2023-10-25

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Wednesday, October 25, 2023

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Santa Ono talks one year as President

University of Michigan President Santa Ono speaks with The Michigan Daily to reflect on his first year as President RILEY HODDER, BRONWYN JOHNSTON & SNEHA DHANDAPANI

Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporters

The Michigan Daily sat down with University President Santa Ono Wednesday afternoon to ref lect on his first year as president, his official statements to the campus community about the Israel-Hamas war, the construction of the new residential complex on Central Campus and much more. The Daily provides Ono with the questions prior to the interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The Michigan Daily: During the September Board of Regents meeting, you said you would support the creation of an unarmed non-police emergency response program to be available to the University community. What do you envision that program looking like and when do you plan to begin implementing it?

Santa Ono: Well, we’ve already started the process of having conversations with different people who are familiar with similar systems.

As you know, Ann Arbor is in the midst of having those kinds of conversations as well. I know the city manager of Ann Arbor, Milton Dohoney, so he’ll be an incredible resource, and since he’s close to home we can have a head start on that. He will be a great resource, and so will other universities who are thinking about similar kinds of response units. So, initial conversations will be held with an information-gathering approach, but it won’t be myself who’s doing it, there will be a group of individuals that I name that will be involved in gathering all that information.

So, I would say the process has already started. I’m already consulting with people who might be knowledgeable and helpful in informing me about the best approaches. At the last board meeting, there were individuals who actually spoke to this and who have said that they have expertise in that area.

Probably it’s not a good idea for us to rush, because public safety, especially concerning members of our community, is a top priority, so we don’t want to just rush into something without being thoughtful about how we go about doing so. But I don’t

want this to be a protracted effort. I think we should be able to move quickly to be able to identify best practice and then try to stand that up. It will take a little bit of time, but not that long.

TMD: The semester started out with the Graduate Employees’ Organization coming to an agreement with the University and ending their six-month strike. How do you feel coming out of the strike, and what changes have you seen to our campus community with the new contract between the University and GEO? SO: I’m incredibly happy that we have a contract that both the University and GEO’s members and leadership are happy with. That’s something that was the top priority for the institution in the past year, so I’m very, very pleased that there has been an agreement.

It’s almost certainly a relief to the University community and everyone involved including the graduate students themselves, the faculty members that work with them directly in their capacity as graduate students and undergraduates who are instructed or supported by them. Everyone’s very pleased that we’re at that stage in the process.

TMD: Are you currently living in the President’s House?

SO: I am in and out because I have a lot of things in my home in Vancouver. So we’re in the process of moving stuff in and out, and it’s going to take some time. I actually spent quite a bit of time moving yesterday as well. So the first thing I want to say is that it’s not my house. It is called the President’s House, but it’s really the University’s house. And as you know, much of its use, and the entire ground floor, is really dedicated towards being a facility for celebrating faculty, staff and students and also for events. So I don’t view it as my house even though that’s what it’s called.

TMD: You have moved partially into the President’s House after its completed renovation, and are the first president of the University to inhabit this version of the historic residence. What changes have you made to the house’s landscape and interior to make it feel like home? How does it feel to be living in the house partially?

SO: I have almost no say in the house because it is the

University’s house. The only thing that I contributed to designing the house was the three cherry blossom trees, and they’re all in the front yard. I chose trees as my only input to the house because of their importance in the sustainability of the planet and because I tend to like cherry blossom trees, which are beautiful in the spring. So I can’t wait for spring to come around so we can see the cherry blossoms. The trees tend to get bigger and bigger. I planted a cherry blossom tree at the University of British Columbia, and you’d be amazed how quickly these trees grow.

Even within seven years or so, they’re quite large. I hope that faculty, staff, students and alumni will enjoy seeing these blossoming trees in spring.

The house is a wonderful place because we didn’t have a place to welcome people and to celebrate them. It’s a space that was designed primarily by two regents, Denise Ilitch and Sarah Hubbard, who did a really good job. I think it’s going to be a lovely space to celebrate the community. One of my favorite parts of the house is that there’s a beautiful Steinway piano, and I like music. I’ve heard a student play on it already, and it’s lovely to hear such a historic piano being played by our students.

The most important thing for me in terms of the home is that it’s a place for my family.

So my wife and I are living here now because my youngest daughter is in college at UBC and my other one is married and living in Oregon, so they’re unfortunately not there except when they come to visit. So home for me is where my wife, Wendy, and my dog, Romeo, live.

TMD: On Oct. 10 , the University released a statement on the Israel-Hamas war that has prompted an intense reaction on campus, including a protest staged outside of the President’s House on Oct. 13. Then, two hours into the protest, the University released another statement in response to backlash from some members of the campus community about your first statement. What went into crafting both of these statements? What have been your thoughts on the campus reaction to the statement?

SO: Let me first correct and say the second statement wasn’t in response to the campus community’s reaction to the

SARAH BOEKE/Daily

University of Michigan President Santa Ono speaks in the Ruthven Building Wednesday afternoon.

first statement, they were just sequential statements. The first statement was informed by what was happening around that time, which was the initial attack. As time went on, as you would expect, a further statement would build upon the first statement, taking into account inputs I received from the entire community. So the first statement and the second statement reflect the evolution with what was happening during that time. So it was not a response, it was just me taking into account the evolution of a world event, which has affected many people on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides of the conflict. And it was also taking into account that there are many members of the community that are impacted including Jewish students, students from Israel and students who are Palestinian or Muslim, and they are all a part of the University of Michigan community and they all matter. I was integrating all the inputs that I received not as a response, but internalizing that and sharing that in the second statement is something I felt was very important. I think the demonstration in front of the President’s House is something that is very, very much part of the ethos of the University. If you look at the history of the University, there have been many protests in front of the President’s House.

As you probably noted in my second statement, we embrace that. We think it’s a very important part of freedom of expression for members of the

community. So when I say “we” I mean the University, but I also personally think that that’s healthy. I think it’s important for people to express divergent views. Certainly, with this conflict, there are divergent views and people are passionate about those views because they’re personally impacted due to their culture, their ethnicity or their national origin. So I think that that’s understood, and I support that.

TMD: The Lecturers’ Employee Organization is nearing the beginning of their negotiations for a new threeyear contract. How does the University plan to engage in negotiations with the union and reach an equitable agreement?

SO: LEO, and the individuals that are represented through LEO, are incredibly important parts of not only our academic community but our general community. I know many, many members of LEO. I’m friends with some of them.

They play a very critical role with instruction but also mentoring of our students, and so the University — because I don’t personally bargain with any union — respects their contributions.

The University looks forward to those conversations and that dialogue, and also to reaching an agreement and contract.

TMD: On Aug. 22, two students participated in homophobic graffiti at the Jewish Resource Center.

The University of Michigan and Michigan Athletics both declined to comment on the

disciplinary actions of the two students involved. What role do you play in deciding disciplinary measures for students and how does this influence the University’s ability to hold those who commit hate-based crimes accountable for their actions?

SO: I can’t comment on those particular cases because they involve individual students and their privacy considerations.

I can say that the University will deal with them through established procedures that are documented, but also when it involves situations that might be governed by the law of the jurisdictions where we reside, it will go through those processes as well. In terms of myself, I usually do not get involved in those kinds of deliberations or discussions or certain decisions, because there are individuals and parts of the institution that are charged with investigating and also making those decisions directly on behalf of the institution. I do not personally make those decisions, but I care greatly about the individuals who are impacted by such alleged acts, and it’s incredibly important for the institution to look at what happened and the veracity of an allegation in an appropriate and fair manner to all involved. But I’m taking it very seriously, whether it’s on the campus itself or adjacent to campus. It involves many members of our community and requires careful investigation and thoughtful decision.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

NEWS BRIEFS

Social Security numbers compromised in August cybersecurity attack ITS reveals further details about cause of campus-wide internet outage

IRENA LI

Daily News Editor

Social Security numbers and financial details were among the pieces of information compromised in the August 2023 cybersecurity attack,

the University of Michigan revealed in a statement released Monday afternoon. The breach led Information Technology Services to disconnect the campus network from the internet for several days, leaving the campus community without internet access for the first few

days of the fall 2023 semester.

According to the release, an unauthorized third party gained access to the personal information of students, employees, healthcare patients, alumni and other members of the campus community.

Compromised information

included Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial account details and medical records.

The University discovered “suspicious activity” on the U-M campus computer network on August 23 and promptly disconnected the network from

the internet. The University went on to mandate password resets for all accounts following the attack.

The University said campus administration will continue to work with law enforcement and third-party cybersecurity experts to investigate the attack

and prevent future incidents.

The number of individuals whose information was compromised by the attack was not provided. The release states that the University has mailed letters to “relevant individuals” who were impacted by the breach.

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INDEX

Vol. CXXXII, No. 110 ©2023 The Michigan Daily

N E W S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 ARTS........................4 MIC.........................7

OPINION................8 S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

News

2 — Wednesday, October 25, 2023

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

NEWS BRIEFS

Regents approve the obtaining of liquor licenses for Yost, Crisler and the Big House

The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents voted to apply for liquor licenses to permit alcohol sales at Yost, Crisler and the Big House RILEY HODDER & MILES ANDERSON

Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents unanimously voted to apply for Class C liquor licenses for Yost Ice Arena, Crisler Center and Michigan Stadium.

The licenses would permit all three venues to sell alcohol on the premises. The Board also unanimously preemptively approved implementing the

licenses at Yost and Crisler, which would allow them to begin alcohol sales in the two venues for the current sports seasons.

The Board will wait to receive feedback on the alcohol sales at Yost and Crisler before voting to approve implementing the license at Michigan Stadium.

At the Regents meeting Thursday, Athletic Director Warde Manuel said the board wanted to assess the implementation of alcohol sales at smaller venues before making a final decision on the status

of alcohol sales at Michigan Stadium.

“The Board will vote on the implementation of the Class C liquor license for Michigan Stadium at a later date, after careful consideration and review of data and the experience at the other two venues,” Manuel said.

The Board collected community input before applying for the licenses. The University sent out an online survey to the campus community on Oct. 2, which was available through Oct. 6, to gather feedback on the

potential sale of alcohol at sports venues on campus. The results of this survey were not disclosed at the meeting.

Regent Paul Brown (D) said he was personally against the sale of alcohol in Michigan Stadium and that fans and attendees tend to have differing opinions.

“There is mixed belief on whether we should sell alcohol in the stadium,” Brown said. “I believe one thing that makes our environment so unique is the fact that it is different than other venues.”

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CAMPUS LIFE

A Night of Remembrance honors Palestinians killed in Israel-Hamas war, implements community action plan

Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter

Content warning: this article contains mentions of violence.

More than 1,000 Ann Arbor community members and University of Michigan students, staff and faculty’s faces were illuminated by candles arranged in the shape of Palestine outside Angell Hall Thursday evening. The candles cast light onto flags and signs held by attendees showing their support for Palestine in the ongoing HamasIsrael war.

The attendees gathered for A Night of Remembrance, an event organized by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the U-M Arab Student Association and other campus community organizations to “honor the lives of 3,000+ martyrs of Palestine”. At Thursday’s event, U-M students and Ann Arbor community members shared personal experiences with the Israeli attacks in Gaza this past month, poems and other written works.

The Night of Remembrance was hosted following the ongoing violence in the Hamas-Israel war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas on Oct. 8 following a planned attack

by Hamas on Israel, killing more than 1,000 people and taking more than 100 hostages. In the following two weeks, Israel responded with a series of land and air attacks on Gaza that killed more than 4,000 people, in addition to cutting off electricity, food, water and fuel supplies to the area. Israel urged the 1.1 million civilians living in the north area of Gaza to evacuate.

Earlier this week, al-Ahli hospital in Gaza was bombed, raising debates across the world on who is to blame for the attacks. Violence has also spilled into the West Bank, where 73 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7.

Co-President of SAFE Salma

Hamamy opened the event by describing the current situation in Gaza, speaking about the continued airstrikes and siege perpetrated by the Israeli government. She also emphasized how anti-Palestinian violence has spread to the U.S., where a 6-year-old PalestinianAmerican boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was fatally stabbed on Wednesday by his family’s landlord in Chicago.

Hamamy said the presence of the attendees was a testament to the collective dream of liberation for Palestine.

“Our presence here is a statement, a statement that says no matter the hurdles, no matter the pain, and no matter the odds, we will not be silenced,” Hamamy said. “We will continue to remember to mourn, to hope and to strive for a just world for all.”

Zaynab Elkolaly, SAFE director of activism, said in an interview with The Michigan Daily the event was organized to honor the lives lost and recognize the ongoing violence perpetrated against Palestinians.

“This (event) is (meant) to commemorate the lives that are continuing to be lost at the hands of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and all of Palestine,” Elkolaly said.

“We actively did not call it a vigil in our programming because we believe that a vigil implies that the deaths have ended and now it’s time to mourn. The fact is that lives are continuing to be stolen from Gazans and Palestinians at large, and that’s why we call it a night of remembrance — so that they’re constantly at the forefront of our minds in everything that we do and all the advocacy that we engage in.”

Yasmeen Nimer, a prospective U-M student, shared a poem at the event about media portrayals of the violence in Palestine.

“I’m tired,” Nimer said. “I’m tired of my generational trauma, put on display, for your eyes to view and for you to decide the ability of my pain.

Seeing the news of the death of my own people every day, realizing that my government does not stand with me at the end of the day. The terror

they feel when I say ‘Free Palestine,’ and the audacity of them to have to say ‘It’s no problem of mine.’ ” Following the speeches at Angell Hall, event organizers led attendees in a silent march to the lawn of the President’s House. The Night of Remembrance followed last week’s sit-in organized by SAFE in response to University President Santa Ono’s statement on the violence in the Middle East.

