2022-10-26

Tune In Turn Out Festival hosts musicians to promote sustainability, voter registration

Environmentally-conscious artists invited to Diag, encourage climate legislation

NATALIE ANDERSON Daily Staff Reporter

Following the first snow flurries of the fall, students gathered in the University of Michigan Diag Thursday evening to listen to live music, eat free pizza and register to vote at the Tune In Turn Out Festival. The event was co-hosted by Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) and Empty Mug Records to spread awareness about climate action and encourage U-M students to vote in the midterm elections.

Voter registration tables bordered the Diag as upbeat rock and folky acoustics rang from the steps of Hatcher Graduate Library. The event featured performances from environmentally-conscious artists Kelly Hoppenjans, Ani Mari and Big Chemical.

Empty Mug Records, a student-run record label on campus, booked the musicians and coordinated the audio setup for the concert. LSA senior Aly Latherow, co-president of Empty Mug Records, said it was important to prioritize musicians who understood the issues the event advocated for.

“We just want to make sure that the artists that are representing the event actually know what they’re representing and know the platform that we’re giving them,” Latherow said.

Public Health junior Joseph Cerniglia, co-president of CCL, spoke about CCL’s goals for the festival, emphasizing the importance of voting for candidates who will prioritize environmental issues.

‘The priorities are first to listen’: Santa Ono outlines goals since taking office

learn from that.

The Michigan Daily sat down with new University President Santa Ono on Tuesday afternoon for his first formal interview since officially taking office last Friday. Ono discussed his priorities for the administration, the University’s Climate Action Plan and his plans for engaging with student organizations on campus.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

The Michigan Daily: From city council member to senator to university

president, the beginning of a tenure of a public servant often sets the tone for the goals of the administration and the work yet to come. To help our university community understand what to expect from your administration, what are your priorities for your first 100 days as president of the University of Michigan?

Santa Ono: The most important thing is for me to meet with different parts of the institution; that’s why I am thrilled that we are meeting in the first several days of my time here. As you know, I have been on campus for about four or five days, and I am meeting with people in formal meetings, but I am also out and about. For example, I

went to the Michigan Union recently, and I’ve also been to the Michigan League. I am also having meetings with all kinds of individuals around the entire institution, including going to Flint later this week for the regents meeting. It has been a whirlwind of activity, but it hasn’t just started in the past four or five days. It has been three months since the announcement. I have put in hundreds of hours of Zoom meetings and a couple of visits, and had a chance to meet leadership with the student government, but also the Faculty Senate and some of the unions. And so, to answer your question, the priorities are to first listen and then inform my priorities based upon what I

TMD: Throughout your tenure as President-elect, you were active on social media trying to engage with student groups on campus. Now that you have officially stepped into the role of president, how do you plan to engage with students here on campus?

SO: So you probably noticed that I have actually enhanced the level of engagement on social media. Just in the past hour, I got about 12 direct messages from students and staff and faculty, so that seems to be continuing and is a medium where people feel comfortable interacting with me, which is great.

Let’s get a “hail yeah” for the University of Michigan class of 2026. At this point, this year’s freshmen have survived their first seven weeks on campus, including five game days in the Big House, about 130 meals in the dining halls and two University presidents.

The Michigan Daily sent a survey to the 5,357 students Information and Technology Services listed as members of the class of 2026 on Sept. 8, receiving 1,194 answers about freshman experiences and expectations. Overall, The Daily found that this year’s freshmen are fairly optimistic when it comes to grades and dorms but less so about the impending winter.

Here are the results of those who responded: Residence Halls

West Quadrangle has been officially crowned the most coveted dorm placement on campus for the second year in a row. Freshmen rated their residence halls on a scale of 1-10 with West Quad averaging a 9.28 satisfaction rate. That’s still slightly down from last year, when the class of 2025 gave West Quad a 9.56 average rating.

When LSA freshman Rachel Lim was placed in West Quad over the summer, she said her mother — an alum of the University — told her she was lucky. That’s turned out to be true, Lim told The Daily, and she has enjoyed living in her dorm over the past couple of months.

From air conditioning to spacious rooms and lounges, Lim said West Quad is one of the best dorms on campus. And the location can’t be beat, she said.

“West is definitely top-tier,” Lim said. “The main thing is how central it is. It’s really convenient getting to classes.”

Compared to last year, East Quad (8.88 average rating) upset South Quad (8.74 average rating) as the second-most satisfactory dorm on Central Campus for this year’s freshmen. With an average satisfaction rate of 7.76 across all of the dorms, it seems that the freshmen are already feeling pretty at home in Ann Arbor. This year, Baits II beat out Bursley for being the favorite North Campus dorm. And with an average rating of 9.04, Alice Lloyd Residence Hall was

the king — or queen — of the Hill compared to Couzens and MosherJordan Residence Halls’ ratings of 8.19 and 8.75, respectively.

GPA Forecasts

According to the respondents, prospective neuroscience students think they will have the lowest GPAs upon graduation — with an expected 3.43 average. They’re followed by architecture and nursing students with anticipated GPAs of 3.49 and 3.54, respectively.

Out of the 10 majors with the lowest expected grades, half of them are in the College of Engineering. Mechanical engineering, computer science, aerospace engineering, chemical engineering and environmental engineering students all think they will end up with a GPA lower than 3.70 — the median GPA anticipated by the class of 2026.

Engineering freshman Julie Anton said she expects her GPA to be around a 3.5 when she graduates in four years. She said she recognizes that engineering courses are rigorous and challenging, especially since she did not have a strong engineering

background in high school.

“Nobody really learns engineering in high school,” Anton said. “I think (a 3.5 GPA) is pretty reasonable for the university we go to and considering the courses I’ll be taking in the future.”

Tuition Stress

Seventy-eight percent of firstgeneration students in the class of 2026 are at least somewhat concerned about paying tuition, while less than half of non-firstgeneration students are stressed about paying for college.

About 14% of all U-M undergraduates are firstgeneration students, though almost a third of underrepresented minority students are firstgeneration. According to a 2017 New York Times analysis for the class of 2013, the median family income at the University was $154,000. The University’s website for first-generation students says 66% of first-generation students come from households making $65,000 or less. That means the majority of first-generation students come from backgrounds where their parents were making

less than half of the median family income at the University.

While the Go Blue Guarantee offers free tuition for students whose parents make less than $65,000, many first-generation students do not qualify for in-state tuition and are therefore ineligible for the guarantee.

LSA freshman Vanessa Rodriguez is a first-generation student whose parents immigrated to Michigan from Cuba about 23 years ago. Though Rodriguez said qualifying for in-state tuition and financial aid has helped take some of the financial burden of going to college off her family, she still has to work a campus job to fund her education.

In general, Rodriguez said she has noticed higher stress levels among first-generation students concerning tuition.

“Sometimes it’s stressful,” Rodriguez said. “I have to work to help my parents pay (for college) because they said they would help me, but I have to put in that work, too.”

class

2026 by the numbers: From winter woes to this year’s dream dorm

with

University president says engaging community, facilitating conversation are values he will pursue during his tenure

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University President Santa Ono speaks during his first interview with The Michigan Daily in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building October 18.

Big Chemical performs at the Tune in Turn Out Festival on the Diag Thursday evening.

JOSÉ BRENES/Daily

RONI KANE

News Editor

PAIGE HODDER & GEORGE WEYKAM P Editor in Chief & Daily News Editor

Board of Regents talk Flint transformation initiative, new ethics and compilation office

Flint’s campus.

The University of Michigan Board of Regents met at the Riverfront Conference Center on the University of Michigan-Flint campus for their October meeting Thursday afternoon. The meeting marked University President Santa Ono’s first Regents’ meeting in the role. The Board discussed the creation of a new central ethics, integrity and compliance office, the proposed transformation of the Flint campus and a new building for the College of Pharmacy.

Ono addressed the Board and attendees as the meeting began. He said he is looking forward to fostering an open dialogue with the campus community in his first few months as president. He also announced his intent to formalize an independent ethics, integrity and compliance office. Though the University has an Ethics, Integrity and Compliance department, it currently convenes under the General Counsel. Ono’s proposition will make Ethics, Integrity and Compliance an independent office that oversees compliance issues and misconduct reports for all three campuses and Michigan Medicine.

Paul Brown (D), chair of the Board of Regents, then commented on the Flint Transformation Plan, which was announced at the September meeting. The plan proposes a large investment in Flint’s campus in order to bolster enrollment and improve

“(Flint) wants (the transformation plan) to be successful, but no one wants this to be successful more than the Board of Regents,” Brown said.

Timothy Brooks, U-M Flint Student Government president, also addressed the board, expressing his support for the transformation plan while urging the Board to use new funding to support community involvement on campus.

“(Flint student government) wants to increase our campus outreach to the community to allow (Flint) residents to understand that college can be a viable and affordable path to improve their lives, an effort that we need your help in continuing by placing greater priority on community involvement within (the Flint transformation plan),” Brooks said.

Prior to the meeting, a few dozen community members and supporters of the One University campaign (1U) — a student and faculty coalition advocating for tri-campus equity — rallied at the nearby McKinnon Plaza. Their primary concern was about the Huron Group, a management consulting firm hired by the University to provide data analysis for the Flint transformation plan.

Jacquindre Brown, junior at U-M Flint, spoke at the rally, expressing support for 1U’s efforts to advocate for equitable distribution of funds across all departments, including STEM, arts and humanities.

“The most important goal for me is to advocate for the benefit of students, and if we decide to specialize … that would only do the opposite,” Brown said. “Because the private company that was hired

to deal with said specialization, the Huron Group, is known to put major cuts in departments (at other universities) … we have concerns that the same will happen here.”

Terae King, senior at U-M Flint, said the disparity in funding between the Ann Arbor campus and the other two campuses is apparent. In 2019, The Detroit Free Press reported that U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint students received about a quarter of the funding that students at the Ann Arbor campus received that same year. He told the crowd he wants the University to continue working towards equity across all three campuses, after 1U successfully advocated for an expanded Go Blue Guarantee and a University-wide $15 minimum wage.

“Here at UofM-Flint we are critical thinkers, determined, and world changers and that is cultivated in the College of Arts and Sciences,” King said. “Let’s reimagine UofM as a university that equips their students to become leaders in our society. … As we begin to reimagine our campus, let’s make sure that our University remains comprehensive.”

The Board then examined the proposed design for a new building for the College of Pharmacy on the Ann Arbor campus. The building design was proposed in 2020, but plans were put on pause during the COVID-19 pandemic. The building would be housed on Central Campus, on the corner of East Huron Street and Glen Avenue.

JOEY LIN Daily Staff Reporter

Last Friday, the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) hosted its monthly Feel Good Friday event curated by Philippa Hughes, a social sculptor and creative strategist based in Washington, D.C.

Centered around the upcoming midterm elections, the event is open to the public and features artists, musicians and local politicians. Unlike a traditional art exhibit, Feel Good Friday encourages participants to interact with the art and engage in conversations with local politicians and social workers, all the while swinging to the music on the main stage.

The October Feel Good Friday featured five distinct galleries and a rotation of musicians supplying music throughout the night. The event also highlighted UMMA’s pop-up ballot office, which opened on Sept. 27 and allows members of the campus community to submit their votes.

LSA sophomore Andrea Pellot, an UMMA staff member, said the October Feel Good Friday was created as part of the museum’s fiveyear strategic plan, which highlights

civic engagement.

“We’re working with visiting artist Philippa Hughes for the Vote 2022 project,” Pellot said. “I think this is an environment where people can engage really closely with each other and learn more about each other and the world around us.”

Hughes explained that the event was about facilitating audience interaction with art and other participants, as well as learning about local issues while still having fun.

“All the experiences are geared around human connection through dialogue, through meaningful questions, meaningful experiences, and not just the usual stand-backand-look,” Hughes said. “(Those at the exhibit can) also learn about issues on the ballot in a fun way.”

Hughes, who has been organizing events to facilitate social interactions for many years, said she aims to create experiences where people of different opinions can have a civil conversation.

“People will literally say ‘I’m not going to sit down with that person’ or ‘I’m not going to talk to that person,’ so I want to create experiences where you can actually come together and have a real human and authentic conversation,” Hughes said.

Hughes said she took inspiration from an experience when she invited someone who had differing political opinions to lunch and discovered that they connected really well.

“Literally from the very first moment, we found a lot of connection with each other and we sat together for almost three hours, just talking,” Hughes said. “Once we had the conversation, it was amazing, but it’s getting to the conversation that’s so hard. So it’s just if I can get them there, I know it works.”

Hughes’ experience mirrors the events that took place on Friday as well. Christopher Ankney, director

of marketing and public relations at UMMA, explained that local politicians attended the event in order to listen to the voices of their constituents, and participants were encouraged to engage with them, regardless of their beliefs.

“You can sit in that chair, there are cards that offer you talking prompts,” Ankney said. “Or if you have something you want to talk about, you can just talk about it with them, and they are not allowed to talk back to you. They will sit there and listen to whatever you want to say.”

One University campaign rallies ahead of meeting in support of equity among all U-M campuses

Photo courtesy of Riley Hodder

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PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Protestors from One University support fellow public commenters at President Santa J. Ono’s first Board of Regents meeting Thursday afternoon.

JULIANNE YOON/Daily

Freshman Tarris Reed, Jr. greets the crowd as his name is announced during team introductions at Michigan Madness. The men’s and women’s basketball teams were featured at the event Friday night at the Crisler Center.

IRENA LI

RILEY HODDER

Photo courtesy of Joey Lin

What’s

ANNA FIFELSKI, SAMANTHA RICH & CAROLINE WANG

State Senate 14th District Tim Golding (R) and Washtenaw County Commissioner Sue Shink (D) will face off for Michigan’s 14th District State Senate seat. The seat is currently held by state Sen. Ruth Johnson, R-Holly, who is running for the Senate seat in the 24th District. The 14th District has been held by a Republican since 2014, but Shink is looking to flip the seat. She has centered her campaign on climate policy, supporting small businesses and improving access to healthcare. Shink won the Democratic primary with 75% of the vote. Golding’s campaign has focused on pandemic recovery, defending Second Amendment rights and restricting access to abortion. He ran unopposed in the Republican primary.

State Senate 15th District Scott Price (R) will challenge incumbent state Sen. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, for the 15th District state Senate seat. Price won the Republican primary with 72% of the vote. Price did not respond to a Michigan Daily request for comment during the primaries and has not spoken to other outlets. Price does not have a website and has not shared his platform on social media. Irwin was elected to the state Senate in 2018 after serving as a state representative from 2011 to 2017. Throughout his time in office, he has focused on public education, climate action and infrastructure. Irwin has campaigned on accomplishments in these areas, including passing legislation to increase support for students with dyslexia. Irwin also touted legislation he supported to increase corporate accountability for environmental damage and provide support to Michigan residents harmed by disasters resulting from climate change.

6th Congressional District U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., will face Whittney Williams (R) for the 6th Congressional District seat. Dingell has been the representative of the 12th District since 2015, winning the seat after her husband, at the time the longest-serving congressperson, died. Dingell ran

ANN ARBOR

unopposed for the Democratic Party. Williams won 53.7% of the vote in the Republican primary. Dingell is focused on the auto industry for jobs, protecting the environment and increasing access to health care. Williams has a focus on lowering taxes, securing the border and restricting abortion.

Attorney General Matthew DePerno (R), incumbent Dana Nessel (D), Joe McHugh (L) and Gerald T. Van Sickle (Tax) are running for the position of Michigan attorney general.

Trump-backed candidate DePerno is an attorney currently under criminal investigation an alleged plot to tamper with voting machines . He believes the 2020 presidential election result was fraudulent, abortion and Plan B should be banned and critical race theory should be outlawed.

Nessel is a former prosecutor and civil rights attorney. She is focused on protecting consumers, defending civil rights and protecting the environment and health care.

McHugh is a Marine Corps veteran. Based on his campaign website, he supports the legalization of all drugs, protection of the environment and free speech. He believes in a debunked conspiracy theory that there is a “Shadow Government” manipulating elections and the Supreme Court. He also thinks the September 11 terrorist attacks were orchestrated

midterms ballot?

Bolden, attorney Paul Hudson, attorney Kerry Lee Morgan and incumbent Brian Zahra. The race is nonpartisan, though candidates can be nominated by political parties.

Bernstein, a University of Michigan alum, was elected to the Supreme Court in 2014, becoming the first blind justice to serve in the state of Michigan. Bernstein has also previously served on Wayne State University’s Board of Governors. Bernstein and Harris Bolden have been endorsed by The Michigan League of Conservation Voters, Michigan Association for Justice and the Michigan Democratic Party. Harris Bolden is currently serving in her second term as a representative for the 35th House District. If elected, Harris Bolden will be Michigan’s first Black woman justice on the state Supreme Court.

Republican candidate Bill Schuette, attorney general under the Snyder administration. Whitmer’s platform has largely focused on reforming Michigan’s abortion policy and highlights her May lawsuit, which resulted in the ruling currently blocking the enforcement of a 1931 abortion ban. Whitmer has also said she supports policies to prevent school shootings, including red flag laws and safe storage requirements.

CHEN LYU Daily Staff Reporter

Since 2017, Michigan legislators have been debating whether or not to prohibit local governments from imposing more controls on shortterm rentals. The push for restricting local control gained new momentum in the past year following the passage of bills banning short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods, such as the banning of Airbnb houses in Ann Arbor. House Bill 4722, introduced by state Rep. Sarah Lightner, R-Springport, would limit the local governments’ ability to enact zoning restrictions on shortterm rentals. The bill, which passed in the house last year in a late-night session, was advanced by a Senate panel this September and referred to the Committee of the Whole.

State Sen. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, said in an interview with The Michigan Daily that he opposed the intention of the bill.

“I think the communities should have some limited authority to make rules about these things,” Irwin said. “(They should have) limited authority to make sure that (short-term rentals) don’t present a persistent problem to their neighbors, that they are positioned in a way where it’s more fair to the hotels.”

For Ann Arbor, a college town and popular tourist destination, short-term rentals have long symbolized its tourism paradox. The thriving tourism industry, buoyed by weekend football games, has benefited property owners who convert their properties into short-term rentals to host visitors.

However, city officials have said short-term rentals contribute to the city’s affordability challenges by taking housing stock away from prospective buyers and long-term renters.

In 2020, City Council passed an ordinance banning dedicated short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods. In 2021, amid possible legal challenges from affected short-term rental owners, City Council updated the previous ordinance to allow existing dedicated short-term rentals to continue operating. However, the continued to prohibit the creation of new dedicated short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods. The city also introduced a new licensing system requiring annual renewal by all short-term rental owners.

The House bill bans local governments from restricting short-term rentals to lower than 30% of total residential units. In 2020, 1400 out of 47,214 housing units in Ann Arbor were short-term rentals. While Michigan Realtors, a statewide organization, has advocated for the bill, in interviews with The Daily, the Ann Arbor Board of Realtors said they didn’t take a stance on this legislative initiative.

Prentice 4M is a local real estate company that operates dozens of short-term rental units. Founder Heidi Poscher said the current city regulations reflect a reasonable compromise.

“(The cost of operating shortterm rentals) is more expensive (than in the past) because there are licensing fees to pay,” Poscher said. “But I understand that because the licensing fees are necessary to police the program … there hasn’t been any

by the U.S. government and planned to use COVID-19 “to collapse the economy and move the world onto Bitcoin.” These theories have been disproven.

Van Sickle is also vying for the position of attorney general, representing the U.S. Taxpayers Party. The party’s priorities are limiting government control and intervention, including opposing education regulations such as compulsory attendance laws and standardized curricula and protecting Second Amendment rights.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), Kristina Karamo (R), Larry Hutchinson Jr. (Green), Christine Schwartz (Tax) and Grego Stempfle (L) are running for Secretary of State.

Benson was elected Secretary of State in 2018. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was the dean of Wayne State University Law school from 2012 to 2016. She was the youngest woman to lead a top-100 accredited law school. She is a supporter of voting rights and has transformed customer service by creating a ballot-tracking website for voters to monitor the status of their absentee ballots.

