deep into their bag to pull out all the stops, but it’s Ciaramitaro who steals the show. “I’m a slave to the curse and it’s getting worse / California Cursed / I was born here and I’ll die here / Until that day, this is where I’ll be / This state has swallowed me whole / Suck me down and set me free.” Ciaramitaro and the rest of Drain all know that, more often than not, sunshine does not equal good times, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

They’re all cursed, but it’s the only way they’ll ever set themselves free.

California Cursed Drain Revelation Records

FILM REVIEW

‘And Then We Danced’ is simple, yet heartbreaking is either missing from their performance or their career is derailed. Enter the Daily Arts Writer rebellious newcomer; naturally talented with seemingly little care for the amount of The world of professional dance is work that others may have put in to gain a ruthless — the beauty we see as an spot in the company, this character always audience is often the result of years of both turns the world upside-down. Whether it’s psychological and physical damage. To their unorthodox style or simply the fact become a principal dancer in any kind of that they are somehow effortlessly better dance company requires a certain amount than the entire dance corps, there is always of discipline that the average person doesn’t something intriguing, and off-limits, about have. Every dancer, whether they’re just this new person. starting out or are at the peak of their Though “And Then We Danced” follows career, has questioned not only whether this classic narrative with little f lexibility, they’re technically good enough, but also if there are small moments sprinkled they have the “look.” For ballet, this means throughout the film that set it apart from long, sinewy limbs that can gracefully the generic movies that often come out of hold impressive positions. Meanwhile, in powerhouses like Netf lix. The opening ten other styles of dance, minutes are efficient this might mean — they introduce the intensity of a impossibly fast feet Georgian dance or sharp movements rehearsal and both that look effortless.

“And Then We Danced” the mental and In “And Then physical toll it takes We Danced,” the Dir. Levan Akin with barely a word audience is exposed Feb. 7, 2020 from any of the to the Georgian characters. In barely tradition of dance, a two scenes, “And strong conservative Then We Danced” style that values establishes a base for masculinity and its story that takes confidence. It’s a style that leaves no room for someone some films thirty minutes.

Not only are we introduced to Merab’s unsure of the choreography, let alone their (Levan Gelbakhiani, debut) current world, own identity.

Dance films have a very set formula we also watch the moment everything — think along the lines of “Save the Last changes with the unexpected entrance Dance” with Julia Stiles. They begin by of Irakli (Bachli Valishvili, “Until 1 introducing the main protagonist, a person PM”). Silence cuts through the scene who has dedicated their entire life to and the studio f loor becomes divided; perfecting their technique, yet something it is no longer an internal struggle EMMA CHANG

MUSIC BOX FILMS

between company dancers vying for duet opportunities. Now, the question lies in how this newcomer is going to affect the already delicate balance of the company.

The story unfolds predictably — Irakli is a talented dancer, better than most, and his carefree attitude upsets the status quo.

Little else is said, but as the scene comes to a close the audience watches Merab gaze at Irakli, prompting a sense of fascination with this new character.

The next step in most dance films is to address the tension between our two new protagonists. Will they train together?

Will they compete? Potentially both?

Whatever way a film chooses to bring them together, the chemistry between the two characters must be clear. “And Then We Danced” takes little stock in conversation. Instead, the connection between Irakli and Merab is highlighted with a dance. The first time we see the two dance together is also the first time Merab is shown actually enjoying himself

at rehearsal — his movements become more f luid, his performance imbued with a healthier sense of self in relation to Georgian dance. It’s the first time we see him at ease on the studio f loor, and it’s beautiful to watch.

“And Then We Danced” is a typical coming-of-age dance story. It highlights the sacrifices that people make when they try to monetize their art, and the effect that emotion can have on the way art is seen in the world. The minute someone puts their creative ventures on display, they risk facing the kind of debilitating rejection that can take away all of the passion needed to create art well. At the same time, though, if an artist has found a certain level of confidence, an understanding of both themselves and their art, this passion is untouchable.