On Thursday, event organizers read a list of demands for University President Santa Ono that have been signed by 24 student organizations as of Oct. 19. The demands include that the University divests from companies that violate Palestinian human rights, conduct formal inquiries into anti-Palestinian actions and sentiments on campus and support faculty members who choose to stand in support of Palestine. At the Night of Remembrance, Hamamy stated the fourth demand; asking President Ono to follow the example of experts and formally recognize the Israeli government’s actions as genocide.

“Our fourth demand is to release a formal statement that clearly defines the massacre in Gaza as a genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign, led by Israel and aided by the United States,” Hamamy said.

“Their statement should also iterate that the events of the past week cannot be isolated from a denial of Palestinian human rights and prevent the Palestinian resistance.

It should offer an unapologetic, long overdue condemnation of the last 75 years of colonial violence.”

After speaking the demands, attendees chanted “Free, free Palestine” while walking onto Ono’s lawn. Those at the front of the crowd knocked on Ono’s front door and asked him to open it, but received no response from the dark-windowed house, leading event organizers to tell attendees to return to the steps outside Angell Hall. As they walked back to Angell Hall, attendees chanted, “Ono, Ono, you’re no good.

Treat your students like you should,” and “Ono, Ono, you can’t hide. We

charge you with genocide.”

A woman holds a megaphone to her mouth while standing in front of the president’s house Salma Hamamy, co-president of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, leads chants on President Ono’s doorstep. Jeremy Weine/ Daily. Buy this photo.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden traveled to Israel to meet with Netanyahu. In his visit, Biden convinced the Israeli government to allow humanitarian aid to enter into Gaza and convinced Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi to open up a border in south Gaza.

Northern borders in Gaza are controlled by Israel and remain closed, making Egypt’s agreement to open the southern border significant.

During his trip, Biden also pledged $100 million in aid to Gaza.

On Friday morning, Biden requested $100 billion from the U.S. congress.

The request included $10 billion in military support for Israel, among other international funding. It did not include funding for Palestinian aid.

As the event came to a close, organizers thanked attendees for joining the event and welcomed students to stay at the event to pray for those who have died.

In an interview with The Daily, Jenna Sukkar, a Wayne State University student who attended the event, spoke about the comfort she found within a large group of people who she felt understood her sadness about the violence in Gaza.

“Coming out here today to help represent my people – because I am Palestinian – helped me have a little bit of hope for the future,” Sukkar said. “Definitely the turnout made me happy.”

Following the night of remembrance, the U-M Egyptian Student Association, ASA and SAFE hosted the attendees at Trotter Multicultural Center to offer a safe place to check in on each other and share a meal.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

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Over 1000 people gathered to honor Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war and deliver demands for University of Michigan President Santa Ono RACHEL MINTZ & BRONWYN JOHNSTON

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JEREMY WEINE/Daily University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor community members gathered around the steps of Angell Hall for the event, A Night of Remembrance, to honor Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces Thursday night.

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Wednesday, October 25, 2023 - 3

ADMINISTRATION

UMich leaders break ground on new residential complex Former and current University of Michigan leaders broke ground on a new residential hall complex at a private on-site ceremony

BRONWYN JOHNSTON Daily News Reporter

The University of Michigan officially broke ground on a new residence hall complex Friday afternoon in a private, on-site ceremony. Former and current U-M leaders attended, including E. Royster Harper, vice president emerita of Student Life, after whom the hall will be named.

The ceremony opened with welcome remarks by Kambiz Khalili, associate vice president for Student Life, who thanked the individuals at the University involved in the endeavor as well as the various design and architecture groups consulted for the project. Khalili said the new residential complex marks the first expansion of on-campus residence space in years and the first hall built for first-year students since 1963.

“There’s a lot of excitement in the air because we’re here to commemorate the next bold step forward in bringing more on-campus housing options to our first-year and undergraduate students,” Khalili said. “Today, our university community has gathered to break ground on Central Campus residential development, the University’s first Central Campus residence hall built in decades.”

Sarah Hubbard, chair of the U-M Board of Regents, echoed the significance of the new residential development, which was approved unanimously by the board last month. The residential complex will include a 2,300-bed residence hall and a dining facility that will seat

900. The total cost of the project is expected to be $631 million.

Hubbard emphasized that the complex will provide necessary housing space for undergraduate students.

U-M enrollment has continuously grown since 2015 and currently sits at over 52,000 students — the largest in the state.

“The new Central Campus Housing Project represents a fantastic opportunity for more students to live on campus, something that has been an issue for years,” Hubbard said. “And this is really important. Every student that wants to live on Central Campus will be able to do so.”

In his remarks, Martino Harmon, vice president for Student Life, said the University considered student wellness and environmental consciousness throughout the process of designing the residential complex.

“I truly believe that this is exactly the sort of on-campus living community that speaks to generations of future Wolverines,” Harmon said. “It will be the place they call home, the spaces where they build community and discover what well-being means to them. Every aspect of these spaces has been designed with sustainability and community well-being in mind.”

Following Harmon, Harper thanked the attendees for their support on behalf of the students and faculty of the University. She described her hopes for what the building will represent for future students of the University.

“My hope is that Harper Hall will be a place filled with students

LUCAS CHEN/Daily

Community members celebrate the groundbreaking of a new residence quad Friday afternoon.

who love from their hearts, live from their strengths and serve from their passions,” Harper said. “The students will come to know the value of looking up and out toward a future, a future that they will lead.”

Andrew Kasper, vice president of finance for the Residence Hall Association, said the new development will extend RHA’s impact on campus and continue to provide a platform for students to advocate for themselves and their experience at the University.

“We are very excited to be able to expand our RHA’s reach on

campus for the first time in 13 years with the addition of 25 new hall council positions,” Kasper said. “These positions allow students to lead and represent and enable them to learn the importance of community and leadership.”

University President Santa Ono closed the first part of the ceremony by referring to the development as a milestone for the University and a project of great importance to the student community.

“Number one on the list of what (alumni) remember is their

time in their halls of residence,” Ono said. “And I’m sure it’s true for each and every one of you as well. Because a residence hall is not just a place where you live and you eat, it’s an extension of what we do as an institution.”

Ono also acknowledged that the residence hall will be the first building on the University’s campus named after a Black woman and promised it would not be the last.

Following the ceremonial remarks, the speakers were joined

by U-M regents, Geoffrey Chatas, executive vice president and

chief financial officer, and Sally J. Churchill, vice president and secretary of the University, each holding a shovel and donning a U-M logo construction hat to officially break ground.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA sophomore Taleah Nelson said she appreciated how the new residential complex could alleviate some of the stress associated with finding housing as an undergraduate at the University.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

RESEARCH

UMich startup’s liver tumor treatment receives FDA approval HistoSonics, founded by UMich researchers, received FDA approval for their soundwave tech to treat liver tumors

NADIA TAECKENS & EMMA LAPP Daily Staff Reporters

A new soundwave device created

by HistoSonics, a company founded by University of Michigan researchers, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating tumors in the liver. According to HistoSonics, the device, called Edison, offers patients a less invasive treatment option compared to surgery, chemotherapy or radiation.

The FDA approval for Edison comes after the researchers completed the #HOPE4Liver clinical trial, which treated 44 patients with liver lesions using Edison. The researchers found the Edison device striked and reduced patients’ tumors 95.5% of the time, with only three patients reporting side effects, all of which were minor.

Zhen Xu, professor of biomedical engineering and co-founder of HistoSonics, spoke with The Michigan Daily about how histotripsy uses external ultrasound pulses to destroy targeted tissue. Xu said the pulses rapidly expand and collapse gas pockets within the target tissue, destroying it in a process called cavitation.

NEWS

“(Histotripsy) produces very high local mechanical stress to basically pull cells apart within millimeter accuracy,” Xu said. “So it can be used, as you can imagine, for noninvasive surgery. The cellular debris actually is absorbed by the body over time. So over time, the treated region is literally just like you have surgically removed the tissue. It’s actually gone.”

Xu said histotripsy is the first non-invasive, non-ionizing and nonthermal method available to break down tissues in the liver, making it a promising option with minimal side effects for patients with tumors.

“We found that histotripsy can treat tumors where we (need to) preserve critical structures like the major vessels, neurovascular bundles (and bile) ducts,” Xu said. “They are more resistant to histotripsy damage.

So (histotripsy) actually allows us to potentially treat high-risk locations near critical organs or structures that cannot be achieved by the current approach.”

Eli Vlaisavljevich — who worked with HistoSonics while doing his Ph.D. and postdoctoral work, and continues to collaborate with them while working as a professor at Virginia Tech — told The Daily the technology can offer patients options that previously weren’t available.

“A lot of patients can’t get surgery because of the progression of the disease, the number of tumors (or) the location of tumors,” Vlaisavljevich said. “With histotripsy, you can significantly improve their quality of life and outcomes and survival.”

According to Xu, HistoSonics is working to expand the use of histotripsy to treat other types of tumors.

“There is a clinical trial on using the same device, the Edison device, to treat renal tumors,” Xu said. “The plan is to extend that same device to treat pancreatic cancer, hopefully in a year.

And then we also are doing a lot of research on many other cancer types.

For example, we are doing research in our lab to treat brain tumors.”

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Ryan Miller, manager of advanced systems at HistoSonics and U-M alum, said this device will positively impact patients with tumors in the future.

“The safety of the device was proven throughout the clinical trials,” Miller said. “We are just really excited to have the FDA grant and to put this amazing new technology into the hands of physicians to help patients.”

The University, along with Xu and several other HistoSonics researchers, has financial interest in the company,

which was established with support from U-M Innovation Partnerships and the Coulter Translational Research Program. Xu said the HistoSonics team is working hard to get insurance companies to approve histotripsy treatment.

“So I think (HistoSonics is) doing

this one by one,” Xu said. “They are now getting (approval), I think, from Medicare and then they are moving one major medical insurance at a time.”

Vlaisavljevich said the success of this clinical trial will help support future research with histotripsy.

“Now that the device is approved, you’ll see a lot more clinical data come out because hopefully you’ll see more and more patients getting this therapy now,” Vlaisavljevic said.

“And we’ll continue to learn about the effectiveness of histotripsy because of (that) clinical data.”

Design by Francie Ahrens

Vietnamese-inspired cocktail bar Peridot opens Peridot, a Vietnamese-inspired cocktail bar and restaurant opened on West Liberty Street earlier this month

MADISON HAMMOND & SACHI GOSAL Daily Staff Reporter & Daily Staff Contributor

Vietnamese-inspired cocktail bar and restaurant Peridot, opened on Oct. 10, joining the diverse global cuisine options throughout Ann Arbor. The restaurant, located on West Liberty Street, offers a rotating menu of small and large plates and craft cocktails.

Restaurant partner Adam Lowenstein is a member of the Watershed Hospitality Group, which owns Peridot along with other popular Ann Arbor nightlife establishments like Alley Bar, The

Last Word and Good Time Charley’s.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lowenstein said he came up with the idea for Peridot when he was thinking about what kind of food would be well received in Ann Arbor.

“We’ve been hearing, just as restaurant and bar owners over the course of the last few years, how there’s kind of been a dearth of new, exciting spots,” Lowenstein said. “People have been so excited about a new place and something unique and the food has been really well received. There’s only so many places to go out, and Ann Arbor has a really big population of people who are into dining in new places and experiences.”

Compared to other cocktail bars owned by Watershed, like The Last Word, Lowenstein said the drinks at Peridot are focused on offering lighter liquor options.

“The cocktails are really nuanced, balanced, inventive and kind of build on the experience that we have with The Last Word,” Lowenstein said. “(They’re) not as whiskey focused, more focused on gins and rums.”

Lowenstein also mentioned the restaurant is named after peridot, a green gemstone mined in Vietnam.

Lowenstein said he decided to decorate the restaurant’s interior with a lot of green furnishings to match the name.

“We have a lot of green tones, and the space is kind of green and

glittery,” Lowenstein said. “We just felt like the idea of the gem really represented what the feel of the space is.”

LSA junior Jordan Dohrman is the internal marketing director for the University of Michigan’s branch of Spoon University, a food publication that reviews local restaurants.

Dohrman told The Daily that Peridot has a great opportunity to join the list of popular restaurants loved by U-M students.

“I think having new restaurants serves different crowds,” Dohrman said. “If you’re not an Italian lover, you can try Vietnamese or Mediterranean. There’s so many different options in this area.”

Dohrman also said she

appreciated Peridot’s diverse drink menu, including wine, beer and craft cocktails.

“A lot of the Asian fusion places around us are just food,” Dohrman said. “Not many of those places were serving alcoholic beverages for the 21+ community. We don’t have anything like it.”

Lowenstein said Peridot will be open late — until midnight Tuesday through Thursday and 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. He said a lot of restaurants in Ann Arbor close their kitchens early and he hopes Peridot will help satisfy cravings for a late night bite.

“There’s not enough restaurants that are staying open late, and so there’s a market for it,” Lowenstein

said. “Plus, if you’re gonna go out and have a drink you know, at 11 o’clock, you want to have a bite to eat, too.”

Nursing freshman Tina Le, a member of the Vietnamese Student Association, told The Daily that going to Peridot is a great opportunity for students to try Vietnamese food and get a taste of that culture.

She said for those who identify as Vietnamese, Peridot might also be a place that feels representative of those identities.

“Cultural restaurants offer foods that people from those backgrounds are familiar with and know,” Le said. “Knowing that food from your culture is being offered or served nearby can make you more comfortable in a new environment.”

Arts

4 — Wednesday, October 25, 2023

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

The music beat’s fall playlist DAILY MUSIC WRITERS

Fall is officially upon us, with its kaleidoscope of leaves, its Halloween movies and, most importantly, its contemplative music choices. There’s something about the crisp weather and shorter days that necessitates a playlist filled with somber guitar and lyrics on renewal and new beginnings. Here are the music beat’s picks for the autumn season, perfect for this period filled with nostalgia and change.

“Poison Root” – Alex G Nothing feels more fall than Alex G’s “Poison Root.” The track opens with a barking dog and methodical guitar plucks traversing in all sonic directions.