Karamo is a former community college instructor. According to her campaign website, she currently leads a research team focused on identifying election inefficiencies. Karamo gained public attention after claiming she witnessed voter fraud in 2020 in Detroit while

working as a poll watcher.She supports fair auto shop inspections, eliminating election fraud and preventing identity theft.

Hutchinson ran for Lansing mayor in 2021 and lost. He believes in publicly funded elections. In his 2021 campaign, Hutchinson supported campaign finance reform and said he was passionate about gun control, school safety, education and taxes. Hutchinson did not elaborate on these issues and did not share a secretary of state platform on social media.

On the U.S. Taxpayer Party’s website, Schwartz included a statement outlining her platform, which focuses on limited government and building safe communities. “I am 100% ProLife, a traditional family supporter and a 2nd Amendment defender,” Schwartz said in the statement.

Stempfle was a clinical laboratory scientist at the Henry Ford Hospital organ transplant lab. He has 25 years of experience as a political activist. Stempfle believes in election security. His initiatives include introducing rankedchoice voting for state elections, nonpartisan county and local elections and stopping subsidies for Democrats and Republicans.

Michigan Supreme Court Justice

Five candidates are running to fill two open seats on the Michigan Supreme Court, including incumbent Richard Bernstein, Michigan state Rep. Kyra Harris

Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Zahra to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2011 following the retirement of former Justice Maura Corrigan. In November 2012, Zahra was elected to serve a partial term and was reelected for a full term in 2014. Zahra dissented in September decisions to place two constitutional amendments on the Nov. 8 ballot. Zahra and Hudson have been endorsed by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Michigan Farm Bureau and the Michigan GOP. On his website, Hudson says his platform is “grounded in his commitment to the Constitution, the rule of law, and respect for the separation of powers.”

Morgan has been endorsed by Michigan’s Libertarian Party.

Morgan ran for the Michigan Supreme Court in 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012 and 2006. Morgan also filed a brief on behalf of the LONANG Institute opposing affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court. In it, Morgan states he supports petitioners’ challenge to Harvard’s use of racial factors in college admissions.

Gubernatorial The Nov. 8 midterm election marks a historic gubernatorial race for Michigan, as two women from major political parties are facing off for the first time in Michigan’s history.

Incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was first elected as the 48th governor of Michigan in 2018 when she ran against

Whitmer gained national attention in 2020 due to her pandemic response, which is a large talking point of opponent Tudor Dixon’s (R) platform. Dixon was endorsed by former U.S. President Donald Trump on July 27, days before the primary, and joined Trump at his “Save America” rally on Oct. 1 to garner more support for her candidacy. Dixon has emphasized her anti-abortion views as a part of her platform, in addition to vowing to make parents more involved in their child’s education. Specifically, Dixon has promised to limit education on gender and sexuality in schools and to outlaw critical race theory, an academic theory not generally taught in K-12 schools.

Whitmer and Dixon faced off in a televised debate hosted by WOODTV on Oct. 13. They are scheduled for a second debate at Oakland University on Oct. 25.

Donna Brandenburg of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, Mary Buzuma, the Libertarian candidate, Kevin Hogan of the Green Party and Daryl Simpson of the Natural Law Party are also on the ballot for governor this year.

Brandenberg, a business owner, has built her platform on maintaining the integrity of elections, limiting government overreach, and rebuilding mental health services. Buzuma’s campaign includes promises to cut taxes and allow individuals the freedom to choose their own health care, including revoking vaccine and mask mandates, lifting restrictions on abortion and decriminalizing marijuana. Simpson said the three main points of his campaign include economic growth, improving public education and having a “common sense approach to every issue.” Hogan has not shared his platform on social media.

real change. We have continued to adhere to the regulations and try to be good neighbors to the people that surround us.”

Jennifer Rigterink, assistant director of state and federal affairs at Ann Arbor-based policy advocacy group Michigan Municipal League (MML), said the bill has gone further than in the past.

Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor told The Daily in an interview that the city would leverage communication channels with state officials to prevent the bill from passing.

“Certainly we are communicating to our delegation,” Taylor said. “Also, in the event that (the bill) passes in the Senate and gets onto Governor Whitmer’s desk, we would encourage her to veto it.”

Rigterink also said MML encourages representatives from college towns to look into adding exemption language to the bill grandfathering in their policies.

The bill allows cities that have restrictions before 2019 that don’t explicitly discriminate against short-term rentals to continue to enforce them. Ritgerink said East Lansing might have already been exempted since the city has restrictions on rentals in general before 2019.

“The bill doesn’t name a specific municipality, ” Rigterink said. “But the only one that we have found that fits that kind of language is the city of East Lansing … In other communities that host universities or are college towns, I would be asking my legislator, ‘Why is that community carved out and not going to have to deal with this, but we’re preempted in our regulations?’”

SO (cont.): Now that I’m on the ground here, there’ll be more faceto-face interactions. On Wednesday, I’ll be on both Central and North Campuses meeting with students. I hope to also drop in on classes and other venues so I can interact with people spontaneously.

TMD: Over the past few years, the Board of Regents has taken steps to facilitate the process of ratifying new unions. Despite these steps to improve labor relations on campus, the University has still seen numerous stalled negotiations and a strike since 2020. What do you view as your role in working with the unions and how do you envision the University’s relationship with labor on campus?

SO: I’ve come from two other universities that have many unions. One thing that’s really important is that I don’t interfere with the processes and policies around the negotiating table. I won’t do that. But I think it’s very meaningful for me to meet and listen to leaders and unions, and I’ve started to do that and I hope to continue to do that. It’s got to be something where it is really clear that the agreed-upon procedures of negotiating and bargaining are adhered to.

TMD: At the University of Cincinnati, you were active in promoting the school’s athletics. How do you view your role in approaching issues like name, image and likeness (NIL) in college sports, especially when some critics have claimed that Michigan Athletics has fallen behind other schools in NIL?

SO: Yeah, it’s pretty early days in terms of NIL. The great thing is that all the great universities that are part of the Big Ten are having these conversations, so I don’t think it makes sense for one university to go off on their own.

There are issues of parity, issues of values that are embedded in those decisions, and there are legal issues

as well that are jurisdictional from state to state. So a president has to be involved because these are major decisions. One of my roles as president is to understand the landscape and to understand the specific jurisdictional policies and laws, and also to be a team player in all NCAA sports.

TMD: Can you speak on what values specifically you want to see inform these NIL decisions?

SO: We have a broad spectrum of sports here at the University with different positions and different teams, which brings certain ethical considerations in the recruitment of athletes. What Michigan values is that we can do things in a way that we can be proud of, so being in compliance with the NCAA is one thing that is really important to me.

With NIL, certain players are more prominent than others, but the success of a team isn’t just the quarterback or the wide receiver or the running back who might have more popularity in the NIL space — the whole team is important. J.J. McCarthy has done something, which I think is indicative of Michigan values, to donate his NIL earnings to his offensive line and that’s something I applaud.

TMD: You are coming to not only the University but also the state of Michigan as a representative of a public university, in the middle of a particularly contentious election cycle. What race or issue do you view as the most important going into November?

SO: I think it is really important for me as a president of a university with a diversity of views to not insert my own particular personal views into any kind of election, or anytime, actually, as president. I think it is really important for me to facilitate and support active debate and to encourage people to vote. Unfortunately, I have only just arrived and there appears to be a 30-day residency requirement for me to vote, so I just miss being able to vote. But, I am going to encourage people to vote and to be involved in the democratic process of opining

about and advocating for things that they believe in.

TMD: The University of Michigan has been plagued recently with sexual misconduct scandals, from the decades-long allegations against former athletic doctor Robert Anderson to more recent allegations against former American Culture Professor Bruce Conforth. What are the biggest problems you see in terms of sexual misconduct at the University? And, how do you plan to begin to rectify them?

SO: Having been president to other universities, I can tell you that sexual misconduct is pervasive. It is not just in this sector, but it is in every sector of society. It is not just at the University of Michigan. Nevertheless, it is a very important thing to address, and I plan to be actively involved in addressing the situation here. We have been hard at work over the past three months and intensively over the past several days. You should stay tuned for the actions that I will take and statements that I will make regarding this issue, but it is a little bit early for me to say. But I have, during the three months, listened and talked to many people who have made it clear that this is something important for me to address, and I will do so.

TMD: In August, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) released a statement criticizing a May 2014 trip to Israel you went on as president of the University of Cincinnati. SAFE also criticized an April 2022 decision of yours to decline to have the University of British Columbia divest from companies located in the West Bank. What do you have to say to these criticisms and how do you plan on engaging students on both sides of this very contentious issue?

SO: The trip that we went on to Israel when I was president of the University of Cincinnati was really focused on technology, innovation and academic linkages. There are great universities in Israel, and I’ve visited universities across the world.

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The 2022 Booker Prize: Reviews and predictions by the Michigan Daily Book Review

Garner

The Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in fiction. Getting the nomination at all is a feat in and of itself; getting onto the shortlist and winning cements an author’s place in literary history. This year, 13 books were longlisted for the prize, with only six making the shortlist — those under consideration for winning the overall prize.

Luckily for our readers, in keeping with tradition, the Michigan Daily Book Review has read and reviewed all of the nominated books. Among them are the youngest author ever nominated, the oldest author ever nominated, the shortest book ever nominated and a debut novel. Here are our thoughts on the finalists of 2022.

Our projected winner: “Glory” by NoViolet Bulawayo

Our longlisted underdog: “Nightcrawling” by Leila Mottley

THE SHORTLIST

“Glory” by NoViolet Bulawayo

NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Glory” is nothing short of a masterpiece. It follows the downfall of a dictatorship in the fictional African country of Jidada, in which the 40-year reign of Old Horse comes to an end in a violent coup d’etat (inspired by an actual 2017 coup in Zimbabwe). Though every character in the novel is an animal, the struggles and conflicts in the novel feel as real as the events they’re inspired by. Bulawayo’s novel operates within its own vast mythos and cultural legacy, which is slowly built upon by various references to Jidada’s rich albeit complicated past as a former colony. The novel is a negotiation between this colonialist past and a future as an independent nation. Bulawayo communicates these themes in a multitude of ways, but her use of language throughout the novel is perhaps the most striking; words and phrases are repeated with a steady rhythm, until they gain an emotional resonance in the reader’s mind, reminiscent of poetry. Bulawayo unflinchingly examines the question of how we can overcome traumatic legacies and pick up the pieces to forge our own paths.

“Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan

At 116 pages, “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan is the shortest book ever nominated for the Booker Prize. Don’t let its size fool you; the book is quiet and contemplative but stands out with its exposure of a tragic reality

that threatens to rock the Irish town of New Ross. Set in 1985, the book follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant who lives a good life with his wife and five daughters.

“Small Things Like These” is the story of a hardworking man and a choice that could alter his life forever. In a way, the book is simple.

Even Keegan’s prose is simple; the book is filled with descriptions of Furlong’s work and home environment and the coldness of Ireland around Christmastime. But that’s not to say it doesn’t pack an emotional punch.

“Small Things Like These” is a worthy Booker finalist, but it probably won’t win.

“The Trees” by Percival Everett Grounded in mystery and intrigue, steeped in bitter dark humor, Percival Everett’s “The Trees” combines the Guggenheim- and Creative Capital fellowship-awarded author’s signature engaging and pleasurable prose with a side of scathing social commentary. “The Trees,” rife with twists and turns, takes place in the small town of Money, Mississippi. Sixty-seven years after the brutal murder of Emmett Till, a series of killings, eerily similar to Till’s, arise.

Gut-wrenching, acerbic and willing to go to the unseemly places we would rather ignore, “The Trees” is both highly deserving of its spot on the shortlist and a top contender for the Booker prize.

“The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Shehan Karunatilaka

“The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Shehan Karunatilaka delivers a biting satire on the human condition, rich with colorful visuals, cutting sardonic humor and existential contemplation. Set in 1990, as the ruthless decades-long Sri Lankan civil war rages, Karunatilaka introduces the readers to a protagonist whose lifestyle and behavior casts him as an outsider, an unrelatable deviant murdered for trying to uncover the truth. What unfolds is a familiar murder mystery whodunit but with a twist of magical realism that skews the line between real and fake. “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” offers what a good book should — a delicious page-turner that will keep you thinking even after the cover closes. “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” most assuredly deserves its spot on the shortlist for the 2022 Booker Prize.

“Treacle Walker” by Alan

In “Treacle Walker,” an ordinary boy named Joe makes a bizarre transaction that enables him to see and experience the most peculiar things. It’s a surrealist novel, whimsical and full of oddities. Garner’s writing is incredibly spare, and its mysterious silences cause the reader to lean into the story, rapturously hanging onto every word and treasuring the dollops of pure wisdom and truth that make this novel compelling. There are certain phrases that are repeated throughout the novel, like “What sees is seen,” “I heal all things; save jealousy,” and “Can’t never did.” In this little book, Garner powerfully communicates his many insights about the world. “Treacle Walker” is a book you could read over and over again and still see something new every time.

“Oh William!” by Elizabeth Strout

In Elizabeth Strout’s third installation following Lucy Barton, the author’s ability to invigorate the complexities of life into her characters and narratives shines through better than ever before. Lucy, a writer softly in tune with the world’s emotions around her, is wrapped back into the world of her complicated ex-husband. He is perhaps the only aspect of the world she cannot unravel, and is an on-again, off-again friend for reasons she cannot explain; really, the two act as magnets of mysticism to each other despite the juxtaposition of their characters. As the most recent indulgence of the pair and central plot of the novel, William ropes Lucy into a long winded trip to co-investigate his discovery of a life-altering family secret.

It is not surprising that “Oh William!” is a Booker shortlist nominee: Strout offers a tender, intimate look into the angst, fears, insecurities and existential mysteries life has to offer, along with the lonely joys and beautiful imperfections that make it worthwhile.

THE LONGLIST “After Sappho” by Selby Wynn Schwartz

“After Sappho,” author Selby Wynn Schwartz’s debut novel, is the kind of book you can open to any page and find something beautiful: “scry the marvelous new thing that will grace and harrow your life,” “the world was made of threads humming into place,” “just outside time or subject, wistful in colour, its edges tinged with foreboding.” Written as a series of short vignettes of

just a few paragraphs at a time, labeled by character and year, this book is best read like a collection of poetry: in small doses focused on language and unconcerned with plot. Schwartz loosely traces the lives of iconic Sapphic women, from the very famous Colette and Virginia Woolf to the lesser-known Lina Poletti and Sarah Bernhardt, as they loved other women and made strides in feminism and art. But the book is not a biography; Schwartz herself describes it in the bibliographic endnote as “a hybrid of imaginaries and intimate nonfictions.” She takes on the voice of a Greek chorus in a tragedy as they follow Queer women through time and offer interludes of Sappho’s poetic fragments.

While “After Sappho” deserves its place on the longlist for its attention to historic detail and poetic language, its sometimesconfusing timeline and narrative — clarity on which are often sacrificed to the altar of making the book sound pretty — mean it sits comfortably off of the shortlist.

“Trust” by Hernan Diaz “Trust” has fantastic writing but is a disappointing concept novel. Composed of four chapters written as excerpts of other books, Diaz’s debut samples literature written in an alternate 20th century America. Each sample stacks neatly on top of each other in one conveniently-themed book jacket. They are written from a different perspective (with a corresponding new writing style and skill level) revolving around the topic of money and the life of one Wall Street tycoon. But the stories carry few points of continuity and, at its base construction, the book is a hamfisted consideration about how truth, myth and memory are formed — a tragically haphazard copy-and-paste of gorgeous short stories and gimmicky narratives. The second story, stylized as a half-complete manuscript, was written with no narrative purpose besides existing as a prolonged example of the many discarded biographies mentioned in a later story. Instead of being excited by the gimmick, I found it twee and embarrassing. Much like the “Bojack Horseman” character Vincent Adultman (the nom de plume of three kids masquerading in a trench coat), the novel wears the veneer of a cohesive story without being a unified treatise.

‘Frozen,’ fairy tales and my fascination with tragedy

LOLA D’ONOFRIO Daily Arts Contributor

It was 2013. I was going to see “Frozen.”

At 10 years old, I had been brewing in a lukewarm stew of stories with true love and happy endings for as long as I could remember. I followed my family into the movie theater feeling like a total fairy tale movie expert.

The premise of “Frozen” is simple: Two princesses grow up as best friends but drift apart after Elsa (Idina Menzel, “Rent”) accidentally injures Anna (Kristen Bell, “The Good Place”) with her magical ice powers. Years later, during a tense confrontation, Elsa accidentally freezes Anna’s heart, a curse that will prove fatal if not broken by an act of true love. It’s an uncomplicated story about forgiveness and emotional vulnerability.

Watching “Frozen” in the theater for the first time, I settled comfortably into my seat as soon as the first musical number began. I knew how this was going to play out: Elsa would worry, Anna would hope and the curse would be broken by the end. I was enjoying myself, but I wasn’t thrilled.

The climax of the film reached its peak and I watched calmly as Anna raced through a blizzard toward her love interest, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff, “Glee”). A true love’s kiss was imminent, and the curse would be broken.

Then, suddenly, just moments from salvation, Anna spots Elsa about to be struck by a sword. I remember the surprise I felt when she diverted her path to protect her sister.

As Anna reached toward the blade, the curse took effect. She froze.

The sword shattered against her hand. A final breath of air drifted from her frozen lips. Everything fell silent. I was stunned.

My decade of princess education had not prepared me for this. Anna was dead. All was lost.

I watched with terrific fascination as Elsa rose and stumbled to her sister, sobbing against her lifeless form. The snow hung in the air.

There was a vague shuffle from the audience. My younger sister’s small face was crumpled in confusion — this wasn’t supposed to happen. The princesses were always happy in the end. I was as lost as everyone else. But I loved it.

This was the first time a movie had made me feel something complicated. I wasn’t just scared or sad. I was stumped. I couldn’t think of a way the story could move forward.

“Frozen” does have a happy ending. Anna’s block of the

sword is the act of true love that saves her from the curse. She thaws shortly after my newfound favorite princess movie scene concludes and everything wraps up rather neatly. But I didn’t think about the gentle resolution as I walked out of the theater. What stuck with me was how I felt at the film’s darkest moment.

It was that feeling you get when you drop something and it shatters. A feeling of irreversible loss. That feeling has a name: tragedy.

After “Frozen,” I devoted myself to it.

I gravitated toward my family’s older DVDs, “kid” movies with moments of unabashed tragedy like “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Bambi.” I lost myself in books like “Little Women” and melodramatic musicals like “Les Misérables.” I was surprised and thrilled that so many disastrous stories existed.

I began to wonder why so many people are drawn to tragedy. Life is hard enough. Why would anyone ever want to compound that feeling? To me, kind-hearted characters who get much worse than they deserve are consistently fascinating; they make stories feel real. As much as we may love fairy tales and happy endings, real life tends to be messier. It’s thrilling to consume art as rich and textured and confusing as reality.

I am drawn to a wide variety of tragedies these days.

Doomed romances leave me thinking hard about regret and melancholy. I often return to the sentimental first romantic encounter in “La La Land,” reveling in how the colors and music parallel the movie’s devastating final sequence.

Fantastical stories like “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars” also have a special place in my heart because of their fundamental themes of destruction and chaos. My favorite example of this is “Revenge of the Sith,” which essentially reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. I can spend hours talking about how director George Lucas (“Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope”) connects political and interpersonal machinations in such a way that our heroes are left to become the worst versions of themselves.

Slice-of-life movies that feel extremely rooted in reality are another one of my favorite vessels for tragedy. In “The Florida Project,” there is no villain. It is societal failure that sends our characters spiraling into poverty and despair. “Licorice Pizza” is another one of my villainless favorites, which focuses on how earnest desires for love and acceptance often erode morality.