Throughout “And Then We Danced,” the audience watches as Merab struggles with this understanding, eventually finding it in heartbreak.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Arts

BOOK REVIEW

Truth and lies in ‘I Know Who I Am’ SEJJAD ALKHALBY Daily Arts Writer

Peter Kispert’s debut collection of short stories is linked together by characters who, in one way or another, lie to their loved ones. These lies are sometimes huge and elaborately maintained for months. The title story, for instance, is about a narrator who makes up a friend so that his boyfriend doesn’t think he’s lonely. When the narrator’s boyfriend gets suspicious, the narrator hires an actor to pretend to be the friend and meet both of them for coffee. Kispert’s book travels the continuum between harmless white lies and the complete fabrication of one’s own identity, prompting questions such as what it means to be truthful, what lies do to relationships and how lies shape our own perceptions of ourselves.

The first thing that struck me about this book was how hard it was to hate the main characters, despite knowing the often deep and serious lies they’ve told.

Though very few of them draw a strong sense of sympathy from the reader, none can be thought of as bad people. I imagine this is due to Kisper’s shying away from turning his characters into unreliable narrators. Though many of the stories are told in the first person from the point of view of habitual liars, there is no indication that the characters are being dishonest to the reader. They’re usually open about their flaws, so the reader feels hyperaware of the characters’ thought processes.

This method of keeping characters relatable does, however, come at a cost. A character type that is explored frequently in this book is the compulsive

liar. Kispert attempts to introduce complexity to the reader’s perception of such characters by portraying them not as someone who simply lies a lot, but as someone whose state of mind is comparable to that of an addict. Essential to this goal is maintaining the reader’s trust by avoiding the unreliable narrator.

This strategy is successful insofar as it creates characters that, if not worthy of praise, are at least worthy of sympathy. It falls short when Kispert tries to express the cognitive dissonance that allows these characters to simultaneously value their relationships while also jeopardizing those relationships with their habitual lying. Kispert intends to portray them such that their lies aren’t malicious. They’re just trying to salvage their relationships, but fail to realize that their dishonesty causes more harm than whatever is avoided in telling the lie. When told from the first person, they seem to recognize this, but they can only be sympathized with insofar as they fail to recognize it.

The best example of this is in “Rorschach.” The narrator is attending a pseudo-therapy session with Noah, a guy he’s interested in. Noah asks the narrator, “How does that make you feel? That you don’t feel sick?” The narrator then thinks to himself and the reader, “I gave him an odd look — what a stupid question. A little mean, but I excused it. I hoped my intelligence hurt him.” The narrator in this case is too deliberate in his thinking to be sympathetic. There’s no inner conflict; he isn’t fighting his character flaws, he’s leaning into them. The narrator can only be as honest with the reader as the narrator is with themself, but for the reader to sympathize with

the narrator, the narrator needs to be somewhat dishonest with themself and therefore the reader. This puts Kispert in a catch-22 where he can’t fully make his point without breaking the reader’s trust, so the characters come off as too selfaware, too clear in their thinking. This paradox is, of course, a huge part of what makes the subject matter so interesting.

I think Kispert strikes a good balance between these two poles, but ideally there would be a way to circumvent the problem altogether.

Another major theme Kispert works with is how truth and lies are related to homosexuality. The main character of nearly every story in the collection is a gay man, and their lived experiences as gay men color how honesty manifests itself in each of them. The book deals with characters who have had to hide a fundamental part of their identity, using them as thought-provoking test cases for the question of when, if ever, is it acceptable to lie. This is exemplified in “River is to Ocean as ____ is to Heart,” in which the main character, Ty, negotiates with himself his desire to be seen as masculine as he cautiously comes to terms with his homosexuality. This creates an inner conflict that complicates questions about honesty.

“I Know You Know Who I Am” grapples with interesting philosophical problems by grounding them in real experiences and presenting the nuance that emerges. Kispert is careful not to spoon-feed the reader answers, and instead remains agnostic on difficult questions he doesn’t have the answers to.

Kispert’s book is worth a read and, given that it’s his first, I’m optimistic about anything he might write in the future.

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

A few not so famous last words ELI RALLO

Daily Arts Writer

Sometimes, writing pours from me— hours fall from my grip and the practice renders me tranquil by way of its leisurely, meditative nature. Poems fill pages and characters in lengthy plays and short stories begin to write themselves— I can see the whites of their eyes between the lines of a bright document by the time I reach their final words. Other times, writing reminds me of an unending uphill sprint. Lately, I’ve felt winded.

I digress.