Its deep, bassy textures are squall-like, breaking every line as muffled, nearly unintelligible vocals twist and turn alongside instrumentals. Beneath it all is a steady thrum that carries the song ever forward.

The inordinate noise cuts out to reveal a prayer-like repetition of “now I know everything” before bursting back into dissonance — out-of-time keys, squealing strings and the same forward pace. The lyrics are simple yet haunting — there are only about four unique phrases — but they hold within them all the pensive gloom of fall.

And really, what is more fall than finding a poison tree, digging up its roots and boiling tea?

Music Beat Editor Claire Sudol “Stay Home” – American Football Since I became a Midwestern transplant three years ago, Midwest emo has crept into my musical rotation every October.

There is something about the genre’s hushed vocals, its sometimes melodramatic lyricism

and steady, melodic guitar riffs that call to me with the first cold snap. There is beauty in this gloom, an atmosphere best distilled on the self-titled debut album from Illinois emo band American Football.

On 1999’s American Football, the essence of a Midwestern fall permeates every chord progression.

Written while the band members were still attending the University of Illinois, the project is steeped in the confessional tales of a college student navigating love and life. In the song “Stay Home,” a past love deteriorates like brown autumn leaves, the detritus of our lives in transition. Vocalist Mike Kinsella sings woefully, “But that’s life, it’s so so-so / So emotional / So, stay home.” While the changing of the seasons may be predictable, the life changes that accompany these shifts are not. The glow of summer has begun to wear off, leaving in its wake a more austere and mercurial world. Why face your emotions when you can stay home, wrapped in a blanket and protected from this messiness?

“Stay Home” is a soft, amber gem of a song, one that has rung true these past three falls as I grapple with my yearly urge to hibernate.

Senior Music Editor Nora Lewis “Change” – Big Thief Since its release last year, I’ve made an effort to listen to Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You on the first day of fall every year.

Although the tradition is new, I hope to continue it because this album’s diverse acoustic soundscape and melancholy lyrics are perfect for transitioning the listener into a fall headspace.

There is no better track to start this transition than “Change.”

Fall is the season of change.

People return to school, the colors

all around turn from lush green to dense yellow and red hues and then to the inevitable brown of winter, and the weather goes from comfortable to frigid, all over the course of one season.

Set to slow, delicate acoustic guitars, “Change” perfectly encapsulates this feeling, crooning, “Would you walk forever in the light / To never know the secret of the quiet night?” It furthers the concept by bringing in mortality: “Would you live forever, never die, while everything around passes?” And it delivers perhaps the most heartwrenching acceptance of change with, “Could I set everything free / When I watch you holding her the way you once held me?”

Fall is the transition between beautiful, warm, sunny days and the miserable, gray cold, but this change makes it the most vibrant season of all. These lyrics of forlorn acceptance of change are the epitome of fall: If everything was stagnant perfection, we could never fully enjoy what makes life so special, and only in these periods of change can we really appreciate what we have.

Daily Arts Writer Nickolas Holcomb “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” – Fairport Convention Though spring is traditionally the season of rebirth, fall has always felt to me like the time of beginnings. The air is brisk with anticipation; the first time my breath fogs in the night feels novel and exciting. In the great circle of a year, those new red leaves steadfastly propel us forward. We look back with sentimentality and ahead with expectation — whether it’s a beginning or an ending, there’s something about fall that forces a reckoning with time.

That’s what makes “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”

Illustration by Evelyn Mousigian

the perfect song for the season.

If The Velvet Underground is the cozy indoors, Fairport Convention is an open field. Mellow guitar riffs and lead singer Sandy Denny’s resonant voice create a delicate mix of nostalgia and possibility, as Denny eloquently captures the feeling of fall from the very first line: “Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving / But how can they know, it’s time for them to go?” No sooner does she sow doubt, however, than she brings us comfort again. With warm, reedy guitar and a relaxed drum line to back her up, she sings, “So come the storms of winter / And then the birds in spring again / I have no fear of time.”

As someone with a definite fear of time, I envy her peace. But for the five minutes that the song plays through my $20 headphones, peace feels, for once, reachable.

“Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” came out in 1969, when my

$20 headphones didn’t exist, but the wistfulness of fall is, ironically, timeless.

Daily Arts Writer Nina Smith “End” – Frank Ocean Though Frank Ocean has been M.I.A. for roughly the past four years (and even longer if we use the time elapsed since his last release as a metric), his discography provides a lethal yet satiating arsenal for the times when your heartstrings are feeling particularly tender. “End,” the 17th and final song off Channel Orange, is no exception.

As seasons change, the tides of our lives, too, turn, and we inevitably discover that temperature is not the only thing that grows cold with time.

Appropriately, “End” acts as an echo chamber for a resounding experience — equally unfortunate and human — carried as a mere chip on a shoulder or an irrevocable hit in the battle to preserve a

relationship. Superimposed over a sample of “Voodoo” — another Ocean track, circa 2012 Tumblr — “End” captures a hauntingly inaudible conversation between two weary lovers in a car, pelted by a downpour that is putting out their flame. In the reverberation of raindrops and the absence of coherence, we feel the collapse of the lovers’ world all the more intensely: a sensation that the listener may know too well.

Listening to this concluding track to Channel Orange is the perfect coping mechanism, whether you seek to wallow in love lost or embrace a bruised heart before the blue-purple left by their touch fades to yellow-brown, eventually vanishing forever with the warmth and sunshine of fleeting summertime.

Daily Arts Contributor Meli Birkmeier Read more at michigandaily.com

Thank you for the music (on my TV) SERENA IRANI Daily Arts Writer

When I think of music in television, one of two things comes to mind. The first is “musical TV,” which is when elements of musical theatre become temporarily infused into a show, like a late-season musical episode where every character can suddenly sing and dance, or the entirety of “Glee.” The other is what I call “music behind TV,” which is pretty much every other use of music in television that no one gives much thought to. There are songs composed specifically for the show, the themes and familiar instrumentals that reside in the background, and then there are soundtracks, songs chosen to heighten the emotional intensity of a scene or fill out a montage.

With grand cinematic scores, we know how to give credit where credit is due, but the music behind TV is often overlooked in the art of critical television appreciation (the inaugural Emmy category for music supervision was in 2017).

The truth is, a good or bad song choice can make or break a scene. Think about what The Fray’s “How to Save a Life” is to “Grey’s Anatomy” or Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” is to “Stranger Things” or Jason Derulo’s “Whatcha Say” is to Thanksgiving in “Gossip Girl.”

The list is endless, but you get the gist.

Simply put, the job of a music supervisor is no easy feat, and there’s a lot more to it than just picking “good songs.” Music sets the tempo and the inherent tone for the audience to pick up on; it can pull us into the atmosphere

of a show or the headspace of a character, and when it works in perfect synergy with the editing, writing and direction, it can transform an ordinary scene into an unforgettable one. In reflecting on some of my favorite uses of music in TV, I thought about how these shows were particularly ingenious in their respective approaches, and what made them linger in my head long after the episode was over.

“The Umbrella Academy” I’m not usually a fan of shows with a lot of action scenes. Unless the editing style is extremely compelling, I get bored of the punching and kicking and my eyes glaze over. They’re just not my thing. With that in mind, it is notable that I not only tolerate the many action scenes in “The Umbrella Academy” but actively enjoy them. And it’s in large part due to the show’s incredible use of music in its fight sequences, which makes them feel choreographed in the truest sense of the word. Whether they’re fighting or dancing (or both), their movements are perfectly seamless and engaging to watch.

Like most things in “The Umbrella Academy,” the music is a little weird — in the best way — using non-intuitive “fight songs” from an eclectic catalog of obscure covers and ’80s pop rock. Number Five (Aidan Gallagher, “Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn”) gets some of the best music moments by far, like when he literally runs into the future in “Run Boy Run,” or gets chased by armed assassins through a department store to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” or brutally kills multiple attackers in a quaint, run-down donut shop to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).”

Is jamming out to The Backstreet

Boys as the characters fight for their lives a little unserious?

Yes, by all accounts, but it’s also a large part of how the show is able to pair its action-based plot and comedic tone so effectively.

“The Umbrella Academy” comics and TV adaptation were co-created by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, and so he presumably has some influence on the superb music taste. But in general, it comes down to a creative use of nonperiod-specific music and bold, unexpected song choices that really elevate those actionpacked episodes. The show has no qualms about overdoing it on the uncanny, and its musical approach is always consistent with the eccentricity of the story itself. So whether they’re having an impromptu dance-off or saving the day, the Hargreeves are having a good time, and the music makes sure that you do too.

“Big Little Lies” A TV technique that I really love is when the music that we — the audience — hear is actually a part of the scene itself. At first, we’re just listening to a song as an ordinary backdrop for the scene, and then we see one of the characters turn off the radio and realize that they were listening to it too. It induces a sort of shared experience with the character, as we briefly step into their headspace and hear what they hear. Plenty of shows integrate songs into scenes in this manner, yet very rarely is it employed quite as exclusively as it is in the series “Big Little Lies.”

Because the show is restricted in a way by the songs that its characters are actively listening to, music takes on a much more prominent role in their lives and the scenes that we are privy to.

Design by Emma Sortor

Scenes are structured so that we get glimpses of the songs that play during weekday car rides and birthday parties, the stuff that makes up the musical fabric of these characters’ lives. It’s a really creative way to intertwine music within a story, and it makes the song choices feel that much more intimate and intentional to the characters themselves.

It also addresses questions for the audience that we don’t usually have an answer to, like what kind of music these characters would actually listen to, or what a song says about their emotional state in a specific scene. We know that Jane (Shailene Woodley, “Divergent”) goes for runs on the beach to heavy punk rock blaring through her headphones and dances around to David Bowie with her son Ziggy (Iain Armitage, “Young Sheldon”) as they get ready for school. We know that Madeleine’s (Reese Witherspoon, “The Morning Show”) daughter Chloe (Darby

Camp, “Benji”) has an iPod filled with Leon Bridges and oldschool ’70s deep cuts because that 6-year-old has absurdly good taste.

In “Big Little Lies,” music isn’t some omniscient moodsetting force, slipped into scenes after editing just to heighten the emotional atmosphere. It’s written into the story itself, which may not seem all that groundbreaking but is actually not that common for a nonmusical show to do for the near entirety of a show. The techniques used to integrate the songs are relatively simple but imbued with so much intention.

It’s a nice realization for a viewer that each song we hear, even if only a few seconds or so, was picked for a reason.

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Much like everything else on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the music was really good. To the best of my knowledge, “Buffy” was also one of the first teen shows to set the trend for the

infusion of live music within a show. Essentially, our favorite main characters attend some event in their hometown where a real band is performing, with one or two of their songs interspersed between snippets of big teen drama. Other teen shows like “The O.C.” would follow suit, and ended up softlaunching the careers of bands like The Killers, Modest Mouse and The Walkmen.

Musical guests were a really fun way to continuously feature performance scenes within a show and introduce the audience to new music at the same time.

When I was younger and didn’t have a super established sense of my own musical taste, hearing new music in a show I liked was a surefire way to get me to listen to an artist, or at least associate them with a cool character from there on out. Kind of like product placement, but for indie bands instead of Cheerios.

Read more at michigandaily.com

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‘Loki’ season two is off to a confusing, messy start MINA TOBYA

Daily Arts Writer

Marvel projects have been a hit or miss lately. “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3” has been lauded as a “practically perfect” superhero movie while “Secret Invasion” and “Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” were not received so well. The first season of “Loki” was very much a mixed bag.

For all its confusing turns and questionable romantic pairings, “Loki” has delivered an imaginative world and expanded on the development of a longtime fan-favorite character while jumpstarting the multiverse era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This first season concluded with Loki (Tom Hiddleston, “Thor: Ragnarok”), our resident trickster god, and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino, “Yesterday”), his resentful variant self, at a crossroads. After arriving at the end of time, Sylvie murders the mysterious figure behind the Time Variance Authority, “He Who Remains” (Jonathan Majors, “Creed IV”), effectively unleashing Loki’s variant selves to conquer the multiverse. After making this impossible choice, she pushes Loki through a time door, which leads him to a past TVA ruled by He Who Remains.

The series picks up right where it left off, meeting Loki in the past universe until he can find a way back to his own present reality.

Even that comes with its own complications as he continues to “time slip” between the two time periods.

The introductory sequence makes a valiant effort to showcase this struggle. It’s a perfect harmony of high-stakes action and a hero’s effort to keep fighting. Loki’s apparent

exhaustion, reeling from Syvlie’s betrayal — which, for him, was mere moments ago — bogs him down as he’s chased through the past TVA by alternate versions of his friends who have no idea who he is. The slow-motion, shaky camera elevates the suspense in this sequence as Loki leaps from balconies and crashes through windows. It’s as close as this first episode gets to a classic Marvel fight scene, and it sets a relentlessly intense tone for the thrilling journey to come.

Though the episode’s plot allows the characters to move toward finding solutions for the main conflict — stabilizing the timelines and fending off He Who Remains — it feels contrived and unnecessarily confusing. The entire plan requires convoluted schemes with absurdly high stakes (namely Mobius getting his skin peeled off) just to get to a baseline stability that allows characters to begin solving the main issue. The constant racing from one concept to another leaves audiences feeling completely alienated from both the plot and the characters.

Compared to the last season’s opening, which focused much more on establishing the characters’ emotional context, this episode’s excessive chaos and surface-level banter simply didn’t pull me in. Watching Loki and Mobius exchange adorably awkward pleasantries with Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All At Once”), a TVA repairman who joins their team, merely provided eccentric, entertaining dialogue to Band-Aid the lack of emotional deep-dives. While these will likely come later in the season with reunions with Sylvie (and promises of a Loki-Thor reunion), emotional moments would have grounded an episode lacking in

Arts

familiar faces or relationships.

The series’s visual flair carries over exceptionally strongly. Its grainy, warm lighting coupled with the vintage 1950s-style technology cultivates the air of a bygone era. Juxtaposed with the futuristic imagery of the sacred timeline and carvings of He Who Remains, the visuals present the TVA as a living contradiction.