Biopics and real-world stories also have a huge capacity for

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I speak on behalf of all superhero movie fans when I say: We’re getting impatient. Recent storylines feel contrived, productions appear fatuous and characters lack their previous charm. It seems we’re on the verge of a breakup with the superhero craze. Perhaps we want different things — maybe it’s time we see other people.

But we haven’t given up yet. Enter “Black Adam,” the highly anticipated DC Extended Universe blockbuster that will debut Oct. 21. Starring Dwayne Johnson

(“DC League of Super-Pets”) in the titular role, “Black Adam” is the first movie to tell the story of one of DC Comics’s most powerful antiheroes. Tapping into darker material has worked in DC’s favor before — “The Batman” (2022) was well-received by audiences and praised by critics for its psychological portrayal of Bruce Wayne in the form of a neo-noir thriller. Like “The Batman,” “Black Adam” walks the blurred line between good and evil without being anchored to the origin story of its eponym.

In a virtual college roundtable with The Michigan Daily on Oct. 6, Johnson, actors Pierce Brosnan (“Goldeneye”), Aldis

Hodge (“Green Lantern: Beware My Power”), Noah Centineo (“To All the Boys” trilogy), Quintessa Swindell (“Master Gardener”), Sarah Shahi (“Sex/ Life”), Mohammed Amer (“Mo Amer: Mohammed in Texas”) and producers Hiram Garcia (“DC League of Super-Pets”) and Beau Flynn (“Red Notice”) discussed their new film.

Brosnan said with sincerity, “Every day was a joy to go to work with my fellow actors here, and we really did become a family.” The word “family” was thrown around numerous times during the panel as each member of the cast expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to be part of such a harmonious

team. The cast’s playful camaraderie was impossible to miss — the actors were unable to contain their effusive laughter as Hodge explained the story of his animated reaction to receiving the news that he had gotten the role of Hawkman. The stars of “Black Adam” have undeniable chemistry off-screen, a promising indicator of the dynamics we may observe on-screen. Flynn shared, “You kind of have to cross your fingers when casting roles … (but) the minute we saw them together, we knew (it) was a home run.”

Johnson’s remarkably successful Hollywood career has spanned years, a rare feat given that his background is not in acting. But

“Black Adam” stands out among his past projects as his first foray into the superhero subgenre, in a role he said was “truly an honor” to play.

Johnson spoke on the driving force behind this story: “We all wanted to make a film that was different and unique in this world of the superhero genre that has been so wildly successful for so many years.” Johnson added that the idea to finally bring Black Adam and the Justice Society to life was intended to usher in “a new era of The DC Universe.” Rather than creating a place for “Black Adam” within the existing hierarchy, the goal of this project was to “(design) a movie that was disruptive” to the

patterns of its own genre. Garcia echoed this idea as he spoke on “(delivering something) special for the fans” while creating a film that felt “fresh and (allowed) us to elevate the genre that we’re playing in.” Whether “Black Adam” will make good on its promises of nonconformity remains to be seen.

Though we have another week to wait for the movie to hit the big screen, one thing is certain: Those who made “Black Adam” are proud of it. In a genre that relies heavily on tradition, this film aims to preserve the thrill of a classic superhero story while reimagining the DC vision. With that in mind, I am ready to give “Black Adam” the chance it deserves.

‘Black Adam’ claims to be the dawn of a new day for DC — but can it deliver?

MAYA RUDER Daily Arts Contributor

This image is from the official trailer for “Frozen” distributed by Walt Disney Animation Studios.

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On Feb. 4, 2016, “Buzzfeed Unsolved True Crime” premiered on BuzzfeedBlue. Originally hosted by Ryan Bergara, the show’s creator, and Brent Bennett until Shane Madej took over for Bennett in late 2016, the first season of “Buzzfeed Unsolved True Crime” was closely followed by the premiere of “Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural.” Both shows became almost immediate sensations. Within two years the Buzzfeed Unsolved Network was established to house everything Unsolved, and as of 2021 the shows had pulled a combined 1.3 billion views and over 16.6 billion minutes of watch-time. While typically staged as an armchair detective show with a presentation of a case and evidence, Bergara and Madej would also venture to locations where the episode’s central event had occurred. Much of “Buzzfeed Unsolved”’s success is owed to the high production quality of the show, the entertaining and well-researched presentation of cases and the chemistry between Bergara and Madej, a supernatural believer and a skeptic, respectively. However, all good things must come to an end. Recently, Bergara, Madej and Steven Lim

— another now-ex-Buzzfeed employee — left Buzzfeed to found their digital production studio Watcher Entertainment. They exited on a wave of other creators in a Buzzfeed mass exodus, with Bergara citing a desire for “other creative opportunities” and “actual ownership of the content we make” that they would not have had with Buzzfeed. Bergara and Madej kept contracts with Buzzfeed to finish “Unsolved” in 2021, before leaving to produce content on the Watcher YouTube channel. At the time of writing, Watcher has amassed 2.27 million subscribers and has produced 15 shows, including “Dish Granted” in which Lim cooks lavish meals for friends, “Puppet History” in which a puppet host retells stories from history, “Too Many Spirits” where Bergara and Madej get increasingly drunk while reading audience-submitted ghost stories and, most recently, “Ghost Files.” “Ghost Files” is essentially Watcher’s version of “Buzzfeed Unsolved,” but it is the fully-fledged older brother of the original — it’s the show “that I (Ryan) wanted to make.”

“Ghost Files” follows virtually the same format as “Buzzfeed Unsolved” — Bergara presents Madej with a supernatural case of some kind, and the two explore the evidence and explanations together in armchair detective fashion. Each

episode since the show’s premiere on Sept. 23 has also seen Bergara and Madej explore the corresponding supernatural locations to attempt contacting whatever is haunting the sites. Where “Unsolved” was rooted mainly in history and folklore, however, “Ghost Files” pulls evidence and anecdotes from audience members and uses these to shape the investigation. In the first episode, Bergara and Madej visited Waverly Hills Sanatorium, the supposedly haunted tuberculosis hospital they also explored during their time at Buzzfeed. Revisiting the same location may seem like beating a dead horse, but it actually allows audiences to see where “Ghost Files” excels and shines in comparison to its predecessor.

The production quality of “Buzzfeed Unsolved” was always top notch for a YouTube show, but “Ghost Files” takes this quality to new heights. The office in which the presentation segments are filmed is industrially outfitted to truly resemble an underground bunker, whereas the “Unsolved” set looked more like a detective’s office from a noir film. During investigations on site, Bergara and Madej are still kitted with lights, camera and gimbals when not handling other equipment, but now they wear matching colors, green and orange, and “Watcher” branded clothes that offer the look of a cohesive team and production rather than two dudes in their plainclothes. There is also more team involvement in an episode of “Ghost Files” than in “Buzzfeed Unsolved” — the audience now catches glimpses of the team during on-site investigations, and they occasionally engage in dialogue with the hosts which adds to the feeling that this is a fully-fledged production. Of course these changes are largely aesthetic and surfacelevel, but even minute changes like matching clothes gives “Ghost Files” a sophistication that I didn’t even realize “Buzzfeed Unsolved” lacked. This time around, Bergara

and Madej have produced something that feels like a real television show without the restrictions that a television show poses (namely being allowed to say “fuck”).

In the same vein, the investigation quality has also improved in “Ghost Files.” I mentioned before that “Buzzfeed Unsolved” took a slightly more historical approach to investigations where “Ghost Files” approaches things more anecdotally, but these elements aren’t necessarily comparable other than to say that “Ghost Files” is able to employ more audience engagement. Nevertheless, this audience engagement allows Bergara and Madej to go more in depth with their investigations on site as they recreate scenarios related by audience members, and the last approximately 10 minutes of each episode is now devoted to each of the hosts going on a solo adventure in their location, which also gives viewers a chance to get each of their unfiltered explorations of the investigation.

Additionally, Bergara and Madej are now using more, and more sophisticated, technology in “Ghost Files.” “Buzzfeed Unsolved” always employed some kind of tech — the spirit box, motion detectors and infrared cameras, to name a few — but it seems that the “Ghost Files” budget is bigger when it comes to equipment. This time we’re playing with pieces like the spirit box-Honeytone combo, which better allows for spirits’ voices to be heard, with REM Pods that create an electromagnetic field and alert users when something enters it and with the Ovilus, which is able to take environmental readings that ghosts manipulate and translate them into words or phonetic sounds. All of these technological improvements add up to an investigation that not only feels more reliable, but far more professional, sophisticated and thought-out than past

An interview with Booker Prize winner George Saunders, author of ‘Liberation Day’

JULIAN WRAY Books Beat Editor

In his new collection of short stories, “Liberation Day,” 2017 Booker Prize winner George Saunders flexes his talent for writing the human perspective. As readers, we’re often shown distorted, or at least incomplete, narratives — from wiped memories to multiple points of view, the narrators of Saunders’s latest work rarely tell the whole story. And they’re all the more human for it.

In an email interview with The Michigan Daily, Saunders wrote about his approach to these conceptual narratives. He pointed out one story in the collection, “Elliot Spencer,” which is written from the perspective of a man who has had his memory wiped.

“I just thought: I wonder what a person would sound like if you wiped out everything in their brain and made them start over,” Saunders wrote.

“And that was challenging and fun, and as I tried to find and refine that voice, the world appeared and the story started getting told, in that voice.”

Saunders’s characters are often linked to or are even reflections of their environment. Like much of his work, the stories in this collection tend toward the speculative: In the titular story, we read of people known as “Speakers” who are bound to a wall and launch into vocal performances like a sort of sentient instrument when given prompts from a man at a computer.

But the tone of the collection is easy and light. One character tries to reassure the Speakers: “There are many of us who see this thing for the monstrous excess it is. You’re human beings. You are … help is coming. It is. Soon.”

They’re unfazed. “Lauren and Craig and I exchange looks of: Wow, thanks, adult son Mike, we did not know, until you just now told us, that we are human beings.”

That tone, and the personableness of the narrators, helps the reader ease into even the strangest settings. These worlds are so naturally constructed, with their exposition sprinkled through the narration of their characters.

“The main thing is to keep yourself in the mindset of the character — don’t let her tell the reader anything that feels unnatural for her to be thinking,” Saunders writes. “Just like now, we don’t think, ‘Clive took out his cellphone — a small digital communications device — and called Sally.’ So,

the world gets built naturally when you try to think like a person in that time and space.”

Even in the most extreme situations — like an amusement park in an underground bunker, with a suspiciously rigid set of social codes — Saunders’s character-first world building never feels artificial. And while there are certainly political or cultural themes baked into these worlds, the author says these ideas arise naturally in his process.

“My method is to write, mostly by sound and humor, and then rewrite endlessly until something starts to take shape,” Saunders writes. “I do almost no pre-thinking or planning of the ‘What do I want to say?’ variety. I’m writing, really, to find out what I will say.”

In reading “Liberation Day,” you feel much of this spontaneity, and therefore closeness, with the characters.

As the reader, we’re not living in an underground amusement park, we’re living in the head of the person assigned to play Squatting Ghoul #3 in that park. So of course we’d be served soup with a single KitKat for dinner. And of course we’d dutifully participate in the public beating of a coworker who misbehaved.

It’s this absorption that gives Saunders’s short stories such impact. And visceral effect is his intention.

“I’m guessing that something got into my head about the way social media is mastering us,” Saunders wrote, “injecting us with agendalaced opinions that we then mistake for our own, and so on — but if that’s all I wanted to say … I could’ve just said that, you know? So I see my goal as being similar to that of a roller-coaster designer: I am trying to make something that will give the reader such a thrill that, for a few minutes after, she’s just sort of happily stunned and quiet.”

To young writers, Saunders offers some advice: “It really is all about rewriting … Instead of thinking of rewriting as ‘fixing problems,’ I think of it as chance after chance to get more of myself into the story. I think of revising as being a little like that bit in ‘The Matrix’ where time slows down during a fight. We get a chance to look at the events of the story with more care and curiosity than in real life, where everything is always happening so fast.”

“Liberation Day” is now on sale. Saunders will be in Ann Arbor on Oct. 28 to speak at First United Methodist Church, in an event organized by Literati Bookstore.

Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis

Ann Arbor Eats brings local food to students and novelty to an oversaturated influencer scene

The Instagram account Ann Arbor Eats pulled me from my complex distrust for food accounts into a new city’s food scene. As I continue to eat through Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor Eats guides me every step and bite of the way.

As shown by my long-defunct, pun-ridden Instagram, I was a pre-teen foodie. After years of proving that every meal I ate looked perfect, I realized I had lost some of the joy of tasting and sharing a meal. My cronut obsession and table-reorganization habit were not worth some hundred followers and a few friends commenting empty “yums.” I fell into a pit of shame.

Food Instagrams democratized the exclusive world of food reviewing and reporting. They soon came to represent waiting in line for overhyped desserts, neglecting diverse local food for “trends” or advertising unattainable “clean” eating. Today, with the fear of being “cheugy” and trying too hard to be trendy, people aspire to an effortless yet effortful posting standard. “Foodie” pages thrive off of impossible aesthetics, long lines and yearning audiences that want their picture-perfect food (though it is just perfect in the picture).

In a cynical future, people think of Instagram hype rather than eating for the sake of eating. Yet, as I walked into Ann Arbor hungry for new experiences outside of the few standard recommendations and microwave college eats, I looked to Ann Arbor Eats. They showed me a diverse array of foods from every

culture, not focused on aesthetics and cherishing the unique stories and offerings of each vendor. Their Instagram inspired me to explore Ann Arbor beyond the surface.

In 2018, five years after Ann Arbor Eats’ last post, Jordy Richman, a 2020 LSA graduate, took over the account for an alum cousin. At the time, the page had around 1,000 followers and nothing distinguishing it from the oversaturated world of food Instagram. Richman saw an opportunity to explore the Ann Arbor food world and take students along on her journey.

Inspired by her sister, the founder of now-massive Nashville Eats, Richman informed partnerships with local culinary businesses. These partnerships allowed Jordy to find new Ann Arbor favorites and learn from unique entrepreneurs.

Ann Arbor Eats shows off new finds and hidden (to students) local favorites: massive spreads at the new downtown Evergreen Modern Chinese and Bar, action-packed popups at YORK Food and Drink, glittering cocktails at The Last Word and fresh seasonal specialties at Juicy Kitchen. The account features Ann Arbor classics of all cuisines framed in a new, celebratory light. A recent TikTok takes viewers behind the scenes of Zingerman’s Bakehouse and rainbows of Bahn mi and pho or call us to Ginger Deli. Close-up shots make Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger look like fine dining and snaps of Blank Slate Creamery ice cream flight photos display unique local flavors.

The 2022 account administrators, LSA juniors Jenna Frieberg and Lila Rubenstein, now post daily and keep

a “master calendar” of openings, events, festivals and meals with restaurant teams. Frieberg searches local websites to keep constant tabs on community happenings. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Frieberg discussed the world waiting for students to explore. “If you try for maybe 30 minutes, you can dig into a hole of … crazy local chefs (that) all follow each other,” Frieberg said. “Our main goal is … connecting students like us with the Ann Arbor community … switching up from … the typical restaurants everyone goes to.”

Starting in 2018, Richman contacted Ann Arbor businesses offering promotional packages of stories, posts and business-specific content. She provided follower demographics (with an estimated 90% of followers living in Ann Arbor) and an explanation of the account mission before requesting a comped meal. Especially during the pandemic, as small businesses fell behind, the comped meal concept grew increasingly controversial. However, this system allowed each Ann Arbor Eats influencer to explore the menu and showcase their and the chef’s favorite dishes. With the comped meal, they can capture a variety of content and get their classic full-spread aerial photos and close-up pictures of favorites. “At first … maybe half of the restaurants were interested, or maybe even less,” Richman said in a phone interview with The Daily. “As more and more time has gone on, and they’ve seen … the impacts of our account … Jenna and Lila have probably worked with a large majority,” Richman said.

Richman first spread the account

through Facebook groups for each college class. “(Freshmen) were a big area where we’d get followers,” Richman said. “Because everyone was excited to see … where they can eat on campus when they arrive and all that fun stuff.” Since its revival in 2018, the account has gained over 22 thousand followers and a trusting fanbase. “It comes from … the consistent posting,” Rubenstein said. “We post daily. And we have a

Food Column: Baking Taylor Swift’s chai cookies is a Swiftie rite of passage

HANNAH CARAPELLOTTI & SABRIYA IMAMI Senior Arts Editor and Managing Arts Editor

Expectations

Hannah Carapellotti, Senior Arts Editor

As a self-professed Swiftie, I can’t believe I haven’t tried Taylor’s chai cookies before now. I constantly see TikTok videos of people making them and have had the recipe bookmarked on my phone for several weeks, but I haven’t had a true opportunity until today. One thing I’m nervous about is the chai. I’m not a big tea drinker — I don’t understand the hype, if I’m being honest — so I’ll be curious to see how strongly the tea leaves will come through in the recipe. Baking is one of those things I do when I’m either looking for something to do with a friend or really in the mood to experiment with a new recipe, and in this case, I’ve got both of those opportunities! I’m ready to jump (then fall) into making these cookies.

Sabriya Imami, Managing Arts Editor

As a self-professed amateur baker, it seems crazy that I haven’t made these cookies yet. I’ve been wanting to for such a long time, but for some reason, I just never went through with it. I think it’s because I was so afraid that I wouldn’t like them — maybe the chai flavor would be too overwhelming, or they wouldn’t be the sugar cookie consistency I’m used to. I just couldn’t bear the idea of not loving Taylor Swift’s recipe … so I just never made them. Ignorance is bliss, right? That being said, I’m finally ready to take this leap (and jump head first, fearless) and make these cookies. It’s Red (Taylor’s Version) season (or as non-Swifties call it, fall), so it only seems right.

The Process

SI: So, the process itself, what happened? I feel like, considering the fact that we made these cookies in your apartment kitchen, with materials that you had in your apartment or that your roommates were letting us use, this went about as well as I could have expected it to go.

HC: The way you just said that makes it sound like this was so not put together well; I bought the flour and sugars that we needed!

SI: I think I was worried that we were going to be scrambling, especially with the chai, so I was thinking, “Oh no, what if this doesn’t turn out well?” But you know what, it did! And they were very good.

HC: Yeah, one of my roommates had a one-pound bag of chai tea that she said I was more than welcome to use. So that was really good because I did not want to spend money on a whole box of tea that I certainly wasn’t going to drink. But the recipe called for us to cut open a tea bag and dump the leaves in there, and we didn’t have that. We just had this one-pound bag. I remember I tried looking up, “how much is in a typical tea bag?” and I couldn’t find a single thing. We also spilled a bunch of powdered sugar.

SI: It happens. That’s life. That’s the life of a baker. Have you seen “Bake Off?” Anyway, I feel like the actual baking was pretty much exactly what you’d expect from baking. We just Taylor Swift-ified it by listening to her music the whole time, and while waiting for the cookie dough to chill, obviously we watched the Reputation Stadium Tour, because why would we not? I think that really enhanced our experience. Wouldn’t you agree?

HC: I would 100% agree. And I mean, it was a perfect excuse to watch the Reputation Stadium Tour again.

SI: Not that we need an excuse to watch it again.

HC: Correct. We also burned the bottoms of the cookies.

SI: Oh, I forgot about that. I think it’s because there was no parchment paper.

HC: Probably. I didn’t even think about that! That was the one thing we didn’t have.

SI: The bottoms looked so burnt that I was wondering, “oh no, are these going to taste burnt on the bottom and raw otherwise?” But they didn’t even taste burnt; the consistency was right. It’s basically just a sugar cookie recipe, and they tasted how sugar cookies are supposed to taste.

HC: The recipe said to bake the cookies for, what, 10 or 12 minutes? So we took them out and they still looked like the balls that we’d rolled them into.

SI : Raw. Yeah, and you almost burned yourself.

HC: Oh my god, I did! I was flattening them with the spatula and almost touched the side of the super-hot tray.