J.K. Rowling wrote her way out of extreme poverty. Sylvia Plath wrote through seven years of crippling manic-depressive disorder. Emily Dickinson managed lively poems from the bouts of self-seclusion. Hemingway wrote through a first-hand experience with both World Wars and diagnosed Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

I remind myself of all of these literary heroes when I hit a brick wall of writer’s block, armed with nothing but my weak arms to knock it down.

It isn’t a helpful practice, but one I fall into nonetheless. When all of this happened, I told myself: I should write.

But I sit down with the greatest of intentions and it’s not that easy. These days, unless met by a deadline, I lack the desire to graze my fingers over 26

letters on a keyboard and tell stories.

When I’m not putting pressure on myself to be productive, I wade in hot guilt. I’ve known for a while now what I wanted to write my last piece for The Michigan Daily about. With circumstances, our writing changes.

Words are malleable. As it turns out, I am too. *** I joined The Michigan Daily when my first serious boyfriend and I broke up. On a December night, the brink of a predicted snowstorm awaited us as I walked away from a person whom I thought I loved following a hasty conversation in an Ann Arbor church parking lot. I retreated to my dorm room and tearfully submitted an application to The Daily’s arts section.

I had put off joining any clubs for my first semester of college, hoping to get settled first. I craved distraction and figured joining communities on campus would be the remedy.

Someone recently told me you have to let yourself feel everything, especially the tough things. At the time of the breakup, I hadn’t heard this advice. I didn’t want to face the tough things. So instead of facing any strong emotion at all, I quelled my bitter sadness by filling my life with clubs and groups and obligations that exhausted my days so I hardly had time to dwell on love lost. The opportunities

I sought out to stave off my sadness and self-doubt taught me, pushed me and enthralled me. I stuck with them — theater groups, three minors and every writing opportunity I could grasp — for all four years of my undergraduate education. They entered my life at a time when I thought I needed distraction, when in fact I needed to find myself. I wanted my ex-boyfriend to envy my productivity and stacked resume though my prospects were no longer about him. The choices I made both frustrate and ground me. I am thankful for choosing to join The Michigan Daily and other organizations on campus — these were good choices. But I needed to do it for me and not for the approval of someone else. Perhaps this crippling awareness is proof of four years of growth.

I can’t pinpoint the moment I decided I was going to dedicate my life to writing. I do know that my first article for The Michigan Daily was published Dec. 12, 2016. It was about my passionate distaste for censorship, specifically regarding books — my first byline. I remember holding the paper in my hands in the lobby of East Quad.

I remember leaving my first meeting in the newsroom and calling my mom to tell her I felt like I was finally “somewhere I was supposed to be.”

Read more online at

michigandaily.com

Friday, April 17, 2020 — 6

MIDWEST COLUMN

Sad world? Unleash your inner emo MAXWELL SCHWARZ Daily Midwest Columnist

Sadness can’t belong to anyone.

To drown in the swell of sadness is as human as breathing, even if the thought scares us. At the same time, our identifications with others, with ideas, with collective identities can trap us into shared traumas, cornering us into communal misery.

The agonizing performances through which we disgorge this misery become communal, too. The screaming, the hollow poetry. In the shadow of a global trauma, I am drawn back to these expressions — to the apogee of Midwest Emo, to the twenty-year old heartbreaking masterwork that is American Football’s self-titled album.

In the mid-90s, something was

The band’s sound, with its irregular time signatures, draws on math rock. The songs American Football produces are meant to draw attention to itself, to break free from convention and pattern. Sometimes, songs will change time signatures mid-song, like in “Honestly,” which returns to standard time for its extensive riff-driven ending, each beat enunciated because listeners easily cling to the pattern. Likewise, American Football’s sound is heavily influenced by indie-rock. Catchy, almost-dreamy riffs are layered over distant vocals. The lyrics are sparse on most of the songs on the LP. It isn’t so much what Kinsella is saying, but rather the feeling created by the sounds collectively, as the album moves through a story of nostalgia and the loss of innocence.

In the shadow of global trauma, I am drawn to the apogee of Midwest Emo — the twenty-year-old heartbreaking masterwork that is American Football’s self-titled album

going on in Illinois. Whatever it was, it made the youth there feel restless, alienated and reflective. Bands like Sunny Day Real Estate from Seattle were emerging, drawing from sounds like Nirvana, U2, Talking Heads and Deep Purple to create an iconic, deep emotional experience. They released “Diary” in 1994 to critical acclaim.