The score has a dark, ominous, larger-than-life element that speaks to the high stakes of Loki’s predicament. VFX are also up to franchise standards, especially with the visuals of Loki’s timeslipping. Each time he is pulled from one time period to another, he appears to be glitching in place as his multiple variants agonizingly claw their way out of his body. These elements deeply submerge viewers into the world and its protagonist’s torment.

Loki’s pain is easy to empathize with largely due to his actor’s unbridled talent. Hiddleston imbues Loki with a solemnity that carries over from last season’s betrayal by Sylvie, indicating the fresh emotional wound he carries. His performance completely transcends the screen.

Every frantic, ragged breath and signature Loki hair flip bring the character and his pained panic to life with a dramatic flair that only someone who has played the part for a long time can muster.

Toward the end of episode one, his masterful performance truly shines as he switches from apprehensive confusion to shock at seeing Sylvie, then quickly to terror as an unknown figure prunes him. The mystery of the figure’s identity has already sparked fan theories and speculation, laying the groundwork for consistent engagement with the show.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 — 5

Dear Diary, I’m taking this one to the grave

Design by Avery Nelson

KATHRYN HEMMILA Daily Arts Writer

I used to keep a journal religiously.

Every day, without fail, I would sit down before bed and write about my day, my problems at the time, my friends, enemies, emotions, philosophies and observations — you get the idea. I told myself it was a form of “self-care,” that my journal offered a much-needed recluse for meditation and self-reflection.

Yet, as I wrote, I could never shake the feeling that secretly, I was not writing for only myself.

I would ponder word choice, make sure to include embarrassing anecdotes — but only if they weren’t too embarrassing — contemplate the significance of an expressed idea and carefully only include the snarky comments that seemed most necessary, wary of whatever I was immortalizing in pen. In my oh-sosecret diary where I was supposed to be fleshing out my deepest thoughts and emotions, I was

inexplicably tentative, writing for the judgment of a captive audience that did not even exist. As vain or illogical as this behavior seems, I could not break this habit. Every time I allegedly poured my heart and soul into the Moleskine’s pages, a fantastical audience watched my every move, ready to praise or pounce depending on the carefully crafted story I decided to feed them that day.

My yearning for a made-up reader’s approval is not surprising.

Since elementary school, I have been consistently exposed to the genre of published diaries. I remember my earliest encounter with this literary subset: “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” This childhood staple is the alleged diary of middleschooler Greg Heffley and follows his many laughable misadventures and adolescent woes via sarcastic narration and stick-figure cartoons.

While “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is a work of fiction, the intent behind the novel remains: It is the published version of a private work.

In middle school, I moved to the more serious side of published diaries, reading Anne Frank’s tragic “Diary of a Young Girl,” which recounts the daily life and musings of a young Jewish girl during the Holocaust. While Frank herself remarks on desires for the journal to be published after the war in her entries, it can be hard not to feel like an intruder when reading the book. After all, despite her attempts at rewriting and creating a less intimate version of the diary for publication, the copy on sale today includes sections from both her original and rewritten journals — perhaps violating the wishes we are led to believe the published diary is fulfilling. These sections, which discuss vulnerable moments in Frank’s life such as female menstruation, sexuality and possibly even same-sex attraction, have been slowly given to a public that she never knew or intended to present to, to analyze and pick apart.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

‘Dumb Money’ knows it’s dumb and that’s why it’s worth the money GABY CUMMINGS Daily Arts Contributor

SUDOKU

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

WHISPER WHISPER “Remember, remember...”

“...the fifth of November.”

Everyone has that friend who’s too into internet culture. They say some odd things, but every once in a while they reference something so out of left field you pee your pants from laughing so hard. Craig Gillespie’s (“Cruella”) “Dumb Money” is that friend in film form.

Chronicling the 2021 battle between Wall Street and Redditors over GameStop stock, the film begins exactly where you’d expect: a “WAP” needle drop. The song introduces key players of this modern “good versus evil” tale, immediately letting the audience know this isn’t a story to be taken too seriously. The stock market true story premise might cause viewers to draw knee-jerk comparisons to the likes of “The Wolf of Wall Street” or “The Big Short,” but that risks ignoring the hilarity of Reddit versus Wall Street. Millions of Redditors (some even at the University of Michigan) driving up the GameStop stock to get rich and combat hedge fund managers trying to short sell it requires a film as comedic as it sounds. The film includes social commentary on the inequity of Wall Street, but its true focal point is a comedic retelling of all the moving parts that allowed normal people to take a stab at the daunting financial institution.

The story is told through a gallery of characters on both sides of the stock battle. The Redditors include nurse Jenny (America Ferrera, “Barbie”), GameStop employee Marcos (Anthony Ramos, “In The Heights”) and debt-ridden college students Riri (Myha’la Herrold, “Bodies Bodies Bodies”) and Harmony (Talia Ryder, “Do Revenge”), all of whom are led by streamer Keith Gill (Paul Dano, “The Fabelmans”) whose internet persona is Roaring Kitty. The Wall Street billionaires are also included so audiences get a glimpse of the chaos that engulfed Wall Street as they faced a man wearing a cat shirt and a sweatband.

Some of the film’s jokes tend to play on current trends and COVID-19 culture, so it might lose steam a few years down the road

(though unlikely to lose all of its spark), but if you catch it while it’s hot you won’t regret it. Jokes like Marcos doing a TikTok dance for a company contest are pretty funny now, but will its humor hold up against the test of time? The internet references ground the movie to its specific time period, but the film’s frequent use of niche internet culture may be difficult to understand in the distant future. The movie heavily relies on internet references that might cease to be common knowledge.

Those without the lived experience of the quarantine era may fail to enjoy a lot of the film’s humor that is built on current culture and trends.

One of the film’s strengths is its ability to balance the characters’ separate stories, as the majority of characters never interact with each other in person. The story is sectioned off into groups, which only works because of each individual group’s chemistry. The Wall Street hedge fund managers are not up against a conglomerate of stereotypical Redditors, but a crowd of very different people led by Roaring Kitty’s financial advice. Riri and Harmony embody a young-lovers-against-theworld arc, Marcos wants more for himself and his family, and Jenny rounds out the Redditors as a single mom weighed down by debt. The groupings add depth to the Redditors as you can see each character’s motivation for taking a risk as large as going against Wall Street.

Gill’s story is not only carried by Dano’s empathetic performance — affording a man who is written as the head of a Reddit movement more sympathy from audiences than they might normally give — but also by the character’s relationships. Gill is emotionally anchored by his wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley, “The Fallout”), and comedically antagonized by his brother, Kevin (Pete Davidson, “The King of Staten Island”).

Davidson is in his element, providing many of the largest laughs throughout the film, but Woodley is arguably underused.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Arts

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 — 6

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Inspired by: Annie Blackman NINA SMITH

Daily Arts Writer

“All art is communication of the artist’s ideas, sounds, thoughts; without that no one will support the artist.” — Lionel Hampton Since the inception of the Arts section, we have written extensively about what we process, see, hear — all of the elements of artistic works — in order to bring you the finest we have in arts criticism. Before there was art, however, there were the artists. These individuals put pens to paper, frames to film, stanzas to song, all in an effort to be understood. Here in the Arts section, we hear them. Rather than the art we appreciate, this series centers on the artists we adore and the ways they have inspired us.

When I discovered Annie Blackman, I was 17 and lonely, stuck indoors in the early months of the pandemic. Though Blackman’s first, and at the time only, album, Blue Green, came out four years earlier, it felt oddly specific to my situation, which was by definition historically unique. Blue Green, described on Blackman’s Bandcamp as “songs I’ve written over the course of high school basically,” is nine tracks of nothing but Blackman, her guitar and a claustrophobic pile of selfanalysis and adolescent longing that, at the time of writing this, still boasts no more than 9,000 streams on Spotify — 3,000 of which are probably mine. Would you believe me if I told you it’s one of my favorite albums of all time?

COVID-19 pulled the plug on my high school experience without warning — there was no prom, no senior skip day, no graduation. This resulted in an odd sentimentality toward the whole thing. When I drive past the tall, white walls of Berkeley High, I still feel like I have unfinished business somewhere in those once impossibly crowded halls.

If you’ve seen “Booksmart,” you know what kind of person I was in

high school: a good student with a small friend group who stayed in and worked hard. But unlike in “Booksmart,” the last celebratory hurrah that I was waiting for never came. In March of what was supposed to be the best semester yet, regular life seemed to cease without fanfare. What a waste it was, then, to have kept my head down all those years.

I took it hard, mourned for a long time and skipped my online classes until my math teacher called the landline to ask my mom where I’d been. If only I had done more, I thought, taken better advantage of that fleeting youngness that I didn’t know was already ending. I told my crush I liked him over text and he replied, “Thanks Nina but I’m gay.” Ouch.

This was the precise moment when Blackman appeared, like a mousy revelation, on my TikTok feed. Her most recent music on Spotify was three years old — an EP called Laundry Room Songs she’d written and released in her first year at Kenyon College. Along with Blue Green, I consumed these amateur releases obsessively. My friends and I pored over lyrical parallels, stalked Blackman’s Instagram profile to an excessive and definitely creepy extent and sat six feet apart under the overcast Bay Area sky trying to deduce her birth chart. (At our best figurations, she’s a Cancer. I’m a Scorpio — no wonder she speaks to me so much.)

I felt understood by Blackman’s music in a way I rarely felt understood by anything at that time. Her wordy, awkward lyrics were like threads she’d somehow managed to disentangle from my own crumpled thoughts — and, benevolently, she’d smoothed them out for me to listen back to in honest, unadorned melody. There was “She’s prettier than me and that’s fair and fine but it stings like a punch decked with heavy rings / I’m embarrassing,” on the sparse, finger-plucked “Appealing to You.” There was “It’s louder

here / And painfully apparent it’s another not my year again,” on the summative “15, 16, 17.” There was “I’m good at making smart boys laugh but / I get it now that’s just one half of / Knowing what they want and being that,” on the victorious but melancholic “Xray Eyes.” And on my all-time favorite, “I Bet,” Blackman sings the lines that still make my chest ache for the both of us: “It’s lonely on the inside, I wish somebody had told / That turning 17 won’t make you any older.”

What Blackman captured in Blue Green, whether she meant to or not, was an eloquent portrait of a teenage girl too thoughtful for her own good — the exact teenage girl I was: clever and weighed down by it, preemptively jaded with no real life under her belt but almost enough metacognition to approximate the experience of

living. What felt pathetic about myself was no longer pathetic because Blackman had felt it too.

And, more than that, she’d put it into words. Isn’t that what we all look for in art — proof that somebody else has felt as ugly as we have? For all the time I spent thinking and not speaking, it was a relief to, for once, hear somebody else say it out loud.

At the same time as Blackman came into my life, I was returning to songwriting, a hobby I’d deemed childish and embarrassing at the end of middle school and left behind. Blackman was an inspiration in the most literal sense of the word — she proved that great writing doesn’t have to be dignified, it just has to tell the truth. If there was a shyness to her music, there was bravery in it as well, and a strong, unwavering heart. When I sat alone in my

bedroom with a guitar, my confidence was bolstered by the fact that Blackman had produced and put out an album exactly the same way.

Blackman signed with Father/ Daughter Records in 2021, and in 2022, she blessed us with All of It, her first full-length release in six years. Armed with a full band and a degree in English, Blackman is mature and confident on this album, clearing her place in the indie genre with a dreamy, intimate sound. But she doesn’t shun Blue Green’s self-conscious sensitivity — maybe she couldn’t if she tried. Her heart grows up alongside her.

I eventually left my bedroom, left high school, stopped wishing to get it all back. I’m older now, and sometimes I feel older, but there are times when I don’t feel all that different from the 17-year-

old version of myself. I remember her with fondness — in fact, I admire her. She had the nerve to keep going.

On Blue Green’s wryly optimistic closer, “Famous, Funny,” Blackman once again puts words to what I thought was indescribable. “One day I’m gonna be funny,” she sings “write award-winning jokes on a couch made of money.” But the song ends with a simple retrospection: “Shout out to all the books that I’ve read.” Our teenage ghosts are embarrassing — it’s tempting to pretend they never existed and that we have always known what shade of lipstick matches our complexion. But Blackman inspires me to treat all my previous selves with compassion, to thank them. By anticipating a fantastic future, Blackman never forgets to blow a kiss to the past.

Design by Grace Filbin

How the SAG-AFTRA strike has changed Fashion in Ann Arbor: A look at student style the fabric of our social media feeds REBECCA SMITH Daily Arts Writer

If you’ve been paying attention to current events recently, it’s likely you’ve heard a thing or two about the Writer’s Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes, both of which began over the summer and have been ongoing for the last several months.

Recently, the WGA strike reached its close as negotiators came to an agreement, but the SAG-AFTRA strike is ongoing, with members of the guild remaining adamant that negotiations will continue until a fair deal is reached.

The strike is awe-inspiring in every way. There are few things as empowering as watching undervalued workers — in this case, creatives like myself and my fellow Daily Arts writers — fight for what they deserve, no matter the amount of backlash they receive from rich, outof-touch CEOs. Over the past several months, strikers have amassed huge amounts of news coverage, increasing leverage not only for their own movement, but for other unions who have already stepped up to the picket line to fight for what they deserve. Their power has impressed even those who have watched it all unfold from behind a screen.

There have been several major side effects of the strike, most notably its massive effects on TV and movie production.

Writing and filming for popular TV shows and anticipated movie releases has been heavily delayed as negotiations have continued. The screen is not the only place that has experienced such tangible side effects from the strike. In fact, the place where I have noticed the most change since the strikes began is not on the big screen, but in the composition of my social media feed — specifically what is missing from it.