SI: So I guess that’s one thing I’d make sure to do next time, is to flatten them into little discs before putting them in the oven so that you don’t almost burn yourself.

HC: Or just take them out when you’re supposed to take them out. We put them back in for another, like, five minutes because we thought they weren’t done, and then we flattened them and they were fine.

SI: And they tasted very much like fall, which I think was exactly what we were hoping for.

HC: Yeah, I agree.

SI: And the icing really made them look good. Very cinnamon-y, very nutmeg-y. I could have eaten a bowl of just that, even though that would have been probably

disgusting because of all the powdered sugar.

HC: No, that was me cleaning up! We had started by just drizzling the cookies with frosting, and then I dipped them all instead and we had the perfect amount for all two dozen cookies. And then there was still a little bit for me to scoop out and eat on a spoon.

SI: I don’t even think there were any big mishaps besides the bottoms burning, and even that wasn’t that big of a deal.

HC: Yeah, I don’t think so.

SI: I think this is absolutely something that college kids can replicate in their apartment kitchen.

HC: Yeah, highly recommend it. I think it’s a Swiftie rite of passage.

SI: Agreed! And they’re really easy. It didn’t take us that long. We were making a TikTok at the same time, which maybe extended our actual prep time. But I think if you were to just focus on the cookies, maybe not get distracted by the Taylor Swift songs you’re inevitably listening to in the background, yeah, it would only take you a few minutes.

HC: I still have to edit that TikTok and post it. Results

HC: All of my roommates tried the cookies, and they said they were “very autumnal.” You and I didn’t really taste the chai when we first tried them, but my roommate, who let us use her chai, said she could.

SI: Oh, so maybe we did it right! Yeah, I think (the chai) added a little bit of like, a lingering flavor in the back, but it wasn’t as at the forefront as I thought it would be. Honestly, you could also make these without the chai and just have it be cinnamon and nutmeg icing, and it’d be just fine.

lot of content and we find new places that no one else has really heard of before, it makes people more intrigued to follow the account.”

The account is never monotonous, with thousands of posts, hundreds of dishes, dozens of local business features and creative photos with clever captions. Ann Arbor Eats attends every popup, grand opening and special event in the Ann Arbor scene. They have

expanded beyond restaurants into the interconnected world of local food vendors, including farmers at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, chefs at the traveling Bao Boys food truck and artisan entrepreneurs at Bon Bon Bon Chocolates. “It’s a whole world,” Frieberg said. “We’re just starting to even scratch the surface.”

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‘Barbarian’ is more suspense than spooky

LAURA MILLAR Daily Arts Writer

Almost one month into spooky season, I’ve watched my fair share of horror movies, both new and old. With a 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a cast including Bill Skarsgård (a.k.a. Pennywise the dancing clown from the “It” series), “Barbarian” has been on my list since its release in early September.

“Barbarian” follows Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell, “Suspicion”), a young 20-something who rents an Airbnb for a job interview in Detroit. When she arrives, she finds the house occupied by Keith (Skarsgård). The rental is double-booked, and with no other houses or hotels available in the not-so-safe neighborhood, Tess reluctantly decides to stay with stranger Keith after seeing proof of reservation.

As a conscious horror movie viewer, I was immediately skeptical of Keith, as I assumed everyone else in the theater was as well. The context of Skarsgård as Pennywise contributes to this distrust. Will he play another creepy villain? The suspense built from the question of whether Keith has ill intentions drives the first act of the film. His nervous mumbling, in addition to what seems like a repetitive forced display of concern for a young woman in an unsafe neighborhood, seems off, almost as if he’s feigning a show of distress. But his warm demeanor is calming. Skarsgård’s performance is on point — he’s mysterious, concerning and charming all at once. His intentions are later revealed in the film’s best scene.

“Barbarian” is a wild ride unlike most traditional horror films. New characters are introduced midway through, helping to maintain a quick yet suspenseful pace, and the transitions between these new introductions are jarring in a perfect horror movie way. AJ’s (Justin Long, “Dodgeball”) introduction, when he speeds down a California road in a convertible while screamsinging, adds humor to the film at a much-need time, and his

role effectively sets in motion a new story arc explored for the remainder of the film.

AJ is an interesting character, one that should be considered the villain of “Barbarian,” even if he’s not technically the “monster.” He’s accused of sexual assault yet seems to take this notice lightly until he realizes it might affect his acting career. He’s wealthy yet blows enough of his money so that hiring a lawyer brings him close to bankruptcy. He sets out to explore the possibility of selling one of his properties — the Airbnb in Detroit. It’s difficult to properly discuss his character without spoiling the story. However, I will say that AJ’s exploration of his so-called guilt is well done. Would AJ reach redemption? There were moments that made me question whether or not I was supposed to feel sorry for him. The way “Barbarian” investigates his wrong-doings adds another layer of suspense — are we supposed to feel sympathy for an awful character like AJ? The film answers that loud and clear in another one of my favorite scenes.

“Barbarian” is a lot of fun, but there are moments where it gets a little dumb. There’s a fine line when it comes to “monsters” in horror. One step too far, and the creature that was supposed to scare you just doesn’t do the job, like the half shark half octopus thing in “Sharktopus.” That’s how I felt about the monster in “Barbarian.” Whenever it was on-screen, I couldn’t help but laugh and feel as though I wasn’t supposed to be laughing. I felt more anxious and scared in moments that involved the typical people in the film, like the reveal of Keith’s intentions and AJ’s potential redemption, than I did in the dark basement of the Airbnb, and that just doesn’t seem right.

I enjoyed “Barbarian” for its humor and suspense more than for its jump scares and dark basement scenes. The film has a strong mix of complex characters that make for a refreshing horror movie, one I would recommend to those looking to get in the Spooky Season spirit without too much of a scare.

Photos courtesy of Ann Arbor Eats

Design by Arunika Shee

Content warning: This article con tains mention of sexual assault.

October clambers in without warning, its ostentatious display sweetened by crisp autumn air, bois terous jack-o-lanterns flashing toothy grins and ghost stories.

I’ve never experienced the super natural: I have no sinister encounters to furtively whisper around a bonfire, no tales of messages from beyond or Ouija boards gone awry. I’ve never touched the other side, but I think I believe in ghosts. Not the kind you’re thinking of, I’m sure, but ghosts all the same.

The ghosts I’m acquainted with don’t look like the ones written in folklore. They are not disembodied figures with lifeless skin, pinned up curls and shadowy nightdresses clinging to their skeletal, evanescent frames. They lack the eeriness of empty eye sockets and mouths fro zen in a permanent scream of agony, moaning in torment as they float down ornate spiral staircases. Mine take the form of moments frozen in time, so vivid I think they’re still here, but long-since dead.

They are people, places, memories, relentless in their haunting and antag onizing in their absence. They lurk patiently in every corner, begging to be remembered: in old photo albums and my childhood bedroom, in text messages and vacant corner stores, in the pages of my high school diary and the dusty frames on my nightstand. Ghosts may connote death, but it’s the living who create them. We conjure them in empty corridors and horror films. We lure them to speak to us in the sanctity of flickering candlesticks, with our hushed whispers and elec tronic spirit boxes. We want them to make themselves known to us, enam ored by the untouchable specters we force back into existence.

I am no stranger to necromancy, to the cruel and fruitless pursuit of trying to bring things back from the dead. I long for lemures: I crack the door open for them, I leave the lights on. I am encompassed by eulogies, akin to apparitions.

I am a mosaic of ghost stories. To tell them is to keep them alive.

The Graveyard I drive back to the town I’m from and think I’ve never seen a graveyard look so much like home.

The roads are familiar but uncan ny, reeking with the putridness of a

past life. I was born and raised here: I’ve kissed every corner, caressed every crack in the concrete, so why do I feel like a tourist? I don’t recognize the new shop by my high school. The city has cut down the towering oak tree in front of my house and nobody cared to invite me to the wake. I am sick with unrest, like an anguished Victorian spirit discovering that the sanctuary wherein he lived and loved had been bulldozed and replaced, that nobody remembered him at all.

I drive the same car but it feels like a casket now, a cold metal vessel trans porting me through a world that’s since moved on without me. I’m pale with the bone-chilling premonition that things have died here.

I realize I’ve died here too, a hun dred times over. So many little ver sions of me have faded away, leaving sepia-toned remnants in their wake.

Old flames, friends, feelings and fleeting memories, all faceless ghosts now marking this place as a land of no return. I wonder if my presence sends a chill down the locals’ spines, if they know someone that no longer belongs here has tried to communicate from the other side.

I try to rouse these things back to life. I perform seances in the park ing structure I used to frequent with people who dare not speak of my existence. I watch in solitude as the sunset, red as inferno, sets the town ablaze. I think about how so much has changed here, that I’ve changed too. But I find solace in knowing that one November evening, we drove up to the top of the parking structure and used our car keys to carve our names into the wall. I’m grateful for the etchings that outlived us, the irrevo cable proof that once, I was here.

Michigan in Color

Ghost stories

Kyra tells me to hold my breath when we drive past a cemetery. Super stition warns that the restless spirits will enter your soul and nestle into your bones. With no home to return to, they anxiously await a gust of air from unassuming lungs that they can get swept up in, longing to take the life that courses through your veins and make it their own. I don’t blame them, but we selfishly puff up our cheeks and sit in silence anyways. Kyra steps on the gas so we don’t suffocate. We turn the corner and breathe out a sigh of relief in unison.

I pull out of the driveway of my home and make the trip back to school. I hold my breath. I’m blue in the face the entire way there.

Pretty Dead Things

My body feels like a graveyard, too.

Because my body, it’s a mess of limbs and appendages, of flesh and regret. Sometimes it feels like a thing I haunt, a land that is no longer mine.

To be so disjointed in the skin that was painstakingly designed for you feels blasphemous, but each move ment is exorcised out of me, like I’m rattling my putrefying bones from the inside trying to coax out some evil sickness.

I remember the graverobbers that visited my body, their greedy hands digging and clutching and taking, always taking. They were insatiable in their taking, and their hunger raised a mind-splitting ring in their ears that stopped them from hearing me protest and plead and persist that this body is mine, not theirs. Not that it matters: dead girls can’t say no.

It feels like watching from the other side, suspended in the leaden grey of compulsory silence. Like a

spirit that doesn’t know it’s passed on, screaming until her throat is raw, wondering why nobody can hear her. But I watched as they made a grave of me, something so alive, with teeth and hair and blood and fight left in me, still.

I mourn the girl that I was before you touched me. I bring her flowers on Sundays. I make her headstone beautiful, wondering if dead things can be pretty, too.

I scrub and shine until my knuck les bleed.

Can dead things be pretty, too?

Are you a ghost, too?

Last year, I asked a boy if he’d ever felt like a ghost.

He wanted me to elaborate and I was rendered speechless, that inex plicable shame boiling inside of me and clawing its way up my throat like bile. How do I say that I feel like a stranger in my own body, watching my life unfold from some hazy neth erworld? Like a tortured soul con demned from their house of bones and forced to observe in paralyzed purgatory? I tried to articulate the placelessness, the drifting, the amor phousness of it all, but the words are all clatter and chaos and confusion. My abstruse existential question ulti mately falls flat, and he says he hasn’t.

The boy relayed my question to his roommate later that night. His roommate responded with expected indifference, rolling his eyes and ask ing what the hell that even means. He called me pretentious, said it’s ‘not that serious’ and I nodded my head so hard that my papier-mâché bones clattered against each other in fren zied discordance.

“It’s not that serious,” I echoed. I

want nothing more than to believe it. When I was eight, I read about the girl with the green ribbon. Jenny kept the enigmatic bow laced around her neck, unrelenting as a promise. In her final moments, she allows her lover to untie it, and her head discon nects from her neck, rolling onto the floor in a discarded heap of skull and hair, long and black like my own. I think she looks like me. I am a mess of knots, more green ribbon than girl. I’ve spent years begging people not to touch the tangles.

I think I’ve always felt that way — like if someone tugs at me just right, I’ll fall apart entirely.

Birds & Banshees I visit home again despite my apprehension.

Because when the unspeakable becomes reality, when you’re ghostlike and translucent and begging to be grounded by some sort of familiarity, you go home.

I drive to my favorite park and settle down at the top of the hill alone, brushing shoulders with my grief, thinking about the house with one less heart beating between its walls. I want nothing more than to be left alone, to remain ensnared by the frothing, sharp fangs of hurt.

But a man named Nick walks up to me, oblivious to my staccato of sniffles and sobs, and tells me he’s an ornithologist: he studies birds, memorizes their flight patterns and mating calls and physical character istics. He possesses an unplaceable warmth, and I’m almost annoyed by the way my sluggishness subsides as he lets me sift through his leatherbound notebook. It’s overflowing with hand-drawn Midwestern fowl, and I sit in silence while he clumsily explains how to distinguish between their feather tracts and beak curva tures.

He shares his favorite type of bird, rattling off some complicated name I don’t quite remember. They’re diffi cult to find in the Midwest these days, already on their migration away from the bitter winter. He’s never seen one, but he found one of their vacant nests during his hike through the park, still miraculously intact and perched in the crook of a tree branch overhead. He flashes me a lottery-winning grin, telling me how lucky he is to have found it, how beautiful it is that they were ever here at all.

I find a video in my camera roll, and it takes me weeks to watch. When I finally succumb, music blares from my speakers so loud it launches my heartbeat out of sync. You’re swaying

Ghost hunting in Ann Arbor

SAARTHAK JOHRI MiC Columnist

Ghosts are real. Maybe not in the ways you’ve heard, but I assure you, they’re very real. I’ve seen ghosts nearly everywhere in my hometown all my life — in every corner of my house, in every school I’ve attended, in every nook and cranny of my neighborhood. Every so often, I take it upon myself to collect these ghosts from their spots — not with a positron pack or vacuums or exorcist tools, per se, but to simply visit them and ask them to come along with me. It’s not so hard when you’ve been doing it for as long as I have. You

just have to know the exact right thing to say.

Throughout my time in Ann Arbor, I’ve spotted three such ghosts. In my hometown, I have my car, which makes it easier to get to every haunted spot, but it isn’t here. I do have a bike. It’s no ECTO-1, but it’d have to do. I slipped on my New Balances and jogged down the apartment stairs while plotting my round trip on Google Maps. This method of ghost hunting might seem mundane, but trust me when I say these are the best tools for the job. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for a while. As the sun sets, I set out too.

The ride didn’t take much exer tion. I rolled down Plymouth Road,

conserving my momentum for the changes in slope and switch ing to the bike lane when I could. The bridge over the Huron River was another small challenge in elevation, but nothing would stand between me and my ghosts that night. Navigating through Ker rytown until I reached the border of downtown Ann Arbor, I saw my first spot. The mostly white, slightly color-sprinkled tiles of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum shone in the distance. I kept biking.

I was looking past, checking the windows on the brick backing of the building. It was after hours, so there shouldn’t be anyone in there except my target. A wispy motion caught my eye as I braked hard,

gazing at what I found.

This one was just a kid, bare ly older than a toddler. Neatly combed, straight hair fell across his forehead as he stood still, star ing at me in his tiny overalls. He looked like he was on the edge of crying as his eyes darted, taking in his surroundings and me. I also looked around, debating whether I cared enough to be seen in pub lic talking to air. Placing my hand on the glass, I prepared myself to speak, practicing the words in my head very carefully as to get this right.

“Hey, everything’s going to be alright — I think you’re ready to go home. Could you come with me?”

Slowly but surely, the kid’s quivering lip steadied. His eyes focused on me and then wrinkled as he broke out into a wide, toothy smile. He phased through the closed window and into me. I felt the small weight of the spirit settle onto mine and figured it was light enough to keep biking. Moving towards State Street and taking a right to continue towards cam pus, I felt the inevitability of what this ghost would have progressed toward if he had continued. That smile would lessen over the years as he found fewer things to grin about, his teeth disappearing into a flat curved line. My next stop was the Law Quad.

In the very center was what looked to be a teenager. Dressed in a simple T-shirt and shorts, his short hair stood in shock, with the very ends curling off. His mouth was closed firm, but his eyes revealed that he was keeping his jaw from dropping. Rotating and taking in the sights of the sur rounding buildings, he didn’t see me until I was right in front of him. No longer caring what the students relaxing in the grassy fields saw, I said my piece, point-blank.

“When you work for it, you’ll belong here — but you’ll learn to value the time you’re not working,

as well. I can prove it if you come with me.”

Lowering his eyes to meet mine, he gave me a nervous half-smile and joined me as well. Feeling the two souls meet each other on my own, I figured I had just enough stamina to return home. My apart ment was where the third ghost was, but I figured I should gather these two first. I caught the TheR ide bus back to my apartment, locked my bike, took the elevator and walked back into my home.

Sitting on the couch was the last ghost. Their hair fell in shaggy curls that I could tell still weren’t long enough to tie up. I couldn’t make out their face as they leaned over on the couch with their head in their hands. Oddly enough, they were completely still. No sobs shaking their shoulders, just still hands gripping their face. I could only tell that this was some one that had lived by the memory of breaths ever-so-slightly shift ing their body. Taking a second to swallow, I gently sat down next to them. I picked my words carefully — knowing what I had to say would be much more intricate than the other two ghosts —- to be the exact right thing.

“I know it’s quiet. It’s completely silent in what’s supposed to be your home, and it will stay that way if you want, for the first time in your life. And I know a part of you loves this quiet, and a part of you hates that you love it. You hate that you’re so glad to be away for a bit, and you love that you finally get to be. I’m here to tell you that you’ll come to miss the noise. Then, you’ll go home and miss the quiet. You’re allowed to miss both. You’re allowed to love and hate this.”

They slowly removed their head from their hands and sat up to meet my eyes. I smiled, looking at my ghostly reflection from over a year ago. Slowly, they broke out into a smile, one they’ve been practic ing to be as big as they feel, tooth

your hips and bellowing a triumphant zalghout in our family’s living room. I remember that day, how you tied a scarf around my waist and forced me to dance. My body is rigid and obstinate and not built for dancing. But you make it look as easy as breathing, and we share the same blood, so I do. I zalghout the way you taught me to when I was younger, when you and I roared fero ciously in the kitchen until I got it just right, two unknowing banshees. You’re weightless, smiling and iridescent and so alive, waving your arms like wings outstretched in flight.

How beautiful is it that you were ever here at all?

It’s an undeniably human feat to believe in ghosts. Our illusory stories are fostered by the faith we have in things now vanished, in our inexo rable trust that they are still with us. That our loved ones will visit with outstretched hands, that they’re sit ting on the L-shaped couch that still bears the indents their bodies forged after years of use. That things like love and friendship and memory persist beyond the grave, beyond the metaphysical constraints of life and death, past and present. We welcome the visitations, leaving a seat open at the Thanksgiving table, letting the photos stay encased in the frames. We love the things that haunt us, and that love keeps them alive.

I love the things that haunt me, even when their visits spur night ter rors and fever chills and body aches. I love them enough to retire the ghost hunting. I decide to stop driving aim lessly through my hometown search ing for some semblance of what it used to be, of who I was when it was mine. To stop yearning for the ver sions of me that were once untouched and untarnished, to stop believing that I deserve to be here any less than they did. The things we’ve lost are not always ghosts or graveyards. Some times, they’re glorious reminders that we loved something enough to miss it, to keep it alive forever, to continue basking in growth and newness even in its absence.

I visit the unmarked grave of the things I’ve loved that are no longer here, and I leave yellow sunflowers. I mourn and I grieve, but I do not claw at the dirt, do not interrupt the bloom ing that is emerging in the wake of the loss. Instead, I thank them for their time and let them rest. Just as we must remember to hold onto these things, we must know when to let them go.

ily affirming their journey. I took their hand, and we went to my bed room, where I released the other two ghosts. They all stared at each other in recognition and looked all over my bedroom, filled with every trinket, poster and picture to affirm my identity. The kid looked around in awe, gasping in delight at the children’s novels I keep on my bookshelf and my Spider-Man posters. The teenager looked out the window, out towards the cam pus and the city, his smile slowly becoming whole. The oldest took in every part of the room they had first seen bare. The three began to wind down, and then they all faced me before rejoining my soul, restoring it.