At the same time, Mark Kinsella and his brother Tim were bouncing around Champaign, Illinois. They put together Cap’n Jazz and released “Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped On and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over” in 1995. It’s been out of print for a long time, but the raw energy it produced carried on.

Mike Kinsella initially harnessed that energy in creating Joan of Arc, a band whose sound featured dark, multi-layered acoustics and soft electronics. But then came Kinsella’s American Football in 1999.

American Football has haunted me for a long while now. The hectic and thick guitar riffs layered over distant, hopeless vocals create a sense of nostalgia for something that has never existed. The anti-rhythm that most of American Football’s songs drum along to is both affecting and disorienting. Their music recalls ideas and memories that are aesthetically afflicted.

The near absence of vocals forces listeners to make sense of the layered instruments, to paint pictures out of the sound. What emerges reaches deep into the soul and tears your heart out.

There are plenty of choices when it comes to picking one’s emotional poison. Why not have your heart ripped out by Brand New’s “The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me” (or even their woefully neglected “Science Fiction”)? Or maybe “Diary” by Sunny Day Real Estate.

Weezer’s “Pinkerton,” “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge”

by My Chemical Romance. All of these are good options.

However, I recommend giving Midwest Emo a try. The sound is milder, the lyrics hit harder.

American Football’s careful work in creating a gentle detonation has led others to reach for the sound.

Modern Baseball, of Philadelphia, was founded with a focus on the sound of the ’90s. Empire! Empire!

(I Was a Lonely Estate) and Hot Mulligan, both from Michigan, have repurposed Midwest Emo and its distinctive sound. Charmer, a band based in the U.P., just released their album “Ivy” as a quintessentially Midwest Emo album.

The Midwest is so often thought of as homogenous, as conservative and contained. The Heartland, surrounded by country and away from the world of the coast. But Midwest Emo is about breaking free of those conventions, about mashing things together until you arrive at what feels most authentic and honest. While quarantined, we might all become suffocated by the walls, contained by stay-at-home orders. With nowhere to run, where do you scream? American Football feels that pain. They put it to music.

Sports

7 — Friday, April 17, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Hold Manuel accountable for mishandling allegations

ARIA GERSON

Daily Sports Editor

Former Michigan wrestler Tad Deluca wanted a listening ear.

He wanted to tell someone ARIA what had GERSON happened to him, and he wanted accountability.

His coach at the time didn’t listen. His athletic director didn’t, either.

Deluca was forced to watch as then-wrestling coach Bill Johannesen read his nine-page letter detailing his assault by team doctor Robert Anderson in front of his teammates. Deluca was kicked off the team. Athletic director Don Canham revoked his scholarship.

At a press conference in Feburary, Deluca declared to reporters: “I will not be ignored again.”

It wasn’t just Canham and Johannesen that ignored him.

According to a report by the Detroit Free Press

released Thursday, Deluca sent athletic director Warde Manuel a letter in 2018, detailing Anderson’s abuse.

University policy stipulated that Manuel report the allegations to Michigan’s Office of Institutional Equity, which handles Title IX allegations. But Manuel instead forwarded the letter to the University’s lawyers, alerting them to potential upcoming litigation. It was a move that protected the University above all else.

“I expect nothing. I want nothing,” Deluca’s letter concluded, according to the Free Press. “I just feel the need to report this.”

Anderson died in 2008.

The hundreds of athletes he abused will never get to see him held accountable — but that doesn’t mean there was nothing more the school could do. They could have found other survivors. They could have figured out if anyone who knew about Anderson’s allegations still worked in the athletic department. They could have done the only thing Deluca claimed to want and listened.

It wouldn’t have taken

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Athletic director Warde Manuel did not follow Title IX guidelines.

Manuel much to do the right thing. Anderson retired in 2003, when many of the Wolverines’ current athletes were in diapers. Few — if any — people involved in the allegations still work in the athletic department. Many of them aren’t even alive.

Manuel just had to listen.

But like the others before him, he didn’t.

Deluca’s allegations against Canham and Johannesen feel distant. Canham is dead. Johannesen hasn’t been associated with the University in years. It’s easy to look at those allegations and think, ‘That was 35 years ago. Things are different now.’