If you’re also someone who spends far too much time online, you may understand what I’m getting at. Today, the backbone of show and movie promotion rests on social media campaigns. Promotion teams for new movies and TV series create accounts across all social media platforms, on which promotional pictures, teasers and trailers are strategically released to amass the largest fan response possible — a key strategy to raising viewership. The actors, directors and writers who work on that particular show or movie help this process along by using their large platforms to promote new content. As one post follows another, fan creators begin to post about this new content as well, echoing the sentiment of excitement expressed by the actors and writers. What results is a cascade of fan theories, edits and commentaries, all of which contribute to a sense of growing excitement for that show or movie’s upcoming release.

This is where social media has taken the largest hit. Due to the guidelines of the strike, actors who support the cause — as well as writers, before the WGA strike came to a close — have been prohibited from posting about the content that they are a part of in order to help maximize the strike’s effectiveness.

Where fans would usually see behind-thescenes photos, cast interviews and other exciting tidbits leading up to a show or movie’s release has instead been a gaping hole in the fabric of their social media feed. As movies and shows filmed prior to the strike have continued to be released, online promotion by writers, producers and actors has been at a standstill.

These are not the only social media users, however, whose content has been brought to a halt by the strike.

Over the summer — in

response to a growing sense of confusion on social media about what was appropriate to post — SAG-AFTRA released contentcreator-specific guidelines, in which they prohibited creators from promoting new material online until the strike was resolved. Unsurprisingly, guidelines of this nature resulted in a massive disruption to the workf low of creators whose content revolves around new media and pop culture.

Many have been forced to turn down hefty paychecks, red carpet appearances and lucrative brand deals in order to show their support for the strike, resulting in a sizable loss in profit for creators who rely on brand deals and studio contracts to remain af loat.

Yet, regardless of how bleak the situation may sound, creators big and small have taken the disruption in stride.

For them, a temporary social media blackout is a small price to pay for the much greater gains this strike will allow for, if it is successful. These creators see themselves not as voiceless social media users, but as honorary members of the guild who are working in tandem with striking actors and writers to expand the strike’s impact. As fellow creatives, they feel that their participation is equally important to that of the actor or writer, a conclusion that is not too far off from reality. In fact, I can confidently say that if it weren’t for the missing components of my social media feed, I would not have taken nearly as much notice of the strike’s impact and longevity.

Its online news coverage would likely have slipped through the cracks entirely, missing not just me but an entire audience: young adults who rely on social media for information about current events.

I don’t think it will surprise anyone when I say that — besides a handful of

miscellaneous news articles — social media has been my most fruitful source of information regarding the strike. This is largely attributed to the fact that content creators who would typically be producing show and movie-related content — Emily Uribe, Cinema Nation, 365 Binge and many others — have pivoted to educating their viewers about SAG-AFTRA, WGA and the importance of unionization. Their knowledge has trickled down, reaching far corners of apps like TikTok and Instagram and encouraging even smaller creators to take a step back from content creation in order to show their support for the strike.

In this way, creators have become trailblazers in union education, using the platforms they’ve been gifted to spread awareness about an important issue to an audience that may have otherwise remained ignorant.

Current data speaks volumes about this phenomenon.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Associated Press and The American Press Institute, over 70% of respondents aged 16-40 — namely, Millennials and Gen Zers — cite social media as their dominant source of news. The survey poked holes in the idea that young people are “disinterested” in current events, confirming that they are very much engaged, just through a different channel.

Pertaining to the SAG-AFTRA strike, without social media and the impressive solidarity of its leading content creators, many users may have remained uneducated about when, how and why actors and writers were striking in the first place.

Their voices have been crucial to the strike’s ongoing success and must be acknowledged as such.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

CECILIA DORE Daily Arts Writer

Clothing can be a special form of expression, a window into the bits of our personality that we share with others.

Every day, I walk past hundreds of University of Michigan students, each displaying a style that tells a unique story.

The eclectic mix of styles on campus is an exciting trove of just-under-the-surface details of students’ lives, providing a window into what fashion means to us.

In a series of interviews with U-M students, The Michigan Daily delved deeper into their looks: what they wear, the stories behind what they wear and what their styles mean to them.

Some interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Music, Theatre & Dance junior Leo Kupferberg sported cuffed, straight-leg jeans paired with a sweater vest, a tote bag and a bandana. The natural materials and muted tones of his clothing combined in a relaxed, effortless style rooted in color and comfort.

The Michigan Daily: How would you describe your personal style?

Leo Kupferberg: The number one thing I always think about is color; that is always what I dress from.

And so I go through phases of wearing a lot of red, a lot of blues, a lot of greens. But I’m always likely to be in one color field head to toe. And within that, I just like comfy textures: you know, jeans, work pants, sweaters, turtlenecks. I don’t think my style is super specific or pinpoint-able, it’s more like thrift chic. I shop vintage a lot, almost exclusively, or I steal from my grandmother. So it’s whatever is comfy, cute and colorful.

TMD: What is a unique element that you’ve

incorporated into your style — a personal fashion trend of yours?

LK: I wear a lot of bandanas, especially tied around my neck or sometimes in my pants pockets. One, I just like how they look, but also for me, it’s a very Queer and especially gay male thing to wear bandanas because of the legacy of hanky code. Back in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, Queer people — especially gay men — would use different color bandanas to sort of signal to each other what they were looking for in a partner or what they were into. Even if I don’t use it like that — I’m not trying to signal anything that specific with it — it definitely makes me feel connected to my community. Especially with my outfit today, where I play more with gender. *** Similarly, LSA freshman Chloe Brookes focuses on color and draws inspiration from everyday life. We saw her in a light blue sweater with green details which complemented the bright shade of her seafoam green pants, demonstrating her uncanny ability to gracefully bring colors together.

TMD: How would you describe your personal style?

Chloe Brookes: I feel like I started looking for a personal style when I looked in the mirror and started getting bored. From there I went on a little journey — tried a lot of things that did not work — and I landed on really enjoying monochrome and always tying an outfit together with a color, even a specific shade.

When it comes to influences, I really enjoy people-watching, so I’ll be outside and I’ll look at people who go by and make a mental note of something I think looks cool or something fun they did with their outfit.

So it doesn’t really come from one person or somebody in the industry.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

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MiC

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 — 7

Romance and other myths

Design by Sara Lin

SARA LIN

MiC Columnist

Love is not real. I mean, it is real to a certain extent, but unfortunately not to the extent many of us are made to believe. In the brain, neuroscientists conclude that “love” is just an excess of dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. Love, as we know it, is a fantasy — a perfect mix of chemicals that release into your brain and make you feel like a bitch.

These sentiments may sound like the words of someone who has been scorned in the pursuit of love, but I would argue that this is not the case.

In fact, I am a huge romantic. Some of my favorite movies pertain to the love-defeats-all concept of romance, and music is never as tear-jerking as when it’s from someone deep in the throes of heartbreak. However, my consumption and appreciation of the romance genre is as fantastical as my consumption of the sciencefiction genre. Both genres often have elements that tie into reality and reveal some universal human truths, but ultimately produce a fantasy that cannot be recreated in the real world. The main difference between these two genres is that most people understand that they will never be able to time-travel or fight an alien in space, but there are many who still believe that one day they will look across a room, lock eyes with their soulmate and ride off into the sunset on a white stallion in each other’s arms.

I believe that the popularity of this fantastical concept of romance is not a reflection of genuine human nature or desire. I would argue that the modern conception of love is actually the product of centuries of industrialization and globalization.

“Love” and “romance” have been

commodified and capitalized, arguably, since the rise of the industrial revolution. Modern love is exactly that: modern. Romance has evolved past its humble beginnings in stolen glances and handwritten love letters and grown into a starryeyed monster that wreaks havoc on all of us. At some point it was realized that romance did not just consist of silly legends and tragic endings, it also held the potential for becoming one of the biggest moneymaking scams of all time. This can be seen in through historical developments such as the rise in popularity of Valentine’s Day and diamond engagement rings, which both inspired people to express their love through material possessions.

Valentine’s Day became popular in England in the early 19th century and eventually spread to the United States, but it did not become a commercial holiday in the U.S. until a woman named Esther Howland began mass producing Valentine’s Day cards in 1848. Previously, the majority of Valentine’s Day cards were handmade, but shortly after Esther’s innovation, buying premade Valentine’s Day cards became commonplace.

She reportedly earned today’s equivalent of $3 million a year from her ingenious idea while also setting the foundation for what would become a $26 billion industry.

The practice of buying diamond engagement rings can be attributed to a single marketing campaign by De Beers beginning in 1946. As a part of this campaign, De Beers, formerly known as De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd, sent lecturers to visit high schools across the country to convince young girls that diamonds were the ultimate symbol of love.

Their campaign aimed to convince young men and women alike that

a man’s love could be measured by the size of the diamond he bought.

They were largely successful, transforming a $23 million industry into a $2 billion industry within 40 years. Have you ever heard the slogan “A diamond is forever”? The cultural impact of their campaign can be measured through the popularity of their slogan alone. They sold the idea that love and diamonds were inherently intertwined, and the entire country bought it. Today, the diamond industry is worth more than $23 billion.

The immense financial success of both Valentine’s Day and the diamond industry demonstrate how love has been shaped and molded into a profitable venture, where the exchange of material possessions becomes intertwined with the expression of affection and devotion.

This transformation underscores the extent to which modern conceptions of love have evolved to exploit emotional dimensions for commercial profit. Over the last few centuries, companies have relentlessly leveraged and capitalized on what they deemed the most profitable human emotion — love.

Just look at romance novels: Romance is the highest earning book genre, generating more than $1.4 billion in revenue a year.

Unsurprisingly, women are the biggest consumers of the romance genre by a wide margin (and I am certainly no exception; just check my letterboxd). The antecedents of the modern Western romance novel can be traced back to an English novel published in 1740, “Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded”. If you are curious about the contents of the so-called first romance novel, it centers around a non-consensual relationship between a 15-year-old servant and

her late mistress’s son. Not very romantic, right? Yet somehow in the 200-something years since, romance has transformed into sunset proposals, rose bouquets and happy endings. The fact that it also generates billions of dollars through a multitude of industries is no coincidence.

What about marriage? What is better proof that love exists than the ancient tradition of ceremoniously binding two people in union? Well, unfortunately, marriage was also not traditionally a romantic affair.

Throughout history, the purpose of the majority of marriages has been to form an alliance between families and legitimize offspring, and in many parts of the world it still is. Love-based marriages are a relatively new Western norm that didn’t emerge until the 18th century.

Love and marriage are often seen as the great equalizer: anyone can fall in love and get married, and that’s why it’s so great! Except this isn’t true. In past and recent history, legal marriage has been a heavily politicized engagement. It has historically been an institution that was not available to everyone.

Interracial marriage was not made legal until 1967 in the United States, and same-sex marriage was not legal in all 50 states until 2015. Even now, marriage is used as a political tactic for the government to deflect its responsibilities to address dire issues. For example, campaigns like the Healthy Marriage Initiative aim to convince low-income families that marriage can help them escape poverty. Marriage has been used to promote political agendas that further disenfranchise marginalized groups and as a scapegoat solution to issues that are deeply rooted in the defective structure of our country’s institutions.

“Love, Inc.,” by Laurie Essig, a sociologist and professor at Middlebury College, explores these ideas extensively. Essig argues that modern love was conceived in the 19th century alongside the beginnings of capitalism. Essig captures this topic especially well in her book when she writes, “If religion was the premodern opiate of the masses, then romance was modernity’s far more addictive heroin.”

Now, you may be thinking, there are pre-modern examples of love: Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guinevere, Antony and Cleopatra.

But these tales of love all end tragically, which does not coincide with how we understand love today.

Pre-modern love stories often did not have happy endings; the classic theme of doomed lovers was very popular in the middle ages. While not all pre-modern love stories ended tragically, the prevalence of death and tragedy in literature and folklore from these eras reflect how love was viewed at the time.

The reason for this was because storytellers were trying to convey a perfect love for readers. However, it was obvious that love was not perfect. Love ended, either through betrayal or dissipation, so the only perfect love was one that ended with death. Only then would there be no opportunity for complications or imperfections between lovers.

Composed in the 18th century, “The Story of the Stone” is one of the most well-known texts in all of Chinese literature. A central theme to the story is the epic romance between the main characters, Baoyu and Dai-yu. But their story is destined to end tragically from the start; Dai-yu sheds her final tear and passes away when Bao-yu is married off to someone else, and

Bao-yu nearly dies of grief until he decides to abandon his wife and become a monk. It may also be relevant to mention that there are many supernatural elements in this novel. Ironically, my parents tried to prevent me from reading “The Story of the Stone” out of fear that I would internalize the tragic themes of romance and become irreparably obsessed with a delusory notion of love. Unfortunately, their efforts were futile.

I developed my first crush before I fully developed my hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Apparently, I had quite the infatuation with a boy in my preschool class named Stone. I have no memory of this, but my parents tell me that I was headover-heels. My mother found this incredibly strange; at the ripe age of 3, her daughter was already boy crazy. I believe it was the effects of watching Disney princess movies for the first three years of my life.

The Disney classics, “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “The Little Mermaid,” were all movies I grew up on. However, these fairy tales were all adapted from much darker stories that were definitely not family friendly. The adaptation of these grim tales into palatable stories for children with happily-ever-after endings again is another example of fairytale romance being used for profit. These movies inspired me to become obsessed with romance and finding my knight in shining armor.

While this may have not been the intent of the filmmakers (the intent was money), it is an undeniable side effect of showing little girls endless stories of princes that save the humble girls from their mundane existences.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Love Language ISABELLE FERNANDES MiC Columnist

My love language has always been words By that, I don’t mean I constantly tell you how much I love you.

(I should, I don’t.)

What I mean by that is I spend hours handpicking letter after letter leaving that simple kind attached to its stem, Instead grasping by the roots your tender soul that never fails to warm mine tangled in the undergrowth.

At times my heart feels so full it could burst.

I am joy incarnate, eager to open my mouth, set free the buds on the tip of my tongue.

But this f lowery language only gets caught in my throat, the thorns dragging along my esophagus, scraping me bare from the inside out and I am left choking on fragments I try endlessly to piece together

but which only leave me breathless.