Ghosts are real. Before in-per son classes started, I’d been in Ann Arbor at three points in my life: moving in during the sum mer before, my campus tour and a visit to the Hands-On Museum I’d forgotten about. They’re all places where I made the deci sion to become a different person three different times: the young adult who had to leave behind their past immaturity to live alone and establish his identity, the teenager who knew where he needed to go to college and had to leave behind his past childishness and the kid who went to a children’s museum with his family but was never remembered by his older selves, only recognized. My soul split as I forced these different versions out of me. I see ghosts nearly every where in my hometown, in every place I’ve become a different per son. Every so often, I take it upon myself to collect these ghosts from these spots, driving around to the places I used to haunt to restore my soul, to move forward with every version of myself. It used to be so difficult to return to them, but I’ve been doing it for a long time. You just have to know the exact right thing to say — what I wish someone would have told me at those times.

Design by Janice Lin

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Ammar

Stanford

48109

Ann

VANESSA KIEFER AND KATE WEILAND

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Devon Hesano Sophia Lehrbaum Olivia Mouradian Siddharth

Rushabh Shah Nikhil

Behind the bow tie:

Lindsey Spencer Evan Stern

Anna Trupiano Jack Tumpowsky Alex Yee Quin Zapoli

What the University of Michigan needs to know about Santa Ono

From The Daily: Changes to Computer Science major are needed, but current execution is questionable

THE MICHIGAN DAILY EDITORIAL BOARD

In recent years, the University of Michigan has been facing a problem common to many universities: too many students are enrolling in computer science courses.

To alleviate this, the University began by trying to hire new computer science (CS) professors, with limited success. Though the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) does have some new professors slated to begin teaching next year, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science course waitlists remain complicated, and facultyto-student ratios remain low.

It’s easy to understand why convincing established computer scientists to enter academia is so difficult, especially when the starting salary of programmers is so high. With such a high opportunity cost of entering academia, many would-be professors are choosing to stay in the professional world, leading to a national shortage of computer science professors.

had access to the same resources. Even though the proportion of high schools that offer Computer Science courses has increased, disparities still persist. For example, Latino students are 1.4 times less likely to enroll in Computer Science classes than white and Asian students, thus reinforcing the status quo in an already fairly racially homogenous discipline.

This, not even to mention the core question: how do we choose good computer scientists? High school applicants offer severely limited information to an undergraduate admissions committee. Getting an 800 on the reading portion of your SAT might impress an admissions officer, but what does it say about an applicant’s ability to build a neural net 10 years down the line? Specialization is good, and necessary in our modern economy, but we are sorely remiss if we intend to forbid students from studying whole disciplines at the age of 18.

Ross, is selecting for certain skills upon admission, “CS is different enough (from) other engineering disciplines,” for a Ross-type model to be appropriate. Kevin Ji, an Engineering junior in the CS program, on the other hand, argued that a Ford-like model is better since it would give students “a year or two to explore the major and decide from there.” For Sader though, what’s ultimately important is that the University is “transparent with the admissions process.”

By restricting application to the major until students have completed the prerequisites necessary for it, the University can successfully limit the effects of the resource gap in CS high school education.

You’ve probably already heard about his impressive résumé, his social media savvy, his talent with the cello and his penchant for bow ties. Many will likely be clamoring for a #SelfieWithSanta since his arrival at the University this month.

But at the University of British Columbia, where Ono served as president for six years, some of us have come to realize that the glowing profiles of him aren’t telling you everything.

Forget the hype from the Board of Regents: the students, faculty and staff of the University deserve a fuller picture of their new president. In that spirit, here are a few reasons to think twice about President Ono.

Ono hosted a fundraiser with an alleged abuser of Indigenous children. John Furlong was disinvited as keynote speaker of the fundraiser because of allegations of physical and psychological abuse, but as president of UBC, Ono reinstated him following pressure from wealthy donors. The allegations against Furlong stem from his time as a teacher in a remote Indigenous community. Some of his alleged victims attended protests against him led by UBC students, and the only Indigenous member of the university’s Sexual Assault Policy Committee stepped down from that committee because of the fundraiser.

Ono failed to take appropriate action against a climate of sexual violence. During Ono’s tenure at UBC, at least six students in one night received medical treatment for suspected druggings at a frat party. The university’s Sexual Assault Support Centre said it was “troubled by UBC’s response” and “urges the university to refrain from dismissing this incident as an anomaly” — echoing events at Ono’s previous university, the University of Cincinnati. Soon afterward, when a female professor criticized the frats involved about being invited to participate in a Remembrance Day ceremony, she was subjected to a torrent of misogynistic verbal abuse and threats online.

The university, rather than condemn the abuse, responded by affirming its “commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom” on both sides.

Ono supported UBC’s hosting of dangerous far-right figures. The university hosted, or attempted to host, a range of speakers during Ono’s tenure who were peddling white supremacist, Islamophobic and neo-Nazi propaganda. On most occasions, these speakers were invited by student groups known for their extreme views and looking to provoke controversy, and at least one anti-trans speaker with known ties to an alt-right street gang rented a room directly from the university. In the latter case, Ono provided inaccurate information to the university, incorrectly claiming that as many community members supported the event as opposed it, after which UBC was barred from the annual Vancouver Pride parade. At another event, attendees physically attacked protesters outside the venue in the presence of campus security, and Ono’s Vice President of Students, Ainsley Carry, subsequently had dinner with the organizers.

Ono repeatedly failed to address concerns from students, faculty and staff. One month before another speaking engagement, Ono received a letter signed by 25 concerned faculty members and graduate students, and his administration only replied five months later — that is, four months after the event. In spite of further outcry from the community, the university continued to justify these events by issuing a release, again citing its 40-year-old Statement on Academic Freedom and callously referring the students who were negatively impacted to the university’s already overburdened mental health services.

Ono failed to act to keep tuition affordable. Students endured consistent annual increases in tuition fees under Ono’s tenure, including during the pandemic — driving students “further into poverty and debt.” For domestic undergraduate students, these increases were as high as was legally allowed. In 2021, the university attributed the tuition hikes, in part, to “equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives” and Indigenous reconciliation, before deleting the relevant web page. After the backlash to these increases, UBC became even less receptive to feedback on tuition fees. In 2022, the annual tuition “consultation” process, already widely perceived as a charade,

GRACE

was replaced by an even more restricted “engagement” process.

Ono demonstrated a lack of financial transparency. Amazon announced plans to open Canada’s first “Cloud Innovation Centre” at UBC while the company was under scrutiny for the obscene wealth of its founder Jeff Bezos, for the abysmal working conditions of its employees, and for providing the tech infrastructure for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There was no consultation with the university community on the matter, and the terms of the deal were not made public. The contract was finally obtained by a student group through a freedom of information request after a nine-month delay. Later, it was revealed that Ono was following orders from Amazon to keep $3 million in funding from the company a secret.

Ono allowed UBC to try to avoid responsibility for environmental harm. Despite its reputation for sustainability, in 2019 UBC was convicted of dumping ammonia into a creek that flows into the Fraser River, poisoning much wildlife. The incident occurred in 2014, before Ono’s arrival, but under his leadership, the university chose to appeal the conviction as well as the 1.2 million CAD (approximately $900,000) fine earmarked for local habitat restoration to repair damage caused by the dumping. A spokesperson declined to comment to reporters on the cost of the legal fees, or whether the appeal was being funded with public money. As part of the appeal, UBC argued that the ammonia solution dumped was not a “deleterious substance.” It lost the appeal.

A university president deserves credit for their successes. But as a public official who will be raking in over $1.3 million per year plus benefits, the community must also hold him accountable for the mistakes for which he is responsible.

We largely failed to do so at UBC: Ono, who was granted a second term as president here, leaves midway through this term having faced few if any repercussions, let alone formal sanctions, from the university for the incidents described above, and appears to be as popular as ever. Hopefully you’ll keep a closer eye on him at the University of Michigan.

Computer science is now the most popular major at the University, representing 11% of all undergrads. With more and more students enrolling in CS courses, CSE announced that new U-M students will need to apply to the major during their senior year of high school through the Common Application, making the entry process more similar to the Ross School of Business’s application method. This would help limit the class sizes in CSE courses, but it would also make the program far more competitive and less accessible to most U-M students. Though there would be an option to apply into the major as an “Enrolled Discoverer,” for those who find a love of CS once already at Michigan, the University has confirmed that these seats for Enrolled Discoverers would only account for a minority of CS spots. If a first-year student is admitted to the University but rejected from the CS program, they are disallowed from applying as an “Enrolled Discoverer,” an arbitrary limitation with seemingly limited utility for either thinning class sizes or choosing the best CS majors.

While there are reasons to critique this new University policy, the changes will have concrete benefits for the program. The University has long been praised for being one of the few top-ranked universities with an open CS major, but this hasn’t always worked to its advantage. Schools with closed CS majors, like the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) , have been able to keep class sizes small and offer more concentrations and electives. U-M students, on the other hand, must fiercely compete for spots in upper-level CS courses, and no concentrations are offered.

Though James Earl Jones routinely proclaims that “we are the best university in the world” at every home U-M football game, the differences between the computer science programs at UIUC and the University of Michigan tell a different story. Because of the more robust CS curriculum at Illinois — made possible through smaller class sizes — UIUC routinely ranks in the top 5 computer science programs in the country, beating Michigan while having a notably higher acceptance rate.

Restricting the Computer Science major would lower class sizes and allow more specialization within the major. However, though changes to the Computer Science program as proposed might increase the University’s prestige at a national level and facilitate the management of class sizes, there are potential downsides to this shift.

While the application will be open to any student interested in completing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, there is an undeniable gap in the quality of high school education students across the country and at an international level receive, highlighting the socioeconomic gap between these groups of students and subsequently giving some students an advantage over others. Students who went to high schools that offered computer science courses will have the upper hand at the expense of those who never

Moreover, limiting admission to students who are entirely sure they are going to major in computer science will limit the intellectual diversity of the major and, consequently, the types of computer scientists the University is sending out into the world. It is important to admit students who have interdisciplinary interests, which students who are still unsure that they want to study computer science are more likely to have. Knowledge in the humanities and the social sciences is necessary for jobs in the technology industry, as exemplified by demands for techsavvy humanities professionals in Silicon Valley. That is not to say that every computer scientist needs to recite Hamlet in their free time, but rather that different, and incredibly valuable, outlooks are possible when a student draws from more places than just their core discipline.

The restrictive application process may also run the risk of scaring students out of applying due to the rigor and high expectations of admissions. Many students might not apply out of fear that, because they have not already had a measure of CS education, they will be disqualified from studying computer science at the University for the rest of their undergraduate career. Remember, students rejected from the CS major when applying may not reapply as Enrolled Discoverers. On top of courses that already discourage students from continuing to pursue a specific degree program (weeder classes), the intimidating threat of not getting into the program initially, and therefore precluded from applying as an Enrolled Discoverer, forces prospective CS majors with less-than-stellar programming backgrounds into a cruel gamble.

In order to combat the challenges facing the increasingly understaffed program while maintaining the University’s commitment to equity, it is vital that the CS department explores alternative solutions in both the short and long terms. Since many classes are currently capped by the number of seats available in person, CS majors often find registering for classes incredibly challenging.

Over the course of the pandemic, however, the CS department successfully experimented with remote options for courses, which often streamlined the core operations of classes by freeing resources to help with office hours and grading. In offering remote sections of each core course in the major, the CS department could allow more students to enroll in classes with minimal learning loss due to the existence of in-person supporting resources.

Though a closed major remains necessary until hiring can catch up, the CS department would also be well-advised to model its admissions process after the Ford School of Public Policy instead of Ross. While Ross admits a majority of its class as direct-admits out of high school and opens a limited number of highly competitive seats to students already at Michigan, Ford only allows students to apply at the end of their sophomore year.

Among students, there’s some debate over the efficacy of each model. John Sader, an Engineering freshman and prospective CS major, told us that because CS, like

While hiring in the long run will likely catch up and make a return to the current program format possible, by using this moment to initiate a paradigm shift in the major, the CS department can enact positive long-term change. Though CS-adjacent programs like the School of Information (SI) and Data Science exist, the lack of a governing body over such majors makes sharing resources challenging. With a highly theoretical CS major, Michigan rigorously builds students’ foundations in the subject, but often fails to provide significant industry experience. SI, on the other hand, offers a curriculum highly relevant to the industry but suffers from a presumed lack of prestige relative to a CS degree.

By creating a College of Computer Science in the mold of SI, for example, the University could offer a richer experience by offering concentrations, more CS-related majors and greater opportunities to explore electives. By investing in CS-related majors like data science and UX design, the University can cater to a wider set of interests and free resources in many current core classes. Additionally, because of the inherent crossover between majors, CS students in each major would be able to explore concentrations that overlap across disciplines, allowing for a wellrounded CS education.

Furthermore, this shift in program structure could also alleviate the hiring challenges the department faces. With more industry courses, a School of Computer Science could have PhD students and guest lecturers make up a greater component of its teaching staff. While most theoretical courses would still be taught by professors, many practical ones are better suited to the pedagogical style of those with industry experience. Overall, this long-term shift could prove tremendously beneficial to both the prestige and utility of a U-M CS degree, maintaining fair, competitive admissions standards while increasing the resources available to each student.

After struggling for years to maintain small class sizes and support the onslaught of new CS students entering the major, the University clearly needed to make a change in the program. While the closed major is a step in the right direction, it’s important that the University addresses the equity concerns stemming from this approach and works toward a more sustainable department structure in the long run.

By capitalizing on the breathing room a closed major allows the department, the CS administration should also work toward the long-term creation of a “School of Computer Science,” or other consolidated program, that would allow U-M students to obtain a CS degree while pursuing different concentration areas across the field. By doing this, the program could expand its national prestige and distribute resources more effectively to prevent future hiring shortages.

Though there remains significant work to be done to improve the CS program, taking the bold step to close the major has the opportunity to accelerate meaningful change. In order to effectively accomplish this, however, the department should revamp its admissions process and restructure the current program format to alleviate pre-existing shortcomings.

Is the Democratic party out of touch with Americans

NIKHIL SHARMA Opinion Columnist

In January of 2021, Demo crats rode into Washing ton and took control of the White House and both hous es of Congress. President Joe Biden’s approval rating stood at over 53%, and the nation looked hopefully to a leader who prom ised to restore order and sensi bility to American politics. As Biden took the Oath of Office, stocks soared to record highs, investors bullish on a president they believed would bring sta bility to markets in a post-COV ID-19 era. The Republican Party appeared a disgraced organi zation, and with the events of January 6 top of mind, many contended the Republicans were facing a lost election cycle, as they did in the aftermath of Nix on’s resignation.

Almost two years later, Amer ica faces a very different politi cal landscape. As stocks remain below where they were at Biden’s inauguration and economists see a recession as an increasingly likely scenario, economic senti ment has tanked. Biden’s approv al rating has dropped more than 10% since taking office and the Democrats face only a 19% chance of retaining both houses of Congress. All of this raises the question: what happened?

Perhaps the primary cause of the Democrats’ fall from grace has been the economy. While external factors, like the war in Ukraine, certainly impacted inflation, continued stimulus spending by Biden after the economy had already begun to recover further exacerbated it. While it’s impossible to pin the blame on any individual, Democrats soured their public image by denying federal spend ing’s role in boosting inflation, continuing to propose large spending packages even as CPI climbed rapidly.

When Democrats finally decided to act on the impending economic crisis, they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which despite its name has dubious impacts on short-term inflation. Though the core components of the bill, such as prescription drug cost reductions and tax credits, are useful tools in fight ing inflation, the $369 billion in climate spending and $79 billion in funding for the IRS raised many eyebrows. The Congres sional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that the Inflation Reduction Act will have a “neg ligible effect” on inflation in the coming months and years, call ing into question its effective ness as a policy measure.

Though the Federal Reserve is the entity primarily respon sible for controlling inflation, the other parts of the federal government also have an obli

gation to take actions that aid the Fed’s objectives. Other than the flawed Inflation Reduc tion Act, however, the Demo crats have continued to take reckless actions that compro mise the fight against inflation. Most recently, the White House unveiled its plan for student loan relief, which the Congressional Budget Office assessed at a cost of $400 billion.

While high student debt is certainly an issue, canceling $400 billion of debt in the midst of high inflation seems impru dent, as it would likely increase consumer spending, further worsening inflation. Moreover, doing so has been shown to be a regressive tax by income, educa tion and wealth, meaning that the plan will further contrib ute to disparities in household wealth between college gradu ates, who typically earn higher salaries, and Americans without college degrees — enigmatic of Democrats’ priorities shifting from their blue collar roots to the more genteel interests of urban elites.

While there are many reasons for the Democratic Party’s fall in popularity, a large share of their troubles are rooted in their detachment from Main Street, pocketbook, kitchen table issues. Though the Democrats of the mid-to-late 20th century were perceived as a blue-collar party in support of working class vot ers, modern Democrats have struggled to escape their image as an elitist institution.

While it may be easy to dis miss Trump voters as racist or uninformed, the populist move ment he created was incredibly powerful. In flipping Blue Wall states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016, he swayed traditionally Democratic voters who felt neglected by a party that had left them behind. Though Biden’s uniting message as a traditional blue-collar Dem ocrat helped the party win back many states in 2020, his rampant spending and perceived pander ing to the left wing of his party has reverted the Democrats to the same elitist image he’d hoped to avoid.

In order to regain the image of competency and moderation that Biden embodied upon enter ing the White House, Democrats need to immediately pivot their strategies behind policy and messaging. The first step they must take is being honest about the state of our economic prob lems. By first presenting infla tion as “transitory” then pinning it on Russian President Vladi mir Putin and corporate greed, and now claiming inflation will worsen if Republicans take con trol of Congress, Biden has lost the trust of the American people and sabotaged opportunities for future bipartisan collaboration.

As we likely head into a reces

sion, Americans must be able to look to their president for sup port in bringing our nation back to a healthy economic state. By refusing to acknowledge his own party’s role in furthering inflation, however, Biden risks continued Democratic runaway spending stalling his ability to curtail inflation.

In addition, Biden needs to exert his authority within the party to rein in the left wing and unite leadership around core policies. As opposed to the GOP, which during the Trump administration voted famously monolithically, Democrats have struggled to keep their agenda reasonable due to the high levels of disagreement between the left and centrist sects of the party. While the Infrastructure Bill was a bipartisan victory, poli cies like student loan forgiveness have angered many middle-class voters and left the Democrats seeming out of touch.

Finally, Democrats must adjust their messaging to high light the policy successes they’ve had and the ways in which they’ve bolstered the long-term health of the econo my. When asked about how the Democrats could regain their credibility with the American people, Charles Shipan, a profes sor of political science and the co-author of “The United States Congress,” said that although the “Democratic-led Congress and President Biden have been unusually successful at passing laws, including many that are at the top of their agenda … Demo crats talk about them in terms of how much money they’ve allo cated to address problems.”

He continued by arguing that Democrats should instead “talk about policies they’ve enacted to help the middle class and … focus on the actual content of the policies and how (they) will help people and stabilize the economy.” Though the Demo crats have a significant amount of work to do in order to restruc ture their party’s priorities, they have succeeded in imple menting many policies that help average Americans. By shifting their core messaging toward these achievements, Democrats can not only regain the trust of Americans, but also rebrand their image nationally as they refocus on everyday issues.

Ultimately, while the Demo cratic Party has lost the trust of many Americans, it remains more redeemable than the GOP. Though their policies have been divisive thus far in Biden’s term, there still remain many Demo crats, including the president, who support the party’s tradi tional working-class identity. If the Democrats can learn to ele vate those voices, they might just have a fighting chance at bring ing stability to their party and America as a whole.