But Manuel is different.

The others were vestiges of old times. Manuel is the one calling the shots for the foreseeable future.

Manuel has done good things as athletic director.

His hire of Juwan Howard has been a hit. He’s also made several successful hires in non-revenue sports, such as Hannah Nielsen in women’s lacrosse and Sean Bormet in wrestling.

But none of that should matter if Manuel can’t do right by Michigan’s athletes — including former ones.

Nothing in college sports is possible without them, and it’s supposed to be the job of the person in charge to create an environment where they’re

in the best possible position to succeed. That means a culture of accountability, where it’s clear that abuse and misconduct will not be tolerated.

When it comes to cases of sexual assault, actions speak louder than words. The message Manuel sent is that he was committed to protecting the University’s image before the well-being of his studentathletes. That encourages a culture of silence — one that ensures that things like this will keep happening.

Michigan’s Student Sexual Misconduct Policy is clear on what needed to be done.

“Responsible employees (including Manuel) must immediately report any information they learn about suspected Prohibited Conduct to OIE or the Title IX Coordinator,” reads the first sentence of the policy.

“Failure by a responsible employee to timely report a suspected Prohibited Conduct may subject them to appropriate discipline, up to and including removal from their position.”

The policy sends a strong message: This is a fireable

offense. And if it doesn’t cost Manuel his job, he should at least face strong punishment, such as a hefty fine or suspension. This, after all, goes deeper than one incident. If Manuel escapes unscathed, it sends a message to future athletes, coaches and athletic directors alike about who the University will protect — and it isn’t the athletes.

All Manuel had to do was listen and follow the correct procedure. All he had to do was make it clear that if anyone committed misconduct again, they would be held accountable.

But he didn’t. Instead, he protected his school’s image, and in the process enabled the kind of culture that allows abusers to go unchecked.

Michigan’s first priority in dealing with a scandal of this magnitude should be to establish a strong culture of accountability, one dedicated to making sure this never happens again. And now, that culture needs to start at the top.

Gerson can be reached at amgerson@umich.edu or on Twitter @aria_gerson.

Taking a hit from Zach Charbonnet: ‘I almost got paralyzed’ ETHAN SEARS

Managing Sports Editor

Zach Charbonnet has no qualms about playing with physicality. In his first game at Michigan last fall, Charbonnet earned plaudits for his pass protection. At 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds, Charbonnet has the strength to go through defenders as a runner. Sometimes literally.

That’s where the story of Nathan Smidt comes in.

Smidt, it should be noted, is completely fine now. These days, his coach, Darren Carr, jokes with him about it. There are no hard feelings — in fact, just the opposite. Smidt interacted with Charbonnet for all of a millisecond on a football field during the 2018 season, bodies colliding, bouncing off each other, Charbonnet hurtling forward against undersized competition.

“I tried to hit him,” Smidt said, “and almost got paralyzed.”

The series of events leading to that hit started the week prior.

A Bakersfield Christian safety got suspended for the first half of their game against Oaks Christian, Charbonnet’s team. Smidt, a wide receiver, would have to step in.

It was early in the season, but already clear that Oaks Christian was one of the top programs in California, thanks in no small part to Charbonnet.

“You saw this kid, running back, this guy was like an Eddie George type guy,” Carr said. “You know what I mean? Just a huge, massive kid. Like there’s no way this kid is a senior in high school, but we get out there, we see them pregame, like this guy’s a full-grown man.”

There wasn’t much optimism going into the game on Bakersfield Christian’s end, in large part because it simply couldn’t bring down Charbonnet. It tried to

preach fundamentals — get to the football and tackle cleanly. Wrap Charbonnet’s legs up and roll.

But Carr calls Charbonnet, “probably the most impressive kid I’ve ever seen,” in 15 years as a high school coach.

There was only so much he could ask of his team.

Oaks Christian won the

game 83-0. Things went off the rails fast.

Smidt hadn’t played defense before.

On the game’s first drive, Oaks Christian lined Charbonnet up inside on a trips formation and threw him a swing pass. He made two corners miss, then saw Smidt between him and 50

I just remember right when I hit him, just like black.

yards of grass. He slowed down. Smidt dropped his head. Charbonnet lowered his shoulder and made hard contact.