Other times I simply don’t have the words.

Those days are the hardest When I want to wrap you in language, Tell you I understand, say I’m sorry in every dialect I know.

Instead I offer you my hand and we sit Not a word between us.

One day I will write you sunset poetry, Lines to read when the light is fading Reminders that another thinks of you in the dark.

The words may be an imperfect bouquet, A brambled mix of chrysanthemums and clover but I pray you notice the fallen petals on the ground– May you follow the path they trace home to me.

Design by Sara Fang

Opinion

8 — Wednesday, October 25, 2023

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Fixing the humanitarian and security crisis at the border requires swift action

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NIKHIL SHARMA Opinion Columnist

W

ith billions of dollars worth of drugs smuggled into the country each year and millions of individuals illegally entering the U.S. in search of opportunity, America’s southern border is more than just a line on a map. A political f lashpoint for decades, the consequences of poor border management have been severe. Currently, there are estimated to be more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, constituting approximately 3% of the nation’s population.

Despite more than 2.2 million apprehensions and expulsions

by U.S. Border Patrol in 2022, the total number of illegal migrants crossing the border continues to climb, posing a security and humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

Since state and local governments’ resources are already constrained by recent hardship in their communities, trying to support illegal immigrants through social safety net programs while also combating the devastating rise in illicit opiates transported from Mexico has become a challenge. Though “sanctuary cities” such as San Francisco are safe zones for those fearful of deportation, these cities provide little assistance in helping migrants find their footing economically.

Most migrants who are apprehended while crossing the border are compelled to live on the fringes of society, often unable to find work due to their immigration status and are typically subjected to months-long waits for asylum hearings in backlogged immigration courts.

Though both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have made solving this crisis a priority of their administrations, little long-term reform has actually been achieved. In order to attain meaningful progress that lowers the strain of illegal immigration on states and encourages a healthy f low of legal immigration, both parties must compromise on measures that end catchand-release practices, clarify deportation policies and expand work visas and legal asylum applications.

One of the most actionable changes that could immediately be made to

immigration guidelines is the termination of catch-andrelease policies, which allow illegal crossers to be released into the U.S. pending a trial date. With immigration courts inundated with cases, many of these individuals go on to live in the country for months after crossing, often not responding to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers contacting them to resolve their immigration status. These policies were temporarily curbed by the enactment of Title 42, a 1944 public health law re-enforced as a response to COVID-19, which allowed the White House to direct border agents to turn away migrants on the basis of public health. While this brief ly alleviated the strain on border agents and courts, the expiration of the order has evidenced the need for more permanent solutions.

Currently, the requirements to qualify for catch-andrelease as an asylum seeker are quite loose. Excluding children traveling alone or families crossing together, who are justifiably granted release, solo border crossers are currently allowed into the U.S. as long as they’ve applied online for asylum status before crossing the border. This lax requirement may ultimately do more harm than good, limiting the spots available for those actually in need of asylum and decreasing the processing time of other cases. A better solution would be to drastically expand the available spots for those legally seeking asylum and to turn away solo crossers without an approved application.

Additionally, prohibiting anyone caught and denied asylum from applying again for a U.S. visa would encourage individuals to go through the standard application process rather than illicitly entering the country.

While this framework would draw a hard line going forward on the application process for asylum seekers, it’s also important to exercise compassion when dealing with those who’ve already crossed and built lives in the United States under current immigration statutes.

Former President Barack Obama took a major step toward solving the illegal immigrant humanitarian crisis by creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed

individuals who crossed the border as children to obtain American citizenship as adults. Though he has been unsuccessful in beating court cases against his legislation, Biden’s bold proposal to codify DACA as a permanent statute exemplifies the types of actions necessary to solve the immigration humanitarian crisis.

Unfortunately, Biden seems unlikely to push any laws that offer DACA protection to future applicants past a conservative Supreme Court, but he can still work to institute stopgap measures that offer student and work visas to prospective DREAMers, which could present an opportunity for future citizenship.

In addition to encouraging legal immigration through the expansion of asylum spots for those who apply, the U.S. should look to attract more immigrant talent through work visas such as H-1B and H-2A. These visa programs have been incredibly successful in bringing individuals to the United States who can immediately contribute to the labor force and support domestic businesses. With H-1B bringing immigrants with professional or academic degrees who support the domestic tech industry, and H-2A offering temporary visas for the agricultural workers who make up a critical component of the labor force on farms nationwide, these programs are clearly worth expanding.

By boosting existing programs and creating similar ones for other industries, we can provide opportunities to people from a wide range of nations while simultaneously increasing our labor force in major industries.

After decades of dispute on border policies, lawmakers must work to find compromise that enforces border security while strongly encouraging legal immigration. By expanding work visa programs and offering those already in the U.S. pathways to citizenship while simultaneously emphasizing the nation’s unwillingness to accept future illegal immigrants, we can work toward solving the immigration crisis. Though many root causes of the migrant crisis are challenging to address, there are several actionable, common sense steps we can take toward progress.

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Op-Ed: As Jews, we must stand against genocide JARED ENO, AMIR FLEISCHMANN, COLIN GARON, ROSA GLAESSNER NOVAK, MAX LAHN, MICHAEL MUELLER, LUCY PETERSON, EKATERINA SHIPYATSKY, JEFF HOROWITZ AND ANNABEL BEAN

Jewish students at the University of Michigan

Content warning: mentions of violence. he events of the past week in Palestine have been horrifying. Israel has brought its full force to bear on the millions of people it has trapped within the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Israeli politicians have, either explicitly or implicitly, declared their intent to commit ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.

As Jews, in whose names genocide is purportedly being committed, we emphatically oppose Zionism.

This opposition means full support for Palestinians’ right to selfdetermination and resistance, the belief in the legitimacy of Palestinians’ claim to their land and unequivocal rejection of Israel’s illegitimate “right to defend itself,” which is used to justify its atrocities.

Alongside the Israeli government’s horrific slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza this past week, the major powers of the West have been engaging in an all-out information war, spreading unsubstantiated claims and rhetorically dehumanizing Palestinians to provide cover for their genocide.

One of the key features of this information war is the weaponization of anti-racism rhetoric against Palestinians and their supporters. Those standing in solidarity with Palestine and against Israeli colonization of their land have long been incorrectly labeled antisemitic. Arab and Muslim students supporting Palestine face severe harassment

T

— and are consequently pushed toward speaking out anonymously — while Jews are labeled “traitors” or “kapos.” In our time at the University of Michigan, some of us have received hate mail, gotten doxxed and even been threatened with termination from our positions at the University for speaking out in support of Palestine.

The “Palestine exception to free speech” is a welldocumented phenomenon that the University is hardly immune to. The most glaring example of this on our campus was the University punishing a professor for denying a letter of recommendation to a student seeking to study at an Israeli institution, in accordance with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. Now more than ever, it is crucial that we reject these lies and articulate the truth: Opposition to Israeli apartheid is not antisemitic, but is a stance for justice and self-determination of an oppressed people.

Apartheid does not make anyone safer, and a growing number of Jews in the diaspora are starting to recognize that. Though Zionism is often conf lated with Judaism, support for Zionism is not a universal Jewish public opinion. A quarter of American Jews correctly recognize Israel for the apartheid state it is. We outright reject the idea that Palestinians and their supporters need to be repressed or condemned in order for Jewish people to be safe. Zionism, an ideology that dehumanizes Palestinians, harms Jews by implicating us in imperialism and engendering violence in the Middle East.

Only ending the occupation and instituting equal rights and participation for all will make people safe.

We also reject the idea that Jews should be privileged over non-Jews — the underlying assumption of the Zionist

project. This racist logic is evident in all aspects of the illegitimate state of Israel: its formation through settlercolonial theft of Palestinian land in the Nakba, its Jewish supremacist character apparent in its self-definition and its frequent terrorism against the Palestinian population. We have similarly seen the logic of Zionism this past week in the prioritization of Jewish feelings over the voices and lives of Palestinians experiencing genocide, exemplified by bans against protests in solidarity with Palestine.

We must be absolutely clear: The focus of Jews, as well as all people of conscience, must be on condemning Israel’s ongoing crimes and standing with the Palestinian liberation movement in taking action. At the University of Michigan, we must uplift the initiatives of SAFE and other groups, such as condemning University President Santa Ono’s unacceptable statements, holding solidarity actions and calling for divestment from corporations that profit from or sustain Israeli apartheid.

From our perspective, Zionism is incompatible with Judaism.

To us, Judaism is rooted in the experience of the diaspora, in being a minority where we live.

When faced with the question of what makes someone Jewish, the eminent Polish historian Isaac Deutscher responded as such: “Religion? I am an atheist. Jewish nationalism?

I am an internationalist. In neither sense am I therefore a Jew. I am, however, a Jew by force of my unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and exterminated.”

It is the Palestinian people who are being persecuted and exterminated, and it should be clear to anyone with whom Deutscher’s words resonate that Judaism demands our unconditional solidarity with them.

Housing shortages on the rise for everyone but President Ono ELIZA PHARES Opinion Columnist

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s a student at the University of Michigan, I’ve had to accept the egregious prices of housing that come with living in Ann Arbor. I find myself lucky to be living in a house with my own room as other students are living in lounges, and even the University admits that we’ve far outpaced our housing capacity. In the midst of this housing shortage, it’s hard to look at the $15 million the Board of Regents allocated for University President Santa Ono’s presidential house renovation and find the practicality in it. While construction on the new Elbel Field housing project won’t be finished until 2026, housing for the University’s president, a single man and his wife, receives a massive upgrade in record time.

The new renovation features a fully redone patio and garden area, a chic maize and blue fireplace, and completely renovated f loors and furniture, along with many other aesthetic changes to make the house look more modern. Though the house is now equipped with muchneeded accessibility upgrades and sustainability features, such as donated solar panels, it still seems like the surface renovations were excessive.

Constructed in 1840, the house has lost the old charm it once had. Old f loors are hidden by hardwood, original windowed arches and pane windows replaced. Without prior knowledge, it’s hard to tell that this is the oldest building on campus, as it looks more modern than many other buildings.

The President’s House’s

renovations came out to a cool $11.5 million, which the University continually praised as being under budget. It is a tradition that incoming U-M presidents renovate the house to their liking. Yet past presidents have spent closer to $1 million to $2 million, with former President Mark Schlissel’s renovations costing the University $1.7 million and former President Mary Sue Coleman’s renovations costing a low $1.3 million at the height of the great recession.

Adjusted for inf lation, these amounts are still significantly less than the amount this year’s renovations were. The University stated that this budget was due to structure maintenance issues, yet the modern, high-tech renovations say otherwise.

Spending $11.5 million on a space that most students don’t get the opportunity to visit, other than for a superficial ice cream open house every year, can seem a bit outrageous.

Yet, the University says this house space is designed to host presidential parties and entertain distinguished guests. But is it necessary to attract top talent and donations to the University?

It’s hard to ignore the historical implications of the President’s House, hosting people like the Dalai Lama and former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, but this concept of entertainment within university housing has become nearly obsolete.

Presidential houses within colleges and universities are not a concept unique to the University of Michigan, but there has been a gradual shift away from them. Universities like Wright State University, the University of Cincinnati and Central State University have all shifted away from

presidential houses, instead offering housing stipends and selling previous presidential homes.

Additionally, many elite colleges and universities have transformed their presidential houses into public spaces or have never had a presidential house at all.

The University of California, Berkeley’s presidential house was kept by the University but transformed into a public space in 2009. The University of Michigan shouldn’t have to worry about falling behind just because our president doesn’t have his own living quarters in the center of campus. In looking at the University’s fiscal year 2023 budget, donors gave $643 million to the University in private gifts.

The cost of the President’s House renovations was covered by U-M endowments, primarily from the earnings of the University’s investments.

If the goal of the presidential house is to solicit more money from donors, it doesn’t seem totally necessary to have this space.

In deciding how to spend $11.5 million, the University and the Board of Regents should not have spent it all on renovating a house for Ono. By doing so they chose to allocate U-M profits to a project that benefits only one man and create a space that most students will never set foot in. Perhaps they could have followed in the direction of other universities by making the President’s House a space for students and faculty alike. Or perhaps they could have focused the funds on expediting new residence halls or renovating deteriorating ones. But this allocation of money to benefit a man who is making $975,000 a year was the wrong choice.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Opinion

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 — 9

No, she’s not a girlboss, she’s in Congress

Design by Natasha Eliya

LINDSEY SPENCER

Deputy Editorial Page Editor

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hen Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, she was hailed as a “feminist icon.” After news broke of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s, D-Calif., death this past month, reports recalled the “glass ceilings” that she broke while in office. As U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took up the Speaker’s gavel as the first woman to do so, she called her ascension a “historic moment for the women of America.”

These three women share their historic political status and sex, but they also share the same title: girlboss.

Originally coined by businesswoman Sophia Amoruso, to be a “girlboss” is to be a woman with ambition, to have the drive to succeed despite the odds.

The term is thrown around pretty lackadaisically, used to describe any woman who exists and achieves in a male-dominated space. In this way, it’s lost its original meaning, devolving into a sort of insult to women who hold undesirable positions of authority and are “too much to handle.” However, this change isn’t entirely negative — sure, it may seem counterintuitive to its initial definition, but the word “girlboss” was nowhere near as socially progressive as people made it out to be.

America has a problem with the “celebrification” of politicians. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has Instagram fan pages, news sites keep track of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s, I-Ariz., high heel choices and U.S. Rep. Katie Porter’s, D-Calif., famous whiteboard has its own X account. The American people don’t know when to stop their incessant worship of far-off entities, creating a landscape wherein any interesting individual is a household name and icon.

I’m not immune to this: I own a mug with former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s, D-Texas, likeness on it and have livetweeted presidential debates like they’re an episode of reality television. But while this all seems like fun and games in the age of social media and divisive politics, this reverence for politicians has its downsides.