The cost of inaction: What to do when school isn’t working

WILL COVEYOU Opinion Columnist

T his semester’s honey moon period is quickly coming to an end. When the calendar flips to October and midterms start rolling in, quantities of caffeine con sumption and sleep trend in opposite directions. For some, the early signs of burnout crop up in the ever-lengthening shadows of the ever-shorter, cloudier, colder fall days. The source of this feeling of con stant exhaustion could be any or all of grades, mental or physical health, overcommit ment, career anxiety or finan cial concerns. While symptoms may vary, a general theme is that it all feels like too much. In some quiet moments doubt starts to creep in, “What am I really doing here? What am I toiling like this for?”

For many — hopefully most — having established healthy routines keeps this struggle mostly theoretical. For others, these feelings can be pushed aside for another day and busi ness continues as usual, with a quiet hum of discontent under girding an otherwise produc tive routine. Maybe the week in, week out is more painful than enjoyable, but morale and output remain more or less sta ble. For others still, my previ ous self included, the pressure of the career expectations, impending paper deadlines and utter exhaustion outweigh the ability to lead a sustainable existence. All assignments start to feel like tasks, innu merable in quantity and insur mountable in scope. Sometime into the semester, external cir cumstances begin to feel like too much to cope with.

There is data to back this up. Take one of our peer institu tions: The Ohio State Univer sity. According to Bernadette Melnyk, the chief wellness officer at OSU, 71% of OSU’s students were facing burnout in April 2021. Outside of OSU, it is well documented that mental health suffered dur ing the pandemic, as isolated students were deprived of ade quate social interaction. And yet, day after day, month after month, this exhausting ritual continues. Maybe grades are maintained, maybe they are not, but one thing is certain: the status quo is not working. While the stigma around seek ing help is being eroded, more serious action remains taboo.

Herein lies the problem with the grinding routine of college burnout: Inaction is a silent killer. The status quo has a subtle ability to disguise itself as safety because it is viciously familiar. Alternatives to the default are largely ignored by

fear and uncertainty. For a select few, though, it is worth considering whether college is the right setting in which to move forward. While it may seem difficult to consider, I suggest taking time away from school, as it can be a viable option, even if it feels daunt ing.

When one leaves school without graduating they “drop out” rather than “move on,” or some other positive phrase. This may be a mere semantic difference, but it speaks to a deeply-held cultural belief: that shifting from the estab lished achievement track is a deviation rather than an act of creation. In a gap year, students can travel, volunteer, learn a skill or pursue a career inter est. Off-season internships are often less competitive than the highly sought-after summer gigs. Most importantly, the clock counting down to gradu ation is temporarily paused while one can explore curiosi ties with more latitude.

The idea of graduating “late” is scary, but ultimately mean ingless. Afterall, what is the difference between the classes of 2022 and 2024? When the weight of each passing week in the few fleeting months that make up a semester feels overwhelming, thinking on a timeline of years feels radical. Taking the time to step away and reorient oneself within a life that can be expected to continue for decades is a mere course correction.

At the very least, whether remaining on campus or not, university students may ben efit from broadening their perspective of what counts as a beneficial experience. In two years I moved to a new city, worked in a new indus try, traveled internationally and refocused my goals for my return to school. These were formative experiences, made available outside of the con text of the four-year college path.

On the other hand, I also attended the graduation of my friends that I entered college

Design by Emma Sortor

with, having completed just half of the credits required to cross that very stage. Many of these friends were also able to explore career opportunities, study abroad and invest in formative growth experiences without having left school. The harsh reality for those feeling “behind” is that time does not stand still, whether in school or not. This is all the more reason to exert agency over one’s limited time, rather than trudge toward an unsat isfying future. The terms of improvement, and responsi bility for growth, are more fully shifted onto the student.

Admittedly, a kind of expe rience relativism can be naive depending on the ends that the student is pursuing. If the goal is to ultimately grow in some meaningful way it clearly mat ters how the time is spent. I am only advocating for tak ing time away from school if there is a direct plan of action to best use it. It should also be clear that there is immense value in having completed a college education in terms of the professional and personal freedoms it can afford. Much of the time, gritting something out for practicality’s sake may pay dividends.

I also recognize that this is, of course, not a path available to many. Having strong famil ial support behind making the decisions to leave and return to school when I did is far from guaranteed, and I do not take that blessing for granted. There are myriad financial and logistical reasons why up and leaving school for a couple of years is not feasible. Do not let the reason be fear. Fear of judgment, fear of career pros pects or something even more trivial keep you from thinking about what might be most ben eficial, as radical as it might seem.

When the long nights of the soul come for some of you this semester, consider what the risk of taking bold action is. Then consider what the risk of not taking bold action is, if only for a moment.

A case for the “Vomit Comet”: the beauty within struggle

ZHANE YAMIN Opinion Columnist

It’s 2 a.m. on a Friday night. The streets are desolate. The faint, distant roar of “Pump It Up” in the distance slowly fades away, only to open up a lone ly silence. You are alone with your thoughts. Your mind races from one topic to the next, trying to make sense of the night you just had. Your voice is gone and your legs are tired. You want to sit down and relax but you can’t: you have to take the bus back to North Campus. You walk for what seems like miles and what feels like a millennium. Sud denly, in the distance, a beck oning light calls you. It’s the CCTC, and you’re greeted by a group of people in the same position as you. You found that at that moment you were a bit excited to see people you had never met. You find, at 2 a.m. on a Friday night at a bus stop, a community.

“Yeah, I live on North” is a phrase that is often met with disdain, distaste, mockery or even just straight pity. “Oh, you

have to take the bus?” “Oh man, how early do you have to wake up in the morning?” “Wow, I’m so glad I live on Central Campus.” These are all com mon responses students use to respond to the North Campus assignment. While most people easily find themselves being herded into this anti-North mindset, I was convinced that there must be something amaz ing and unique about North Campus, and something that the 20% of the students dorm ing on North Campus could latch onto. I became embold ened, energized and motivated to find this “something.” Little did I know that I would find it at the CCTC.

The “Vomit Comet” is the slang term many students have used to denote later buses on weekend nights that go back up to North Campus. The name, noticeably, comes from the sickness, tiredness and nausea that most students bring back with them after a wild night out. Despite its retched nick name, it is on those buses that a University of Michigan stu dent will find something more profound than anything the Philosophy Department could

teach you.

As my weary legs sought rest on a Saturday night dur ing Welcome Week, I thought about how much I wanted to go home. I’m usually not one for going out, instead opting for a night that consists of listening to music and hanging out with just a few people instead. How ever, I found myself overcome by the opportunistic spirit of college and I decided to go against my status quo. With everything done with and my desire to go home stronger than ever, I remembered that my Mcard and housing card were both in a friend’s dorm. On North Campus. I made the pilgrimage to the CCTC with my friend and fell onto a cold bench. All of a sudden, small groups of people piled in and I was sitting with and around at least 20 to 30 other students making their way up to North Campus. The silence turned into a light buzz of conversa tion, which only picked up as we entered the bus. People who had never met before and who didn’t have any reason or excuse to talk to each other, were. The camaraderie spread like wildfire across the bus,

and soon everyone was con tributing to the conversation. “That’s what it is,” I thought to myself, “It’s the community.”

Students taking the bus up to North Campus, students trekking through mountains of snow to get to class and stu dents struggling through cal culus all have experienced this phenomenon. As human beings and as young adults, it’s easy to focus on how we are different from one another. Diversity is very important, especially con cerning growth, progress and the inclusion of unique and underrepresented groups of people. However, it is very easy to get so distracted by what divides us that we forget how similar we are. All it takes is a collective experience to show us that we are similar enough to relate to each other, an expe rience where a group of people, small or large, can realize that their struggles might be more similar than they think. All of sudden, either consciously or unconsciously, if one realizes that another person also dis likes taking the bus, if they also find calculus hard or if they also dislike how some custom ers treat them at work, then

they realize that they might not be alone in other struggles.

We all face struggles in our lives. We all carry weight with us, some of it is light and some of it is heavy. Sometimes the weight we carry is unseen by other people, either because we feel like we need to keep it to and solve it by ourselves, or because we invalidate our own feelings and experiences. This weight only gets heavier. After a long time, it can feel like we are alone in our struggles and that they are something we will inevitably be crushed under. These moments though, moments of relatability, cama raderie and connection, can make a monumental change. They can destigmatize our own views about the struggles that we face. We realize that if someone also carries the same small weight that we carry, then we are not alone in at least one of our struggles. Knowing this simple fact can give way to new bonds, connections and avenues toward realizing that we do not have to go through our lives alone.

If we as human beings can truly realize that we are not alone in our struggles, small or

large, the world could change. This isn’t idealized or utopian speak. Buses, restaurants and calculus are all microcosms of this very phenomenon. Through shared small strug gles, larger struggles can be heard and stronger bonds can be formed. This is something that is inherently human to realize: we are uniquely simi lar and that our individual identity is not invalidated by a larger, group identity but instead bolsters us as individu als.

While the “Vomit Comet” and North Campus have their respective downsides, only in those places and in other plac es of collective struggle will you find the most human inter action. Only in places where struggle is felt and in turn, heard, will you find the growth and progress that moves us forward as a society. So, next time you feel like throwing up on the bus back up to North because of how many times you’ve heard “Pump It Up” in one night, listen to the con versations around you. Maybe even join in. You could change someone’s life. Or they could change yours.

As a member of the class of 2024, I began college at the University of Michigan during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I made the decision to do my freshman year from home, where the pressure to be the perfect premedical student pushed me into four core science classes during my first semester.

I got my first look at the scientific process through a screen (picture me receiving biology lab credit for “isolating a protein” with a laptop trackpad, animation software and a lot of imagination). Nevertheless, my virtual science labs cultivated a desire to partake in a new activity called “research,” and I became determined not to let the pandemic deter me from this goal. Up until this point, I had thought that undergraduates didn’t have the capacity to truly contribute to the creation of new knowledge — let alone the intricacies of wet lab, biomedical research. It wasn’t until I found out about — and missed the deadline for — UROP that I realized research is an attainable experience at Michigan.

Since access to the traditional UROP research pathway had closed, I was left with one option: cold emailing professors.

I soon realized, after sending over a hundred unsolicited pitches to various Principal Investigators’ (PIs) inboxes at Michigan, that the pandemic was the least of my concerns. The majority of responses were valid rejections citing full capacity or limited funding as the reason I wasn’t offered a spot at the lab bench. However, I was surprised to discover that a handful of PIs were simply not interested in undergraduate mentorship altogether. A few of these researchers substantiated

Dear Professors, Your H-Index Can Wait

a strict, no-undergraduate policy by mentioning that their lab — syndicated and funded by our research-heavy University of over 32,000 undergraduates — was focused on “highimpact” and “undilutable” projects. Despite pitching myself as a motivated student willing to work unpaid, under a flexible schedule and toward administrative efforts, my standing as an undergraduate precluded me from making any sort of contribution.

Interested to see which projects warranted complete separation from the undergraduate touch, I did a deep dive into the PIs’ lab websites, PubMed profiles and Twitter pages. I quickly noticed a running theme: their labs were, indeed, fruitful in publications, postdocs, NIH funding and conference invitations. They had all the metrics of academic success imaginable, and I, too, was left wondering what I could’ve possibly helped them achieve by joining the lab. This realization diminished my motivation to stay in the hunt to conduct research, and I was ready to accept that I wouldn’t be working within arm’s reach of a microscope anytime soon.

It was then ingrained in my head that there was an inverse relationship between a PI’s H-Index, a quantitative metric used to provide an estimate of a person’s overall impact, productivity and significance within their respective field, and the number of undergrads they let run around their lab. As it currently stands, H-index is calculated based on a researcher’s H-amount of papers, each of which has been referenced H-amount of times in H-level journals. The world’s most prolific scientists, for context, will have an H-index over 100 by the end of their career — such as Dr. Anthony Fauci at 229 and Dr. Stephen

Voting is at the heart of democracy

TIAN YEUNG Master’s of Social Work Student

oting is at the heart of democracy.” I’ve heard this mantra repeated so many times that, at some point, I became numb to its meaning. Why did voting matter anyway? One vote — my vote — was unlikely to change the result of an election. For a long time, I believed in this line of reasoning; I thought voting was overrated — a waste of time and effort. Looking back now, I wish I hadn’t been so naive. It took the fall of a city for me to learn the significance of voting. That city was the one I was born in, the one I spent my childhood in and the one I loved: Hong Kong.

To understand how Hong Kong fits into the larger conversation around voting, we will first have to go back in time. In 2019, the city came under the spotlight when its residents protested against China’s oppressive legislation: an extradition bill that threatened the city’s sovereignty and democracy. The extradition bill would let Hong Kong extradite people wanted in countries with which they have no formal extradition agreement. The concern with this is that residents believe the law would allow “virtually anyone” to be picked up, detained and sent to China to be prosecuted. Many people my age, peers I grew up with in Hong Kong, protested on the streets because they wanted to be heard; they demanded change. For a while, everything looked hopeful. After all, the protesters were loud enough that the world paid attention.

But, that hope was shortlived. It was quickly swallowed by China’s national security law, which took away residents’ freedom of speech by the end of 2020. Since then, the city has gone silent. Now, when I look at the news, Hong Kong is nowhere to be found. It’s as if the protests never even happened. In a blink of an eye, I watched a democratic effort disappear.

The silence that ensued after Hong Kong’s democracy fell was the worst part. I never knew silence could hurt so much. You see, I normally relish in quietness. As a shy and introverted person, silence gives me space to breathe, to take a break and to recharge before I socialize again. But the silence in Hong Kong is cruel. It’s the kind that results from being forced to hold your breath. It’s the kind that if you defy, you face the possibility of arrest and prison.

What power did I have that would allow my voice to be heard? It was my power to vote, and I wasn’t the only one who recognized the power of voting. Politicians had always known. In fact, this same pattern emerges as I looked through the history of voting in the United States.

Voices through voting, especially those of marginalized communities, have been consistently suppressed or silenced. For example, African Americans didn’t get the right to vote until after the Civil War. Women didn’t get to vote until 1920, and many Indigenous peoples didn’t get to vote until the 1960s. Even now, disenfranchisement policies, such as those put on citizens with a felony conviction, often disproportionately affect BIPOC voices. In fact, nationally, 6.2% of African Americans are disenfranchised due to having a felony conviction.

Though not to the same extent, I realized that voices halfway around the world weren’t the only ones being silenced. It’s happening in the U.S., too. Watching Hong Kong’s democracy collapse, I now know how integral voting is to democracy. This is why I will vote in the upcoming midterm elections in my state, Michigan.

It’s especially important to vote in this election because Michigan voters will have the power to codify reproductive rights. Ann Arbor voters will also have the power to approve a tax that could help fight climate change.

Hawking at 130.

Finally, at the beginning of sophomore year I got a position as a classroom laboratory assistant at the Undergraduate Sciences Building. A few months experience of organizing beakers and cleaning fruit fly residues for various biology class labs beefed up my resume enough to land me a position as a part-time research assistant at a highly productive cardiology lab at Michigan Medicine.

With the help of undergraduate upperclassmen in the lab, I quickly caught on to these patterns — a peer would make the protocol, I would run the experiment and my PI would discuss the data’s clinical implications at the next lab meeting. Now, as a junior, I am currently completing my Honors senior thesis through this lab. Having been given nearautonomy over a 10-week long project involving the inhibition of atherosclerosis in mouse models, I have grown to be a published author, researcher and confident MD/PhD candidate.

During the “in-betweens” of experiments, moreover, my PI hosts personal statement workshops, gives us research papers to read, helps us rehearse our poster presentations, lets us conduct shadowing visits during his clinic days and gives us so many more opportunities for unquantifiable career moves.

Education proves to be a guiding principle of this lab, as is proper at a research institution which happens to be inseparably joined with one of the largest educational institutions in the country. Most importantly, though, these kinds of researchers, professors and faculty demonstrate how colleagues unreceptive to facilitating undergraduates’ early research careers are sorely out of place at a University. Furthermore, if a U-M lab or research conglomerate has

never hosted a UROP student since its inception, less funding and support from the University should be allocated.

I think back to my early rejections from U-M professors and researchers who were taken aback that a freshman would even consider soiling their holy, million-dollar ideas by joining their lab. To them I ask: Whom are you a Leader and Best of, exactly? At the end of the day, their drosophila (the species of fruit flies used in many labs) will die but the palpable enthusiasm of a Wolverine, cultivated by working in their lab, will not. Any opportunity we as undergraduates receive, in research or otherwise, leads to an exponential effect on our worldview and educational goals. Our current understanding of, and researchers’ obsession with, H-Index should include the measure of impact made on students and trainees in its

calculation.

The world of academia, here in Ann Arbor and abroad, recognizes that citations are a measure of the extent to which one piece of research informs the next. The politics of doctoral life, especially at a rigorous and prestigious center like the University, makes it easy to get carried away by the allure of acceptance to a top journal, international award or fancy funding. How often, between the fine print of a Nature or JAMA publication, do we appreciate how mentorship of young people informs the next generation of researchers? With every research project involving an undergraduate comes an unnoticed benefit years down the line. The silent slow-burn that is undergraduate mentorship influences the very plane, scope and trajectory of scientific fields in the same way citations do.

By using college students as a medium, my PI will have materialized over a dozen avenues to further his cardiology research long after he chooses to retire. I, as one of his avenues, hope to one day use both my MD and PhD to pick up where he leaves off.

Researchers and professors here at the University who not only recognize the caliber of undergraduate students, but apply their plasticity and potential to research projects have, dare I say, the greatest H-Index. I urge those in positions of research leadership here at the University to consider the undergraduate as the tabula rasa (blank slate) they are. Introduce them to your research specialty — whether that be 20th-century Russian poetry or the failures of Themistocles at Sparta — and I guarantee that your impact, in the academic sense or otherwise, will multiply.

Why you should be friends with a Trump supporter

AZUL BLAQUIER Opinion Columnist

It’s no revelation to say that America has likely never seen a more divi sive figure than former Presi dent Donald Trump. Even after his term ended, he was almost as popular as President Joe Biden himself. Over a year and a half later, not much has changed. Trump has retained relevancy by continuing to appear in the public eye: the Jan. 6 committee hearings, public endorsements in Repub lican primaries, the frivolity of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, the question over who will be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate — all timely, frequently-covered concerns that involve the for mer president, which alone do not explain America’s obses sion with him. Many other politicians are equally rele vant but less talked about.

Let me be clear: The title of this article is purposefully incendiary. It could just as eas ily be called “Why you should be friends with a Bernie Sand ers voter,” except that, for this paper’s audience, Trump is the more radical figure. So I want to make my intentions clear, dear reader, before you embark upon my train of thought. First, you need to know where I’m coming from. I am Argen tinian, not American. I am neither a citizen of this coun try nor a green card holder. In short, I do not vote in Ameri can elections.

So, what authority do I have to offer up my perspective?

Argentina has been sociopo litically divided since the ’50s, also at the hand of a populist leader. I grew up not being able to talk about politics with anyone who I might have sus pected to vote for the opposing party because of the sheer rage their opinions would cause me. Therefore, I know first hand what it’s like to surround yourself with people that think

exactly like you do, and how hard the shock hits when you burst out of your bubble.

At this point, I should dis close that if I were American, I would often vote blue, which is why I will use “we” a lot because this piece is directed at Democrats who struggle to find common ground with peo ple on the other side. Despite being an honorary Democrat, my convictions strongly insist that we’re going about this in the wrong way.

Virtually every serious newspaper and magazine out there that isn’t blatantly proTrump regularly publishes OpEds that continue to dissect how his presidency impacted America. Just this week, The Atlantic analyzed how Trump threatened the Constitution, The New York Times studied Trump’s behavior during the Jan. 6 hearings and the Wash ington Post argued that Trump should anger Christians more. Why is he still so relevant?

I spoke with political sci ence professor Mika LaVaqueManty, who shed some light on this matter.