“I just remember right when I hit him, just like black,” Smidt said. “I just remember being on the ground.”

He couldn’t speak or move his arms, but he could feel them. The game stopped for about 30 minutes. There was a trainer telling him they had to get an ambulance, but Smidt managed to convince his mom not to go,

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily

Sophomore running back Zach Charbonnet broke three of Nathan Smidt’s vertebrae when he ran into him in a high school game in 2018.

eventually getting helped off the field. He couldn’t shake a feeling in his arms. Oaks Christian had a specialist, who told Smidt’s mother he needed to go to the hospital.

He thought it was a bit of an overreaction and, he said, “I kinda wanted to keep playing.” Still, he spent the night in the hospital as the doctors ran scans.

The next day, the injury was initially diagnosed as a stinger and Smidt figured he’d be able to play in a couple weeks. Then the doctors took another look at the scans. It turned out Smidt had fractured his T2, T3 and T4 vertebrae.

He needed to spend four months in a brace.

“I was so surprised. I kept losing feeling in — getting like, shots of numbness down my legs and my arms and stuff,” Smidt said. “I thought that was all just part of the stinger.”

Smidt’s recovery took some time, but he got back on the field for his senior year, and Bakersfield Christian won a state championship in its division. Charbonnet is entering a sophomore year at Michigan in which he’ll compete for the lion’s share of carries. Now, this is all just a memorable fragment of the past.

“We tell him, man, we’re like, ‘Hey, when the Pittsburgh Steelers draft (Charbonnet) in three years, you got a story to tell everybody,’ ” Carr said.

Sports ‘It doesn’t feel real’: ‘M’ Olympians adapting after postponement

8 — Friday, April 17, 2020

THEO MACKIE

Managing Sports Editor

Maddy Steere was somewhere over the Indian Ocean when her world began to change.

She thought she knew what the next five months would hold. For Steere and the rest of the Australian water polo team, those five months were carefully curated years in advance, every action and every calorie geared toward peak performance in July.

That’s the month they’ve had circled on their calendars for years — for some, their whole lives. It’s the month of this summer’s scheduled Olympic Games in Tokyo.

But before the glory of Tokyo, the Australians had a standard training trip to Europe, where they would practice with the Italian and Hungarian national teams.

That’s where they were going back in February, back when they touched down in Dubai, not knowing their lives were about to change forever.

In Dubai, a short layover turned into a nightmare, amid news that the coronavirus situation in Italy was rapidly worsening.

Throughout an uncertain night at the airport hotel, team officials discussed going straight to Hungary, before awaking players to news that they were returning home immediately.

A month later, the Olympics were postponed, thousands of dreams placed on a year-long hold.

“It’s so hard to put into words how much this has affected all of our plans,” Steere said. “Every single day, for at least the past five years, I have been preparing to make this Olympic team.” *** Paul Juda is one of those thousands. Like Steere, the freshman gymnast is among a handful of Michigan athletes potentially destined

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

for Tokyo.

He was one of those whose life changed on that eerie, unforgettable Thursday in mid-March. The day when the Big Ten shuttered its winter and spring sports seasons, with the NCAA following suit a few hours later.

“I was literally making jokes about washing my hands that Monday and then that Thursday, everything was canceled,” Juda said. “So I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ ” Felix Auböck, a senior from Austria who competed in the 2016 games, realized something was off when he and his teammates on the men’s swimming team were in the pool, while all six of their coaches huddled to the side, a serious look adorning each of their faces. San Marino’s Myles Amine found out when wrestling coach Sean Bormet stopped practice to pull everyone aside and console his heartbroken team. A few blocks north, Juda, too, found out after a standard afternoon practice.

“For the seniors, I cannot physically or emotionally imagine the kind of damage that they felt when they got the news that their last gymnastics practice ever was a day in the gym,” Juda said. “… They lost their season, they didn’t have a senior night, they weren’t able to compete their last meet ever.

But for weeks, as their teammates returned home to cope with shattered dreams, Michigan’s potential Olympians had to keep training, for an Olympics they knew wasn’t going to happen — at least not in 2020.

That, they agree, was the worst part.