I’m not saying that you can’t “like” politicians. It’s perfectly normal to feel content with their presence and political performance, but this tendency to extend this like into worship is a dangerous road. The consideration of any powerful

woman to be a hero to young girls and women everywhere is a falsified, liberal account of what feminism is, and actually threatens the future of the movement.

Take, for example, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and current presidential candidate. Haley has frequently touted her status as a woman in maledominated spaces. After her recent debate performances, news outlets hailed her as the “winner,” claiming that her identity as a woman in the Republican Party could make even Democrats vote for her. But, these same reports gloss over the ways that her claims hurt people: She believes that transgender kids are responsible for the increase in teenage suicide, promised to send special ops to Mexico and holds a antiabortion perspective that is opposite to the pursuance of feminism. Despite these hawkishly conservative sentiments, Haley’s mere status as a woman is enough to garner her tons of political support and to mask these degrading policies.

The same can be said of the aforementioned trio of girlbosses. The “Notorious RBG” voted with the majority in Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, a 2005 case that infringed upon the sovereignty of the Oneida people and their land in New York. Along with this, her failure to retire from the Court is a major reason why the right to safe and accessible abortions was taken from millions of American women.

Feinstein once argued climate politics with school children and devolved into a staunch moderate over her tenure, and Pelosi failed to use her Speakership effectively, slowing down former President Donald Trump’s impeachment and scrapping a majority of the progressive tenets of the Build Back Better Act. She even publicly demeaned members of “The Squad,” a left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party that aimed toward achieving equitybased policies, especially in the realm of gender. In a time of great climate fear, shaky women’s rights and the rising cost of living, such halfhearted efforts by supposedly dynamic female officials challenge the view that they are “bosses” of politics.

This is all to say that your household girlboss names, no matter how widely championed they are, are not who you believe them to be. You can’t put aside the devastating policies women such as Vice President

Kamala Harris once endorsed because of their sex and political prowess.

To advocate for a female president is a noble effort that I have no hesitation in endorsing, but just saying it for the sake of progress is counterproductive. You cannot effectively make change in the sphere of gender equality by advocating for any remotely inf luential woman to be elected to higher political office — being a woman is not reason enough to trust they will promote women’s equality.

No female politician can accurately represent the diverse voices of the 168 million American women. Basing an official’s reputability and capability on a singular facet of their identity is a closeminded way of looking at politics — identity politics accomplishes little in the larger scheme of things.

Haphazardly claiming that we can reverse centuries of political disenfranchisement by electing a “Madam President” does a disservice to the service done by countless female activists of the past. It just isn’t that easy to reverse gender discrimination: Even with a historic number of women in Congress, there is still a gender wage gap, no national policy for maternity leave and no nationwide protection of abortion rights.

I get the sentiment behind the girlboss movement: It feels good to see women in power and “stick it to the man” (literally and figuratively).

But, this movement is a misguided one and inappropriately advocates for candidates to take political office based on their person rather than their politics. Expressing support for female politicians largely because of their sex sends a bad message to young girls, instilling in them that it is not their minds or opinions that matter, but what differentiates them from their male counterparts.

Representation for the sake of representation is a failed movement toward gender equality, and the first step toward remedying its effects is to end this worship of female politicians.

Recognize that it’s okay to criticize them and that you don’t have to enthusiastically back every female candidate for public office. Do your research and move toward an attitude that takes account of the promises that officials make, not the identities that they represent. Feminism in politics is a necessary step toward progress, but only if we do it right.

Opinion

10 — Wednesday, October 25, 2023

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Failing focus CLAUDIA FLYNN Opinion Columnist

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few weeks ago, I deleted TikTok. I didn’t make this choice because I was worried about the app stealing my data or how much time I was spending on it (although it was a lot). Instead, I realized that my ability to focus on things for more than a minute or two had been impaired, and I was finding it difficult to sit and do assignments, listen to professors and engage in longer conversations.

The average TikTok video is 32.4 seconds and the average TikTok user scrolls the app for 90 minutes a day, which means that they are watching 180 videos a day and upwards of 1,260 videos a week. This estimate is on the conservative side, assuming that people are watching videos for the whole duration.

This realization led me to ref lect on all the other things I did in my life that took about this much time. The average song released in 2020 was three minutes and 17 seconds long, and the average song length has been decreasing for two decades. Listening to music follows the same format of TikTok, with constantly switching entertainment.

Opening Snapchat entails about two minutes or so of replying to some snaps and checking stories, then closing the app. Reading a text or email breaks us away from what we are doing, like listening to someone or reading or writing something important. As dining in restaurants is a much longer affair, it has been overtaken in favor of takeout and fast food.

Watching television, something that used to be the ultimate attention drain, now requires a second task like phone usage for 79% of young adults.

Attention spans are becoming shorter, and with that comes a shift towards shorter tasks and more frequent distractions.

Generation Z is the most susceptible group to the epidemic of shortening attention spans, primarily due to social media platforms.

While the shortened duration of media forms has led to worse attention spans, media is also adapting to be shorter to

Design by Grace Filbin

adjust to the worse spans, thus continuing the cycle.

Neurologically, when we constantly engage with this form of media, two things can happen. First, when we try to multitask by interacting with many types of media at once, our brain can experience cognitive overload, which is when we try to process too

distracted was about two and half minutes. In 2012, it was down to 75 seconds. In 2023, that number had decreased to 45 seconds, less than one-third of what it was in 2004. We can see that excessive TikTok users are more susceptible to distractions and distracting thoughts, a harmful trait in academic and professional

constant stream of notifications and ads. Although options such as “Do Not Disturb” exist, these distractions are designed to be hard to escape.

There are some things that we can do at the individual level.

Namely, we can reintroduce activities with longer time commitments back into our lives. For example, people read

even against our instincts.

Although activities such as walking, reading or switching to classical music may not seem like disciplined actions in the general sense of the word, pushing ourselves to practice new and unfamiliar things can incite neuroplastic change, which physically alters our brain in a positive way.

In 2004, the average time a person focused on a screen without getting distracted was about two and half minutes.

In 2012, it was down to 75 seconds.

In 2023, that number had decreased to 45 seconds, less than one-third of what it was in 2004. much information, resulting in inability to process any of it. Second, social media algorithms use a dopamine feedback loop to take advantage of the way the dopamine center functions in your brain, keeping you “addicted” to the cycle of scrolling through media.

A 10-year study ref lects the effect this has on us and on our brains. In 2004, the average time a person focused on a screen without getting

environments.

So what can be done about the decline in focus? Simply blaming the younger generation is ineffective. Modern society has been designed around ever developing technology. Eightyfive percent of adults own a smartphone. Close to 80% of them also own a desktop or a laptop. Owning these devices has become a necessity in society, yet this ownership makes us susceptible to a

significantly fewer books than they used to, yet recreational reading can improve not only attention spans, but memory and concentration as well.

When we study, listening to instrumental and consistent music can not only improve our brain power but our mental health, too.

Discipline is often discussed in the context of academia or work, but it can also be applied to prioritizing ourselves,

Practices such as consistent exercise and walking, playing instruments, finding creative outlets, meditation and more have been commonly noted as benefits for one’s mental health. Now, these practices need to be discussed as ways to gain back our attention, as inability to focus commonly correlates with anxiety rates.

It is important to acknowledge that Gen Z is aware of the way shortening

attention spans are affecting us.

Gen Z reports feeling burnout and stress at work more than any other generation. With decreased motivation to study comes increased stress and correlated mental issues.

Yet, focus is something that cannot just be turned on, and with increasing barriers to strong focus comes greater repercussions.

McKinsey researchers have shown, however, that Gen Z has made an effort to reclaim some of these healthier habits.

Through the popular TikTok community called #Booktok, Gen Z has worked to revive reading, with young adult fiction book sales increasing by 30.7% in the U.S. in the past year. Podcast listens, another great outlet for sustained focus, grew by 62% this past year. In the face of distractions in society, younger generations are doing their best to create communities around these beneficial habits.

So, if technology is unavoidable and social media is here to stay, there must be some changes made at the institutional level as well.

The norm of 90-minute to three-hour lectures needs to be replaced with shorter, more frequent classes, which would prevent students from becoming as unfocused as they do in longer lectures. Breaks throughout the work day, as well as shorter work days and weeks, have been proven to increase productivity, yet companies have been skeptical to institute this practice.

Changes to support happier students and workers are not only ethically important, but also important to the success of institutions.

The epidemic of shortened attention spans is one that is widely recognized yet rarely addressed. Society is designed in such a way that continues to perpetuate this issue, meaning that the effects are hard to escape. Individuals, especially young adults growing up in this society, need to practice activities that promote focus and keep them engaged for longer periods of time, while institutions have to adapt to this new norm and accommodate shorter attention spans to increase their own productivity.

The deep waters of high-end bottle trends SARAH ZHANG Opinion Columnist

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fter purchasing a Hydro Flask five years ago, I have solely used my 40-ounce lilac bottle since. As someone who drinks hot water, this bottle is critical to my lifestyle. Not only does it help me avoid cold water fountains across campus, it is a panacea for my stomach sensitivity.

Recently, however, I bought a generic stainless steel bottle from Amazon and found, to my surprise, that it accomplished the same task as a Hydro Flask at a significantly lower cost.

Spending only $12, I wonder why I gravitate toward Hydro Flasks, Stanley Tumblers and Owalas instead of their cheaper counterparts.

The rise of Hydro Flasks and similar metal water bottles can be traced to increasing awareness of different social issues. Given increasing disdain for single-use plastics and the popularity of self-care, the reusable water bottle industry has ballooned to $1.37 billion in the United States. Celebrities like Julia Roberts with the S’well bottle and Julianne Hough with Hydro Flasks promoted high-end metal water bottles as the response to these cultural shifts and popularized them as an accessory instead of an essential.

These celebrities foreshadowed the rise of social media’s power to influence user actions. Born out of rather harmless online interactions, these fads can sometimes snowball into global movements. Sure, trends like adding stickers to bottles as a form of self-expression and

the “emotional support” bottle might be harmless, but other trends are less innocuous.

For one, the “VSCO girl” trend exemplified economic exclusion. At $50 per bottle, the Hydro Flask was a core tenet of this aesthetic along with a Fjällräven backpack, Brandy Melville crop tops and Birkenstocks.

Trends like “VSCO girl” are rooted in affluence and promote our obsession with content around materialism and opulence, excluding those who lack the means to participate and reinforcing our association between a successful influencer and wealth.

This concept of social inequity on social media extends beyond Gen Z. For example, Stanley Tumblers were promoted by a partnership between the company and The Buy Guide, a blog and Instagram account.

These two parties intentionally marketed the product to specific demographics: millennials and mothers. Their marketing contributed to the increased trust that viewers now place in “mom-fluencers,” who contribute significantly to a herd mentality within certain strata of social media. While these influencers strive to promote the idea of “women selling to women,” their demographics beg the question of which women can sell to others.

In fact, the “mom-fluencer” community aestheticizes the brand of motherhood from white, cisgender, thin and straight women.

The narrow audiences of high-end water bottle trends raise questions about who can participate and influence on social media platforms.

Beyond bottles, trends like the

“vanilla girl” or “stay-at-home girlfriend” perpetuate the idealization of wealthy white women. These expectations perpetuate the exclusion of less wealthy influencers and women of Color on digital media platforms and at the corporate level. In fact, Instagram users have exposed many brands for the lack of racial diversity in their posts and brand trips, as well as in influencer agencies.

These controversies challenge why we participate in trends, particularly with water bottles. While the practicality and quality of these products encourage us to purchase them, influencers and peer pressure ultimately motivate us to select the Hydro Flask over the generic bottle.

Each view, like and credit card swipe is an implicit acceptance that whiteness and affluence are requisites to popularity on social media platforms and membership in the majority culture. Despite the temporary hype of any single bottle, themes of socioeconomic inequity and narrow expectations for an influencer’s demographics underlie each new product.

The solution is not to stop purchasing these bottles.

Rather, we must implement a twofold strategy. First, we should push companies to support creators of Color.

In fact, after Black creators highlighted problems on TikTok, the company diversified users’ For You pages and invited more Black advisers to its Content Advisory Council.

While companies can take more action to promote diversity, positive change also stems from us. Therefore, the second part of the solution is individual: practicing mindfulness while

mindlessly scrolling. We can find the original creator of a trend, consume content from a diverse range of influencers and ask ourselves whether we click “Check Out” for the product’s practicality or its popularity and the clout it may bring us.

Critical questions would divert

our viewership and money to creators who challenge existing socioeconomic inequities and construct a more inclusive online culture.

While I would not part ways with my Hydro Flask, the questions about why I own a certain product are more

important than what I own. To answer these critical questions, we must be aware of how we participate in different trends, delve into the socioeconomic inequities that underlie them and push social media companies and ourselves to promote inclusivity.

Design by Arunika Shee

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 — 11

FOOTBALL

SportsMonday: To accomplish its goals, Michigan needs to overcome more than just its opponents PAUL NASR

Managing Sports Editor

It really doesn’t matter what you think about the latest allegations against Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan football program.

You can equate them to something as silly as buying a recruit a cheeseburger, or as serious as damaging the integrity of the game by trying to gain an unfair competitive advantage. You can blast the NCAA for the complexity of its rules and the inconsistencies in how it enforces them, or you can — like in the Wolverines’ case — at least take them seriously enough to suspend the accused ‘sign stealer’ pending the result of the investigation.

Whether you think Michigan’s latest allegation is legitimate or not, or you think the NCAA and its rule enforcement are legitimate or not, is beside the point.

For all of its many shortcomings, the NCAA is the governing body of college sports and college football as you know it.

So no matter how serious or

silly anything the NCAA does, no matter how sensible or strange, the Wolverines have to deal with the effects of anything the organization throws its way. As investigations pile up, that’s the reality — if Michigan wants to reach its ceiling, it needs to overcome not only its opponents, but also lots of drama.