“Trump has been able to exploit what I think many other populist leaders haven’t been able to do before, which is information technology, espe cially social media,” LaVaqueManty said. “The way social media companies work is they help exacerbate the polariza tion by each of us having our own echo chamber. And not just the people on the right — it’s almost equally disturbing on the left in different forms.”

I know that what I’m asking is hard, and I even know it’s not always possible. Conversations are a two-way street, and there are plenty of extreme Trump supporters out there who don’t want to engage in debate with the other side. Plus, there are certain conversations you sim ply shouldn’t have to have if the person sitting in front of you holds what you deem to be abhorrent beliefs.

But we have to have some

conversations. Otherwise, how do we expect change to happen? While marching and rallying are helpful, they’re not enough. Like CNN politi cal analyst Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and pub lic affairs at Princeton, says: Change comes via the ballot box. Protests help to get people involved in politics, which is great, but those people would probably have voted blue any ways.

To truly enact change, we need to start having the diffi cult conversations we seem to not want to have. And not just with our opponent but between ourselves, too. If we don’t stop attacking each other, how will we ever come to an agreement?

“I had a student a couple of years ago during the campaign leading up to the 2020 elec tions,” LaVaque-Manty said. “That student was a big Eliza beth Warren supporter, but she began to doubt herself because she was so viciously attacked by Bernie Bros.”

We’re talking about sup porters of two of the most leftwing Democratic candidates — if they can’t talk with one another, how can we expect to debate with someone so far off as a Trump supporter?

There’s a broad consensus that democracy is the best form of government we have been able to come up with. As Winston Churchill famously said, “Democracy is the worst kind of government — except for all the others that have been tried.” Well, Trump is probably what Churchill meant by “worst” in that phrase. But we still have to make it work, and we still have to keep hav ing debates with one another because I refuse to believe that the 74 million people that voted for Trump in the 2020 elections were racists, xeno phobes and misogynists. We can’t continue to demonize and alienate them because, if so, who’s to say an equally debasing candidate won’t win in 2024?

“(Trump) is not quite as unprecedented as some people sometimes suggest,” LaVaqueManty said. “In some ways, he’s tapping into conventional right populism: grievance against elites and a sense of disenfran chisement and marginaliza tion. If you have a rhetoric that offers simple explanations to perfectly legitimate grievanc es, like rural Americans who have suffered the demograph ic shifts towards the cities, and say, ‘Here is a story that explains why you have been screwed,’ of course people are going to support you.”

We keep talking about Trump so much because, like all other populist leaders before him, he runs on a plat form of social division. And despite the transparency of his use of these well-known techniques, we fell into the trap. We encouraged the divi sion and patted ourselves on the back for it. We’re calling them out, we thought to our selves. We are opposing a rac ist, sexist, xenophobic tyrant. We were. But in the process we may have lost ourselves. We exchanged our democratic values for a strict outlook that became more and more bina ry, to the point where people willingly cut ties with lifelong family and friends because of who they voted for.

“I’ve talked to students who are conservative who feel, understandably, and I think legitimately, like their per spective is silenced,” LaVaqueManty said. “We should give people the benefit of the doubt.”

These rifts may be motivat ed by Trump supporters bring ing their true colors into the light. But it also may be Demo crats refusing to see the appeal of Trump. If your close friend, who you love and respect, is a Trump supporter, I don’t think you should cut them off. I think you should tune out all the out side noise and hear them out. Because maybe that way, she’ll hear you out, too. And America

“V

Design by Serena Shen

SportsMonday: Michigan State, the ghost on Harbaugh’s shoulder

have wavered.

Nearly every year of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh’s tenure has prompted the question whether he’s the right man for the job. Sea son after season, questions swirled and doubts arose — until this one, that is.

A College Football Playoff berth, a Big Ten Championship and, per haps most importantly, a win over rival Ohio State vaulted Harbaugh onto a pedestal. He expelled his demons overnight like a scene pulled straight from The Exorcist.

But one ghost still remains.

The final blemish on Harbaugh’s updated résumé is Michigan State.

Harbaugh holds a meager 3-4 record against the Spartans in his previous seven seasons as coach.

In the past two years, with Mel Tucker at the helm in East Lansing, Harbaugh is winless. And unlike the juggernaut Buckeyes, Michigan State has been human, rendering some losses inexcusable.

It’s why Harbaugh focused his and his program’s attention on the Spartans all the way back in July.

“I don’t want us to be more wor ried about Ohio State than we are of Michigan State, because we haven’t beat (those) guys in two years,” Harbaugh said. “We need to get right, get dialed in with them too, and we will.”

Now is the time for that attention spent on the Spartans to pay off in a win; But Harbaugh’s grotesque history with Michigan State almost seems, well, haunted.

It began in Harbaugh’s first bout against the Spartans as coach, per haps the most harrowing of them all. You might not want to talk about it, but you know it as well as any game — win or loss — in the past decade.

It’s 2015, the No. 12 Michigan football team is 5-1 and a No. 7 undefeated Michigan State team is in town. Up 23-21 late in the fourth quarter, the Wolverines landed an all-important sack and forced a turnover on downs. An upset, the first rivalry win in Harbaugh’s career, was in reach. With 10 sec onds left, Paul Bunyan was all but Michigan’s — all the Wolverines had to do was punt.

You can fill in the blank.

“We played winning football and

didn’t get the result,” Harbaugh said after the game. “Welcome to football.”

Welcome to the rivalry, Jim.

Harbaugh’s Spartan woes never really went away. A 14-10 loss in a virtual monsoon, a Halloween COVID-year upset and a heart breaker last season in a top-10 battle of unbeatens round out the remain ing defeats. His results haven’t done much to inspire confidence in a rivalry where Michigan fans like to claim dominance.

That confidence is a large reason why, from an outside perspective, this game matters so much for Har baugh. There’s been little reason, and few legitimate excuses, for his teams not to be dominating this rivalry. Year after year, the Wol verines bring in better recruiting classes. Michigan State has even undergone a coaching change. But still, Harbaugh has struggled.

Some losses, such as last year’s, are so puzzling that all Harbaugh has left to say is simple.

“That didn’t go the way we want ed to,” he lamented after the 2021 defeat.

And what else can he say? That he failed once again? That, whether

Ian Hume’s impact: as remembered by Michigan

CHARLIE PAPPALARDO Daily Sports Writer

Last Friday night, just prior to their matchup, the lights dimmed and the No. 5 Michigan and Lake Superior State hockey teams lined up on their respective sides of the ice for a shared moment of silence.

It was a solemn moment, but it also served as a clear reminder of what the Wolverines were playing for this past weekend. They weren’t just playing for themselves, or glory, or their future careers; they were playing for the memory of their longtime equipment supervisor — and friend — Ian Hume, who had sadly passed away the night before after a battle with cancer.

In every play on the ice after that moment of silence, it was clear that Hume’s presence was still with his team. After two dominant perfor mances in which Michigan both swept and outscored the Lakers, 10-3, Hume was top of mind for many of the Wolverines’ players and staff postgame, and his memory had only served to push them further.

“He was a huge part of this orga nization,” junior defenseman Jacob Truscott said. “ … He was great to us, and obviously it’s sad to see someone like that go. He’s a huge part of our team. We’ve just got to honor him and keep playing for him every game.”

From conversations with play ers and staff one thing is clear: Hume’s impact will be felt far past his 33-year tenure at the Univer sity of Michigan. For starters, it’s clear that he was an expert at his job. After quite literally stumbling into the role under long-time coach Red Berenson, Hume spent the next three decades honing his craft. And his dedication to his work didn’t go unnoticed.

“I’ve known (Hume) for a long time,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato told The Daily. “ … And he’s a legend, very well respected by equipment managers from pro hockey to college.”

Freshman forward Adam Fan tilli shared a similar sentiment.

“He was an amazing guy,” Fan tilli said. “An amazing equipment manager and I know he loved this team with everything he had.”

While on paper Hume’s job title may have been equipment super visor, a position usually seen as administrative, he understood that his role extended far past what most would expect. He understood him self to be an outlet for players to just talk. He consistently made himself available and instituted an open door policy for players to come in and talk about anything, hockey or otherwise.

And it’s clear that while that wasn’t necessarily asked of him, it was something players needed. He was a friendly and supportive face for student athletes who needed affirmation, and he was always there to provide it.

“He did so much for us,” junior forward Phillippe LaPointe said. “He wasn’t just an equipment man ager, he had an open door policy.

And you know oftentimes I’d just sit there and shoot the (breeze) with him. … I’ve had some really tough conversations with him with adversity and stuff like that, so I’ve opened up to him, he’s opened up to me. And you know, we’ve always had that really good strong relationship where we can tell each other anything. I’ll be forever thankful to have him as a friend and mentor.”

Hume wasn’t just a staff mem ber who sharpened skates. He wasn’t just someone who got equipment from point A to point B. Heck, he wasn’t just an equip ment manager. He was a friend to everyone on the Michigan hockey team who needed him to be a friend, and he stood up for his athletes and colleagues when they needed someone to stand up for them.

That’s the part of Hume that won’t be forgotten, that’s the part of Hume that the Wolverines had in mind after they swept Lake Superior and that’s the part of Hume that Michigan has vowed to play the rest of their season for.

“We showed it this weekend, we played for him,” LaPointe said. “And I’m grateful for the memo ries that I have with him.”

the Wolverines are the better team or not, the Spartans seem to be able to walk away with Paul Bunyan in years they shouldn’t?

No, the only thing that can speak for Harbaugh are the results on the field. And those results can shout.

After the 2020 loss, in Michi gan’s worst season in many years, three-star recruit Andrel Anthony — an East Lansing-native — might

“That did open a lot of eyes,” Anthony told the Detroit Free Press in 2020. “I can tell you that. It opened eyes across the United States. Everybody was looking at MSU as ‘Oh, they’re really bad right now and they’re in a rebuild ing process.’ But to go out and beat Michigan, I am pretty sure every body was surprised.”

The sophomore receiver, as we of course know now, did not flip his commitment. Anthony remained steady, bound for Ann Arbor. But that’s not always the case, and there are fallout effects that span larger than a loss on the record.

And it’s on Harbaugh to prevent that from happening.

A 3-4 record isn’t enough, zero wins against Tucker isn’t enough and frequently losing to worse Michigan State teams is far from enough.

This Saturday, against the hob bling 3-4 Spartans, Harbaugh has the chance to get even in his tenure and begin to reclaim the rivalry. Frankly, he doesn’t have a choice. A loss would be catastrophic, not only proving once again Michigan State has his number, but crippling the Wolverines’ chances at the College Football Playoff and back-to-back Big Ten trophies.

A win won’t earn Harbaugh high praise or laurels. It’s what should happen, and it’s what needs to happen. But it will be a part of his narrative. This week, in prepara tion, Harbaugh gets to dip his pen in the ink one last time.

Saturday, it hits paper.

Michigan falls to unranked Indiana, 3-1

KENDALL MCCASKILL For The Daily

At the end of the second set, audible tension rumbled through the arena as the score was tight at 22-24 and the No. 25 Michigan volleyball team led the match, 1-0. But then, a Wolverine service error forced an end to the set, giv ing Indiana the 25-22 win.

Following the set loss, the Wolverines (13-6 overall, 4-5 Big Ten) were unable to regain their momentum, falling to the Hoo siers (11-10, 4-5) in four sets in a Pink-Out Game Friday night.

“We knew tonight that Indiana was a team that was going to pose some challenges,” Michigan coach Mark Rosen said. “We did the best to prepare for it but they did a real ly nice job tonight.”

In the first set, the Wolverines got off to a slow start. They trailed seven points behind Indiana after a series of serve-receive errors, eventually forcing them to call a timeout. Michigan returned to the floor with more tenacity, starting with a kill by senior middle block er Jess Robinson. The Wolverines continued on a seven-point run to

tie the game at 15 apiece. After sev eral more back-and-forth rallies, a strong blocking performance by freshman right-side hitter Serena Nyambio closed out the first set over the Hoosiers, 25-22.

Michigan opened the second set with a kill by junior outside hitter Kendall Murray. It kept a tight lead in the first half of the match, up 13-12. The Hoosiers fought back aggressively, creating separation from the Wolverines. As a result, Michigan fell victim to Indiana at the service line, ending the set down 22-25.

“Indiana came out and served really aggressively; they had a great game plan in terms of getting us in trouble,” Rosen said. “When we were in system I thought we handled it really well, but out of system is a different game and tonight they got us out of system a lot with that serve.”

In the third set, Michigan looked to regain its lead against Indiana but struggled to take com plete control of the match. Despite a kill from senior middle blocker May Petrofsky to tie the score at ten, a series of hitting errors that followed cost the Wolverines the opportunity to take control

of the match. Michigan fought back with a three-point run but couldn’t claw back, falling 19-25 and dropping the match score to 1-2.

In a do-or-die fourth set, the Wolverines worked to create a lead against the Hoosiers early. Spurring a four-point run pow ered by aggressive net play from junior outside hitter Jess Mru zik, Michigan jumped out to a 10-8 lead. In spite of its scrap piness and hard-fought rallies, Indiana capitalized on its forced errors. The Hoosiers followed with a three-point run to win the match, 25-23.

“I think just going into this match something that we focused on (was) not overlook ing anybody,” Mruzik said. “And especially in the Big Ten this year it’s crazy, anyone can beat anybody on any given day. It’s a blessing that we get to be in a conference where every single night you’re going up against the best teams in the country.”

And with difficult Big Ten matchups upcoming, Michigan needs to hone-in to make sure that blessing doesn’t become a curse.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Liza Cushnir: By failing Brittney Griner, we’re failing all women in sports

Brittney Gri ner, an eight-time WNBA all-star and Phoenix Mercury center, turned 32 last week. Instead of being able to celebrate with her friends and fam ily, she spent her birthday in a Rus sian jail cell — just like she’s spent the past 249 days.

ing, where can women in sports look to see that society cares about them, that society values them?

LIZA CUSHNIR

On Feb. 17, Griner was detained in a Russian airport, accused of having vape cartridges with hash ish oil in her luggage. On May 3, the US state department declared her “wrongfully detained” and on Aug. 4, Griner was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison for drug smuggling.

As Griner awaits her appeal hearing, which is set to start on Oct. 25, she worries about being forgot ten back home.

Those fears aren’t unfounded. Outside of the WNBA and women’s sports, the sports community has largely stayed silent. The WNBA started its most recent season in May featuring decals with Griner’s name and initials on every single court. The NBA, on the other hand, has mostly remained disengaged.

Individuals and teams such as Stephen Curry and the Memphis Grizzlies have taken it upon them selves to show their support for Griner on occasion. But outside of women’s sports, the sports world has generally refrained from advo cating for Griner.

And that’s the crux of the issue; The sports world can claim to sup port women’s sports as much as it wants to, but when it comes down to it, people refrain from making comments and in some cases, even ridicule those who do lend their voices.

Society doesn’t care about women in sports, and female ath letes — including at Michigan — notice.

“When you compare Title IX and if you compare an NBA player that’s going to be there and in the same situation that she’s in, you could argue that they would either be back by now or that a lot more people would be involved to try to solve that,” Michigan guard Leigha Brown said at Big Ten Media Days on Oct. 12.

Society makes it a habit to tell young female athletes that Title IX provides them with equality. But outside of mandates for equality in institutions receiving federal fund

Imagine a parallel: Picture LeB ron James or Patrick Mahomes — or any star male athlete, for that matter — being arrested in a for eign country. Now think of the out rage and demands for their return that would follow. There would be immense pressure, from all fronts, on the United States government to do whatever it takes to get them home.

Brittney Griner deserves the same outrage. Not just from the women’s sports world, but from the entire sports world.

“I think about Brittney every sin gle day and I pray for Brittney and her family every single day,” Michi gan women’s basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico said at Big Ten Media Days. “And I hope we’re working incredibly hard outside of our wom en’s basketball network, nationally, to bring her home.”

But right now, that simply isn’t the case. And if the entire sports world doesn’t get involved, Griner’s prospects remain the same: slim and dark.

Of course, there have been people doing everything they can to bring Griner home. Across the women’s basketball world, players and coaches have repeatedly called for her release and sent prayers her way.

But the NBA has a far wider reach than the WNBA, with a much larger fanbase. More voices within the NBA community calling to bring Griner home could have a sig nificant impact.

“I think everybody in the Phoe nix community and the WNBA community and women’s basketball and basketball as a whole has done a fantastic job of keeping (Griner) top of heart and top of mind,” Cindy Brunson, the play-by-play voice of the Mercury told The Daily. “ … In the NBA because their platform is so gigantic, and their voices are so big, anytime they have the opportu nity to speak on it, it just keeps the issue top of heart and top of mind.”

Brunson — who works for vari ous other networks in addition to the Mercury — has spoken about Griner’s detention as much as she can and intends to do so on all broadcasts she is part of for as long as Griner remains detained. If the rest of the sports world joins Brunson and those who already are fighting for her freedom, that detention will likely be a lot shorter.

When speaking to The Daily,

Brunson suggested multiple ways to pressure the Biden adminis tration to work harder towards advocating for Griner’s release, including canceling the NBA’s Christmas games. That would show that the NBA actually cares, compelling the government to listen. Because right now, not enough people are showing that they give a damn to force the State Department to listen.

For things to change, NBA players, teams and fans have to show that getting Griner home is important to them.

“If those teams decided, we’re not going to provide wall-to-wall basketball (on Christmas). We’re going to stay home with our families because (Griner) can’t,” Brunson said.

Brunson highlighted the exi gency of the situation. Griner has been away from home for eight months. That’s eight months away from her home, her wife, her family and her team.

And while canceling Christ mas games would be a significant and unprecedented step, NBA players have refused to play to bring attention to social justice issues in the past. After the shoot ing of Jacob Blake in August 2020, the Milwaukee Bucks and Orlan do Magic boycotted their play off game which led to all three playoff games scheduled for that day also being postponed. Play ers used their platform, and the world took note.

Yes, the situations are very dif ferent. What it showed, though, is that when athletes call atten tion to an issue that matters to them with a significant gesture, fans are forced to pay attention.

Brittney Griner deserves that attention. She needs that atten tion to get home quickly, perhaps even to survive.

There are many ways to call attention to Griner’s detention. But right now, all she gets from the majority of the sports world is inaction.

One of the best players in the WNBA has been detained in Rus sia for 249 days. Few outside of the women’s sports world have consistently brought attention to her plight.

Women in sports are listening, and they’re hearing silence.

And that, more than any legis lation like Title IX, more than any claims about supporting gender equality, is the clearest message being sent.

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily

ICE HOCKEY

With Saturday’s matchup against Michigan State looming, Jim Harbaugh has the opportunity to take control of the in-state rivalry.

Brittney Griner

FILE PHOTO/Daily

With the passing of Ian Hume, the No. 5 Michigan hockey team was playing for a greater purpose this weekend.

COMPLEX

Michigan dominates the slot to claim sweep over Lake Superior State

NOAH KINGSLEY Daily Sports Writer

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — When the No. 5 Michigan hockey team took the ice against Boston University last weekend, the balance of high-danger chances swung heavily away from it. Doomed by tips, screens and rebounds, the Wolverines were simply outmatched at net front, leading to their first loss of the season.

But on Saturday night, Michigan demonstrated plainly that it had learned its lesson.

Dominating the premium spaces at both net fronts, the Wolverines (5-1 overall) outshot Lake Superior State (0-3-1) by 14 while blocking 8 to stave off a season-high 22 penalty minutes and complete the sweep, 5-1, in their first road series of the season.

“I thought our O-Zone was a lot better this weekend,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato said. “Getting into high ice and then switching, and then just converging to the net, there were some really nice plays.”

Forced to spend four of the first six minutes on the kill after committing two early penalties, however, the Wolverines struggled to get much going on offense right away. Instead, they tightened up on the opposite end, getting bodies in the slot to block shots and cross-ice passes, limiting the Lakers to just four shots over two power plays and seizing the early momentum.