For Auböck, it meant swimming in the ocean off the coast of California after all pools closed. For Juda, it meant doing strength work through sickness — he tested

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Senior swimmer Felix Aubock is currently training from his girlfriend’s home in California, but he is unsure about his visa situation going forward.

positive for the flu and never got his COVID-19 test results back. For Amine, who was among three Wolverines’ wrestlers taking an Olympic redshirt, it meant continuing his training without coaches or facilities to guide him.

Then, on March 24, the International Olympic Committee announced what each felt was inevitable.

For the first time in history, the Olympics would be postponed, until 2021.

Across the world, Michigan’s Olympians found out like the rest of us — through push notifications, social media and concerned text messages.

“It was a big relief because the Olympics were still going on but we had no pool space, we had nowhere to train, all the gyms were closed,” Auböck said. “… I think it was like a four or five day process until they canceled it and it felt pretty good, I think everybody was pretty

relieved.”

That sense of relief, though, isn’t shared by all of Michigan’s Olympians.

Across the world, Steere found out in an email from the Australian Olympic Committee. Like Amine, she took an Olympic redshirt this past year to spend the fall in Canberra and the spring in Sydney, training with the Australian national team. But while Amine plans to return to Michigan in August for his senior year, such luxuries aren’t available in a team sport like water polo.

For Steere, taking another year off school is a mandate if she wants to compete in 2021.

It’s an obvious decision for her, but that doesn’t eliminate its drawbacks. It means that her senior season — now pushed back to 2021-22 — is at the whims of the NCAA, and whether it permits a second redshirt. Regardless, she won’t graduate until she’s 25, a thought that gnaws at her.

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Senior Myles Amine took an Olympic redshirt in 2019-20, but he plans to wrestle for Michigan next season despite the Olympic postponement.

“It didn’t feel real,” Steere said of the postponement.

“And honestly, it still doesn’t.” *** Two plain black chairs sit beside the dinner table at Juda’s childhood home, a few miles north of Chicago.

Normally, they’re just that — pieces of household furniture.

This month, they’ve been transformed into parallel bars, part of Juda’s makeshift home workout space. A few feet away, he holds himself on the corner of their kitchen countertops, “just to feel some strength.”

He says his parents have been supportive, but it’s still a far cry from the amenities of the sports coliseum in Ann Arbor, where he would typically be training. This, though, is the new life of thousands of quarantined Olympians across the world.

It’s the reason Juda says he knew a 2020 Olympics would be impossible long before the official announcement came down, but now, he has no choice but to make the best of it.

“It’s something that you have to realize, well I’m in my house trying to figure out what can still give me that mental preparation and that mental satisfaction of that sport, even when I’m just here,” Juda said. “And that’s the biggest thing, I think, cause there’s gonna be people who come back from this coronavirus break and are gonna be kinda lost.”

For athletes like Juda, the extra year of preparation isn’t without its benefits.

In contrast to women’s gymnastics, 18-year-olds competing at the Olympics are rare on the men’s side, without the added strength that older gymnasts have.

Now, Juda has more time to develop that strength.

Amine, too, has come around to that school of

thought after his initial disappointment.

“The more that I’ve got to think about it, I kinda love the aspect of being pushed back another year,” Amine said. “Because I’m really process-oriented and I have a training mindset so it’s just for me, I think it gives me even more time to develop.”

The drawback, of course, is that he’ll be back at Michigan, wrestling in collegiate style, rather than in freestyle, which the Olympics are contested in. And though he recites the track records of college wrestlers who have gone on to a successful Olympics, there’s the underlying understanding that if a redshirt wasn’t preferable for preparation, he wouldn’t have taken one in the first place.

Auböck, meanwhile, has larger-scale concerns to occupy his mind. He’ll graduate when an email hits his inbox in a few weeks, and then he’ll be out in the world.

For now, he’s staying with his girlfriend in California, but eventually his student visa will expire. Without a new one, he won’t be able to spend the next year training in Ann Arbor — his ideal Olympic preparation.

Instead, he may be forced to return home, to a country that has considered preventing its citizens from traveling internationally until the outbreak subsides.

“So far, nothing is set and I have no idea about anything,” Auböck said. “That’s pretty much where I’m at right now, how my next year’s looking.”

Still, from Ann Arbor to Australia, one school of thought prevails above the rest.

“It’s a lot better than it being canceled,” Amine said, chuckling into the phone from his parents’ house in Brighton. “I’ll tell you that.”