“One thing we talk about is pressure versus containment,” Naurato said. “When we can outnumber them, that’s pressure, and when we’re containing, they’ve got numbers. I think we contained the net front very well.”

Michigan faced momentary lapses in its domination of center ice on defense, specifically when Lake Superior State forward Timo Bakos snuck into the slot on the power play during the second period to cut the Wolverines’ lead to two. But by staying tight to the crease to kill off 10 of 11 power plays, Michigan limited the damage and turned that goal into an anomaly.

And for the limited time that they were at full strength, the Wolverines monopolized the slot in the offensive zone to create golden scoring chances.

With multiple Michigan players stationed at the net front in the first period, sophomore forward Mackie Samoskevich fired a point wrister that bounced off multiple bodies, one of the posts and into the net to take the 1-0 lead. Minutes later, freshman forward Adam Fantilli collected a loose puck in front of the crease before

backhanding it in to double the first-period lead.

“Our biggest thing is just outnumbering at the net,” Naurato said. “Defensively, you’re trying to protect the net front, so then how do you pull people away (on offense)?”

Then, two minutes into the second period, freshman forward Jackson Hallum delivered a forecheck in the offensive zone slot to steal the puck from Lake Superior State’s defense. Freshman forward TJ Hughes picked up where Hallum left off, corralling the puck and faking a cross-crease pass back to Hallum right at the post, before blasting it top shelf. Hughes added his second on the night later, crashing the net to clean up Fantilli’s rebound and extend the lead to three.

Though the Wolverines only tacked on one more goal — off the stick of sophomore forward Dylan Duke — it continued to control the slot both ways. Michigan kept creating chances off tips and rebounds in the offensive end, while clearing loose pucks in front of the net to prevent the Lakers from sustaining theirs.

“It seemed like they would have had more shots,” Naurato said. “But I thought our defensemen did a great job of boxing out, getting body position, lifting sticks and clearing the front of the net.”

Given that the Wolverines had to contend with being down a man for more than a third of the game and spent 40% of the final period on the kill, that commanding net-front presence prevented a slew of penalties from spiraling into a collapse.

And for a team that only trudged to the final whistle the night prior, Michigan’s 60-minute domination of center ice served as a forceful reminder of how important controlling that region is to the Wolverines’ success.

And for the limited time that they were at full strength, the Wolverines monopolized the slot in the offensive zone to create golden scoring chances.

‘The grid in the green:’

Envisioning a better North Campus

BY HALEY JOHNSON,

There’s no singular campus experience, but there are a few moments that are iconi cally “Michigan” — walking through the Diag, studying in the UgLi, going out to the less-than-pristine bars on South University Avenue. Until recently, I had never noticed a common thread between these scenes, but now their similarity strikes me: all of them take place on Central Campus.

The fact that when we think of Michigan we think of Central Campus is unsurprising. There’s a reason students joke about having never been to North Campus, and why incom ing freshmen assigned to live on North try to pay thousands of dollars to swap dorms with someone on Central. Everything we envi sion as “The Michigan Experience” revolves around Central. Why would anyone sacrifice Ann Arbor’s indescribable energy and its his toric, vibrant Central Campus for the dated ’50s architecture and suburban sprawl that is North Campus?

Much has already been said about the shortcomings of North Campus. But for better or worse, it’s part of the University, and as the campus continues to grow, we’ll be increas ingly looking toward North for extra space.

But how did North and Central develop such distinct characters in the first place? And how might we envision a better North Campus?

***

In my final year as a University under graduate student, I figured it’s finally time to immerse myself in the illusive, evergreen acres of North Campus. My plan was this: to spend a whole day on North Campus and to try to appreciate and evaluate it on its own merits, not just in contrast to Central.

I’d like to think I’ve spent more time on North Campus than the average student whose classes are all on Central. I never lived

in Bursley or Baits, but over the pandemic, I would frequently drive to the Ford Robotics Building to study, since it was one of the few buildings on campus that was open into the late hours of the night.

During some of those study sessions, I found myself walking through the woods behind Bursley, getting takeout off Plym outh Road and exploring Pierpont Commons. However, I had never spent more than a few hours on North Campus and had never truly immersed myself in it.

So, in an effort to understand what it was really like to live and learn on North Campus, I devised a way to better understand the space.

Admittedly, spending a day on North is nothing compared to living there. Before embarking on my north-bound excursion, I decided to speak with some of the folks who’ve previously made North Campus their home.

Information senior Huda Shulaiba lived in Northwood Housing last year, despite only having classes on Central, because it was more affordable for her than signing a year-long lease on Central. Since Northwood is being demolished, Shulaiba moved onto Central before the beginning of this fall semester — but said she would’ve moved to Central even if she had the option to live in Northwood again.

“Northwood was great, but a lot of the things that make college life fun don’t really happen (there) because everyone else is on Central,” Shulaiba explained.

Despite feeling some social isolation there, Shulaiba admitted that “I always love talking about living on North because I love having lived on North. But sometimes I don’t want to talk too much about North because then everyone will go up there. It’s nice and peace ful, and I want to gatekeep it a bit. Central is great, but it can be so overstimulating. But you

can go back up to Northwood, and you get that bus ride to switch off school-mode and switch on home-mode.”

Riding the bus up to North, I felt that men tal shift Shulaiba was describing, albeit in reverse. As the Commuter North approached Pierpont Commons, I felt a refreshing sense of clarity and focus. Equipped with three practice exams for my upcoming midterms, a coding project I hadn’t started and a list of buildings my friends in engineering had sug gested I visit, I set out to experience North.

***

Maybe the mainstream culture of the Uni versity does not lie at North Campus. Howev er, fiscally and academically speaking, North Campus has been, and will continue to be, the future of the University.

In 1947, the University purchased 267 acres north of the Huron River — the land that would eventually become North Campus — in anticipation of the post-WW2 boom in higher education. The rapid increase in enrollment also coincided with the rise of STEM posi tions in the workforce and a desire for higher education. Plans were soon made to gradually move the College of Engineering to the unde veloped site, and new buildings to house the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning followed less than a decade later.

Construction plans were then scaled back in response to shortfalls in the state’s budget in the 1970s. Since then, however, North Cam pus has continued to grow without interrup tion, although not without complaints from students that North isn’t “integrated into campus,” that the commute between North and Central is too long and that living there will negatively impact their social life.

LUCAS

LUCAS CHEN/Daily

LUCAS

Canvassing the canvassers — Evangelicals, voting drives and more

BY CHARLIE PAPPALARDO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

I think that one of the easiest things to do on a college campus is ignore people — I know this because it’s something I do all the time.

When I’m going to class, or to a friend’s house, or even just wandering around campus and enjoying the fall, I do it all with my AirPods in. I put my hood up, walk at a decent speed and, frankly, do everything I can to ignore those trying to get my attention.

And as a college student, there are quite literally hundreds of people on this campus who are trying to get your attention, from one end of the Diag to the other. Every single day, you and I walk past voter registration drivers, the Jehovah’s Witness missionaries, the stu dent organization advocates, the blood drive people and, of course, and more rarely, the preachers with comically large signs telling us that we’re all going to hell. And like me, I’m sure you do your best to ignore them. You probably avoid eye contact, quicken your pace and pray that you don’t have to interact.

But there’s a part of me that really, real ly respects what these people are doing. Because every single day, these people are

ignored, and even accosted by tens of thou sands of students who unequivocally don’t want to deal with them. But every day, they keep coming back — and there’s a part of me that is deeply intrigued by that fortitude.

On an ideological level, I don’t agree with most of them, nor do I desire to adopt their practices. I am, however, interested in them as people. What brings them back? Why do they brave the cold and rain to sell, or preach, or offer something to students who have repeatedly said that they don’t care?

So, for a weekend, I decided I’d change up my routine. I took my AirPods out, kept my head up, made eye contact and immersed myself in conversation with everyone I found on the Diag who wanted my attention — everyone I was used to ignoring.

***

The more you talk with people soliciting just about anything on campus, the more you quickly come to realize that these people aren’t faint of heart — because they can’t be.

I think the best example of this necessary resilience is the Jehovah’s Witnesses, at least

two of whom can be found from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week, standing somewhere on the Diag beside a small cart filled with flyers about finding eternal life. They never approach students on campus, or call out to them, or yell. They just stand there, smiling, waiting for us to talk to them.

But we very rarely do. I remember that the first time I approached the group earlier this year, they seemed almost surprised when I asked them for their elevator pitch and looked around for a moment to see who would take the lead before they responded.

Once they got started, though, their pitch rarely changed. They worked in shifts, and so in each of the four conversations I had with them, I talked to new people. But in every conversation, many things stayed the same. They were always well dressed — men in suits and ties, women in dresses — they always characterized their faith as an analytical, objective interpretation of the Bible and they were always incredibly kind to me (with the caveat being that my identity as a cisgender, straight male made that easy).

Yet what I was most interested in wasn’t their faith in Jehovah, but rather their faith

in the process of evangelization. In one con versation I had, I asked if anyone had talked to them in their three-hour shift. They said no, chuckling, but remarked with a light smile that they had been talked at, likely meaning they were heckled.

When I talked to them one last time that weekend in 40-degree weather and rain, they smiled and said that they were used to being ignored. And the last man I talked to said that working in sales had hardened him and that he wasn’t affected by rejection. They all understand that quite literally, 99% of those passing by will act like they don’t exist, but they remain standing, in freezing tempera tures and in stoic postures, for the one person who might.

Every Jehovah’s Witness I talked to that weekend mentioned that they found the religion through their family. But one of the women told me that her mother, a devout Catholic, had been converted because some one knocked on her door. This means that of the group of 10 who I talked to that weekend, only one had a personal experience of being converted, and it was tangential. But their faith in the process was unwavering.

That’s what fascinates me most about every canvasser on this campus who keeps showing up despite the constant rejection: it’s that they never lose faith in the numbers game. And that extends beyond religious out reach.

Rob Sweet, a canvasser who registers pass ersby to vote in Michigan, explained his per sonal experience to me simply.

Waltzing my way through ballroom dance history

BY CHINWE ONWERE, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

“Have you ballroom danced before?” a girl asked, as we waited outside the studio door.

I shook my head, a reluctant smile appearing on my face. “Not yet, but I am about to.”

In my creased, worn, white sneakers, I walked toward the mirror room of the Central Campus Recreation Building, my body excited and ner vously brimming with anticipation. The dimly lit space was perfumed with sweat and rubber, the clatter of heels against the hardwood floor sur face, a clock in the back ticking softly. The glim mer of the moon shone softly over Palmer Field and against the wall, reflecting in the mirror.

Coming in with my lint-ridden sweats and creased shoes, I felt underdressed as I looked at the surrounding dancers. Their flowy skirts, high stiletto heels, ironed suits and black ties made the blaring coffee stain on my Michigan shirt even more apparent.

I hesitantly glanced at the time on my watch: 8 p.m. The Michigan Ballroom Dance Team was offering free newcomer lessons for the month of September in hopes of recruiting people to their team. And while there was no way that I could be a part of the team (my lack of rhythm and inflex ibility account for that), there was also no way that I could pass up the opportunity to partake

in a free session.

***

My relationship with dancing has always been one of apprehension, but also of discrete fondness. Since I’m of Nigerian heritage, danc ing is a tremendous part of my culture and cel ebrations. During birthday bashes, ladies in their cloth wraps and men in their suits stomp their feet to the Naija beats, the cling-clang of drums swaying their bodies as they move their legs back and forth.

Throughout my life, I have tried to mimic those moves, yet something is always off. My feet seem to lag as I stomp to the beat of the music, my tempo becomes a muddle as I lose track of which limb performs what move and my arms become so stiff that they stick like glue to the sides of my waist.

Yet I honestly love to dance. There is something so freeing about the movement of letting yourself sway to the sound of the music, something so spiritual about float ing atop a rhythmic line, with no gravity or weight holding you down.

With something like ballroom dancing — a highly technical and competitive dance that combines multiple styles from around the world, including the cha cha from Cuba, the samba

from Brazil and the Pasodoble from Southern France — it is safe to say that I was nervous at the thought of trying to learn how to move my feet correctly in the first steps of the dance.

“Welcome! Are you guys ready?” And with that, we began the proceedings of our magical escapade back to the 16th century, the supposed time period when the first account of ballroom dancing was recorded.

The history of ballroom dancing is said have begun in Europe, par ticularly in Germany. While visiting Augsburg, Michel de Montaigne, an important philosopher of the French Renaissance, accounted for a dance where people were so close that their faces touched. These dances were often per formed by lower-class indi viduals; however, as the popularity and complexity of these styles evolved, they eventually became a marker of high social status.

The development and standardization of this dance continued until the 19th and 20th centu ries, when styles such as waltz, tango, quickstep and foxtrot began to emerge and were performed competitively. This art style slowly permeated from the boundaries of Europe to the climbing towers and bright lights of New York City, as a

dance style known as the “swing,” created and popularized by African Americans in Harlem, began to emerge in America.

And here I stood, four centuries after this dance’s advent in the mirrored, strangely somber CCRB dance studio, about to test the limits of my self-sanity and limb coordination.

All 40 of us were instructed to form two groups facing each other on either side of the room; the “leads” and the “follows.” Typically, leads are more masculine-presenting partici pants that “lead” the dance by choosing the steps and often initiate the stylistic techniques such as the twirls or the dips, while the follow synchro nizes with their footwork. I migrated toward the follow side, hoping my inability to stand on my two feet would be overshadowed by someone else’s talent.

Two of the ballroom dance club leaders took the center stage of the room, separated by the sea of anticipating newcomers, impatient inter mediates and the watchful advanced. Dancing by ourselves at first, we started with a “simple” three-count rhythm; right leg to the front — to the middle — to the back — side step, to the mid dle — to the front — repeat.

Ray Jin gracefully dips Erica Santos in one of the

performances Thursday, September

MARIA DECKMANN/Daily

My first swing at golf: Lessons from the green

Between my fourth and fifth failed attempts to land a hit on the seventh hole of the afternoon, my friend declared with a laugh:

“This article is going to be an attack on golf.”

For a time, I was tempted to write such a piece, especially after an adolescent frustration kicked in on hole six. The autumn sun started to fade, and my fingers grew stiff in the cold — too stiff to

continue taking notes. My eyes watered, largely from the relentless wind, but other factors may have played a part as well.

I grew frustrated with the ball and my tech nique worsened further. Each swing of my club spewed sizable chunks of dirt through the air. Even when my club struck home, the ball spun wildly into the bushes or sadly plunked down a few feet from where it’d taken off.

Behind me, a group of my friends, steadfast companions in my first attempt at the sport of golf, followed my gradual progress toward the distant flag. Along the way, they cheered for my meager victories and my failures all the same. The support kept me from spiraling, even when confronted head-on with the reality of my golf ing ability.

While I expected my athletic reservations to minimize any confidence I might have on the University of Michigan Golf Course, the open ing hours were actually a blast. Reports of the course’s allure had trickled down to me over the years, but I’d never visited to see for myself.

Upon arrival, the staff issued us two shiny golf carts that thrilled us with their novelty and smooth handling. I had never been respon sible for a golf cart before and took quickly to the simple joy of navigating the course. We glided over pathways carved through the open green expanse, then jolted over crooked bumps in the hills. A passenger was likely to be bounced straight from the seat if not holding on tightly,

BY JOHN JACKSON, STATEMENT

and, in the end, I accidentally crashed one cart during a daring attempt to catch up to the other. No damage ensued, fortunately, and the event only raised our spirits further.

Surprisingly, though, beyond our golf cart hijinks, my little band of first-time golfers adhered well to the athletic rituals so foreign to us. I uncovered a deep satisfaction in the thwack of a golf ball lofted toward the horizon, and in doing so, suddenly demystified a reverence I’d always assumed was exclusive to Ross Business students.

Above the course hung wreaths of clouds, etched with deep purple shadows from the dying light of day. Evergreens stood sturdy along our hilltop vantage while more colorful trees swayed and shed their leaves on perfect green grass. It made for an idyllic por trait, one I hoped was never lost on those who frequented the course.

This spectacular view of autumn, however, did not come free of charge. At the University of Michigan Golf Course, one game between four students costs $236.

One game costs more than a used guitar. It costs more than a 75-gallon fish tank or 1,000 bananas. It’s more than a pair of leather boots with a lifetime warranty, or a Scotch whiskey aged 16 years. In 1868, the United States gov ernment spent fewer dollars to purchase 11,000

acres of Alaskan land than my friends and I spent to golf for one afternoon. At the current federal minimum wage, $236 equates to 32 hours of paid labor, or a full week’s work, after income tax.

In short, golf is expensive. By my stan dards, it’s unreasonably expensive. Though an informed golf advocate could surely cite a hun dred upkeep fees that justify the cost, I don’t believe such an egregious price of admission should apply to students already piling heaps of money at the foot of an affiliated university with a $12 billion endowment.

The Michigan Daily provides exhaustive cov erage of the arguments both for and against golf courses, including overwhelming data on wasted land and water. Reporter Alex Nobel cites an enormous 2.08 billion gallons of water used each day main taining golf courses, an amount equal to that of 3,000 Olympic swimming pools.

Sitting face-to-face with one of Ann Arbor’s witches

BY ELIZABETH WOLFE, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

My fascination with witches was born out of reading “The Crucible” my sophomore year of high school. I read aloud the voice of Elizabeth Proctor to the class, my voice trembling as I pleaded with the judge for my innocence, that I did not harm Abigail Williams through supernatural means, that John Proctor was a faithful husband, that I wasn’t a witch. But the judge didn’t believe me, nor did the town of Salem, swept away by a fear only God could instill. Soon I’d be hanged with 18 others, one of 20 victims of the trials.

Arthur Miller’s recount of the events of Salem is nonetheless historical fiction, an allegory for the Red Scare of the 1950s. Abigail Williams wasn’t a teenage Winona Ryder but a little girl, and John Proctor wasn’t a strapping and brooding Daniel DayLewis but an old man. There was no affair between the two that led to Abigail accusing Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft.

But the characters mentioned in the play were all real residents of Salem. Abigail real ly did accuse the Proctors, as well as dozens of others, of witchcraft. And both Proctors really did die as a result of Abigail’s accusa tions against them, making them two of the 20 victims of the Salem Witch Trials, not counting the four who died in prison and the

hundreds of others who were imprisoned on the charge before the chaos ceased in 1693.

This semester, I revisited my fascination with witches and signed up for History 375: History of Witchcraft. Telling my friends about this particular course registration meant I was soon met with raised eyebrows and scrunched faces. They all had the same question: Are witches even real?

The short answer: Yes, but not in the ways one might expect. While there are practitio ners of witchcraft today, they are separate from the ‘witches’ of the trials conducted against people like Elizabeth Proctor.

For the United States, much of our under standing of witchcraft is filtered through the lens of Salem. And yet, the events that occurred in Salem pale in comparison to the European trials of the Early Modern Period — a few centuries earlier than Salem. While estimates vary wildly, the most recent numbers are that between 40,000 to 50,000 people were hanged and burned at the stake, 75 to 80% of whom were women, during the European witch trials. In context, as Shake speare was writing his sonnets and Michel angelo painted the Sistine Chapel, supposed witches, most of them women, were being burned for crimes they did not commit.

One purpose of History 375 is to dis

sect the various reasons, events and players behind the atrocities that occurred during the Early Modern Period, and therefore, no one simple explanation exists for why each victim was accused. However, one reoccur ring element of witch trials throughout his tory is apocalyptic thinking, that demonic evil is present and those involved must be defeated. This line of thinking characterized the Red Scare of the 1950s and Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Today, conspiracy movements

such as Q Anon rely on this same sensational notion that people, specifically the “elites,” are secretly engaging in child sacrifice and devil worship.

With a basic understanding of the accused witches of Salem and Europe and the hyper bolic ways in which they were portrayed and ridiculed, I wanted to know what the real witches were like, here in Ann Arbor.

JEREMY

JEREMY WEINE/Daily

HANNAH TORRES/Daily Kai Belcher performs a Tarot card reading Monday, October