The Wolverines love to say they only need to focus on the games ahead of them. Fans love to ignore anything suggesting Michigan is at fault. Both can be valid thought processes, especially with actually evidence of wrongdoing yet to be made public. But after Michigan’s 49-0 clobbering of one of its biggest rivals in Michigan State, Harbaugh and players weren’t just talking about arguably their best game of the season. They were also talking about the latest allegations.

Overcoming their opponents and trying to rise above the drama was a postgame theme, and it’ll be a theme throughout the rest of the season. Because no matter where Michigan goes on the field, off-field baggage will

be checked with them as well.

“Yeah I think success does that. There’s people that don’t like to see people be successful,” Harbaugh said when asked if there is a target on his team’s back. “And there’s a target, yeah.

I think everybody’s pointed that out from the beginning of the

JEREMY WEINE/Daily

FOOTBALL

How Michigan earned its first defensive shutout of the season at Michigan State CONNOR EAREGOOD

Managing Sports Editor

EAST LANSING — Nearly a year after he was beaten in an infamous tunnel fight against Michigan State football players, Ja’Den McBurrows got his own kind of revenge on the field.

Jumping a route in the fourth quarter, McBurrows earned an interception that fired up his sideline. Not only did he make a play when given an opportunity, but he also all but sealed a shutout of the Spartans.

“All week he was talking about different things. He mentioned what happened last year a couple different times,” graduate cornerback Mike Sainristil said. “But coaches and us as players, we told him, man, when you get your chance just go out there and make plays. Don’t make no moment too big. I’m so happy with how he played.”

McBurrows’ play might have symbolized the wholescale domination of a 49-0 blanking on Michigan State’s own turf — the largest loss in Spartan Stadium’s history — it wasn’t exactly a big moment in a blowout. But even if the play might’ve come in garbage time, it sealed an accomplishment the Wolverines have been trying to capture all year.

Because three times this season, the starting defense delivered a clean sheet until the fourth quar-

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FOOTBALL

ter. It destroyed run plays, broke up passes and even added some scoring of its own on pick sixes. All those showed on Saturday, too, but this time, the Wolverines’ depth players finally kept it going to seal the deal.

“They understand where they’re supposed to be, their assignments, and they’re coached well,” Michigan State interim coach Harlon Barnett said. “And so when you’re a sound, disciplined defense that’s coached well and guys do what they’re coached to do, you’ve got a chance to be pretty good. And so that’s who they are, and that’s what they showed tonight.”

Particularly, the cornerback room shined. Graduate transfer Josh Wallace, sophomore Amorion Walker and Sainristil earned three out of five pass breakups, in addition to interceptions by Sainristil and McBurrows. As a whole, the defense let up just 133 passing yards, including just 42 in the first half.

But when the Spartans tried to run, they didn’t find much luck there either. On 28 rushing attempts, they netted 57 yards.

“They’re very strong, especially in their interior,” Michigan State running back Nathan Carter said.

“I think that their biggest strength as a team is their linemen. So it was a challenge for us to be able to get those holes and be able to push that pile and be able to go out and move the ball.”

While the Wolverines couldn’t ask for much better defensive play, the Spartans couldn’t ask for a worse nightmare. Their sideline energy disappeared in the third quarter after Sainristil ran back a 72-yard pick-six. Michigan’s defense played such a complete game that it outscored the Michigan State offense.

“They came out there trying to get a drive going and Mikey took that pick back for

season, but our guys are just very focused.”

There’s no doubt that Harbaugh’s team is focused. Junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy said they’re “keeping the main thing the main thing,” on multiple occasions after the game as questions about the allegations

a touchdown and you could see the light going out of their eyes,” junior linebacker Junior Colson said. “That’s when the game starts becoming fun, you know.

Seeing everything, all the juice they had and the whole sideline gets quiet. So that’s what we want all year, every year.”

After the pick, Michigan’s energy also changed. With a win all but sealed, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh started sending out backups midway through the third quarter. This left more than 20 minutes in which the Spartans might have slipped a score past the Wolverines’ defense. These were the minutes that proved costly in the previous spoiled shutout attempts.

Instead, the backups stood tall.

From a sack by junior edge rusher TJ Guy or McBurrows’ pick, the backups maintained the standard that their starters set.

There were other factors impacting this performance, too. As news broke of an NCAA investigation into alleged illegal sign stealing at Michigan, the Spartans had to change their play calling on the fly. Their backup quarterbacks delivered plays to the starter, which slowed down the offensive pace. While players and coaches played down the impact that had on their offensive execution, it isn’t an easy hurdle to clear.

Yet in a game chock full of so much meaning, Michigan found a way to hand in its most complete defensive performance of the season. From the inside out, the thorough play allowed the Wolverines to grasp that all elusive shutout — the first since last year’s 59-0 win over Connecticut.

Without stout plays like McBurrows’ interception, Michigan might not have sealed the deal.

continued to swirl. Graduate cornerback Mike Sainristil said that the “main thing” McCarthy was consistently referring to is their next opponent.

But no matter how focused on the main thing they are, other “things” are going to be included in the equation from here on out — regardless of whether or not the players pay any mind to them.

Harbaugh knows that well. He already spent the first three games of the season away from the team serving a universityimposed suspension in response to an NCAA investigation that is still yet to be resolved.

Connor Stalions knows it too.

The Michigan staffer is suspended right now for his involvement in the alleged sign stealing. So call the investigation an elaborate scheme by people envious of the Wolverines’ success, call it a non-story or call it legit, all of those could be true. But there’s no doubt in one thing you can call it — a trend.

The NCAA has made decrees, and Michigan has already started responding with some level of punishments. It’s happened

multiple times this year, so it’s not a one-off thing anymore. It’s part of this season’s story.

“You see it all over social media, people are throwing different stuff at us, the NCAA, whatever,” senior offensive lineman Zak Zinter said. “We’re just gonna keep our head down and keep working. I mean they can claim and do whatever, say whatever, but I mean we’re just gonna keep doing what we’re doing.”

Zinter’s desire to keep “doing what they’re doing” is exactly the point. Even if he and his teammates would like to focus on simply dominating opponents as they’re doing, the fact that he was answering a question about allegations against his program says that they’re doing something else, too.

And no matter what you think about this most recent allegation, football’s governing body is looking into the Wolverines.

So in one way or another, Michigan isn’t just squaring off with scheduled opponents. It’s also facing the allegations — and all the drama that comes with them.

FOOTBALL

Michigan’s third down conversions nullify Michigan State in rivalry win PAUL NASR

Managing Sports Editor

EAST LANSING — There’s a reason third downs are often referred to as ‘money downs’ for defenses.

Get the stop, get off the field and get the ball back to your offense — that’s what defenses are asked to do.

Getting stops on third downs is how they get it done.

Michigan State knows it well. Its defense entered Saturday’s rivalry tilt with the No. 2 Michigan football team ranked third in the country on third down defense, allowing conversions on just 23.6 percent of attempts. On money downs, they were getting paid.

But the Wolverines’ offense wasn’t worried about the Spartans’ bank statements. Third down after third down, junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy and company handled the must-get situations with clinical precision. By the time Michigan’s starting unit was pulled as the eventual 49-0 win got way out of reach in the third quarter, the Wolverines were a stellar 7-for-8 on third down conversions.

So on money downs, Michigan State’s defense went broke.

“Michigan State is one of the best teams in the country on third down, well documented,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said postgame. “We were picking up the third downs, third and longs. There weren’t a lot of third-and-ones, third-and-twos.

There were a lot of third-and-sevens, third-and-12s. And when we got in those positions, we were able to convert.”

Michigan’s first drive was littered with opportunities for the Spartans’ defense to cash in. The Wolverines were faced with a thirdand-14, a third-and-4 and a thirdand-goal. Be it a physical catch from senior tight end AJ Barner or finding senior receiver Roman Wilson

success on critical third downs.

The Wolverines were so unfazed that on their next drive, they plugged ahead on a 3rd-and-1 with ease. While the attempt kept bolstering their conversion rate, it came amid a blunder — the Spartan Stadium scoreboard mistook it as a second down attempt.

But the sideline chains don’t lie. Any time the marker flashed a three, it was go-time. The Spartans, from their defense to their scoreboard, just couldn’t get on the same page to stop it.

“I think it just starts with preparation throughout the week,” said sophomore tight end Colston Loveland, who converted on a third-and-10 late in the second quarter to put the starters at 7-for8 on the day. “Our coaches do a good job of preparing us and making sure we’re locked in all week, and it shows on gameday.”

Even when Michigan’s depth pieces missed on a handful of third downs in the second half to leave the Wolverines with a 7-for11 third-down clip, that was still solidly above their season average 55.4 percent. While Michigan State cooked up its best schemes for the all-important third down, Michigan nullified that and kept the ball moving.

In doing so, the Wolverines initiated a wire transfer on Saturday.

Money downs became all about their offense, and the Spartans defense was left in the red.

in space, when it came time to move the sticks, they kept moving — putting Michigan State’s defense in debt right away.

And the conversions just kept rolling in. Michigan converted on its lone third down opportunity on the next drive, and its lone third down on the drive after that. 3rdand-13, 3rd-and-8, 3rd-and-whatever — it really didn’t matter. Third downs weren’t the Wolverines’ last shot to stay on the field; they were their best shot.

“We want to convert, we want to get a first down and move the chains,” senior offensive lineman Zak Zinter said. “So if it’s 3rd-andshort, gotta get a little nasty down there, get low. If it’s long, they’re going to bring some game, so you gotta be ready to pass them off.”

Through those three touchdown drives across the first quarter and into the second, Michigan went 5-for-5 on third-down conversions.

The balance sheet was easy to tabulate — 100 percent success from the Wolverines, defying Michigan State’s previous clip with ease.

Ironically, Michigan’s first failed third down of the game — and only unsuccessful attempt with its starters playing — was on a 3rd-and-1 in the second quarter, but even the miss showed just how confident the Wolverines were feeling in those scenarios. Graduate offensive lineman Trevor Keegan was bopping his head to the song being played before the snap, and continued doing so even as he lined up and began to get into his stance.

Sure, the play didn’t work as McCarthy’s rushing attempt was gobbled up for no gain.

But Keegan’s chill demeanor made clear that Michigan wasn’t concerned about its opponent’s previous

JEREMY WEINE/Daily

Tight end tandem has a day in win over Michigan State

JOHN TONDORA

Daily Sports Editor

EAST LANSING — Two tight end terrors tore up Michigan State on Saturday.

All night, graduate student AJ Barner and sophomore Colston Loveland came as advertised. In a breakout game for Barner with the No. 2 Michigan football team, the two combined for 178 yards and three touchdowns — all before being rested early in the second half after the Wolverines’ lead ballooned in a 49-0 blowout.

Barner had already flashed his potential earlier this season. All the while, Loveland was always an ever-dangerous target. However, Saturday’s performance was not only a breakout performance for Indiana transfer Barner, but an emphatic depiction of how the two can terrorize as a tandem. “(That’s) some of the best tight end play, I think, anybody’s ever seen in college football.” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said.

And with that play, perhaps junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy

has found his number-two options. assignment was to throw unherIn nearly as much time as it took alded pull blocks behind the line for McCarthy to feel comfortable of scrimmage, to now, Barner and with Loveland last season, so too Loveland are both in the spotlight, has Barner’s development paral- and ready to shine. lelled. From logging one lone target “Me and C-Love, February, during Michigan’s entire non-con- March, April, it would be 8:30 at ference schedule, to eight recep- night and we might go out there and tions against the Spartans, Barner get jugs (machine catches),” Barner has become a featured face of the said. “That’s just our connection offense. is (that) we just feed off each other In his own right, Loveland too has had a quiet buildup to this weekend’s limelight. After an electric finish from week nine and forward last season, Loveland had yet to find the endzone through the team’s first five weeks. After Saturday though, he has scored four touchdowns in three weeks. The 6-foot-5 behemoth that floats around defensive backs like a butterfly, now stings with caught touchdowns like a bee.

Because, the question was never if the two could play together, but how.

In an offense that already has innumerable mouths to feed, pairing the two together was certainly a potential goldmine. Nevertheless, it came with much digging. From weeks where the only offensive GRACE BEAL/Daily

and we both want to see each other succeed.”

That desire came full circle in East Lansing. On all four of Michigan’s first-half touchdown drives, either Barner or Loveland found the ball in his hands. Meanwhile, on two of those four, both Barner and Loveland hauled in catches.

The tandem worked like a well oiled machine. Unselfish, unblemished,

and now unsurprising, the two waited for their moment and each found it on the same night.

“Honestly, the game plan wasn’t really targeting them or anything.

It just happened naturally,” McCarthy said. “That’s the most beautiful thing that could play out. The boys were open and they finished the play. So great job by them — national tight ends day tomorrow, too.”

Every fourth weekend in October since 2019, the NFL has commemorated National Tight Ends day in honor of the work done by the likes of Loveland and Barner. Thus, perhaps it was only fitting that their time came only one day before the professional festivities kicked off.

The two seemingly couldn’t wait for Sunday though. Against what seemed to be an underwhelming Michigan State defense, both Barner and Loveland found themselves covered well throughout the game.

However, in the timely moments — whether taking a hit from a defender or reaching out to make a grab — the two came through.

It was Loveland’s first twotouchdown day for Michigan. For Barner, it was his first touchdown

for the Wolverines ever, and his only one in nearly an entire calendar year. The transfer could’ve even snagged his second of the day if a false start by junior running back Donovan Edwards hadn’t ended the first half early.

Yet, as Loveland went on to surmise, the tight ends’ day might have felt big, but the work building behind it was enormous.

“I don’t think anything’s changed,” Loveland said. “It’s just the time came today and (I) happened to be open in (McCarthy’s) reads and he just put the ball where it needed to be. It happens all the time in practice and it was bound to happen some time.”

Walking out of East Lansing, that defensive mismatch finally moved out of practice and into game days.

The Wolverines may have seen this building from inside the walls of Schembechler Hall for sometime now. Loveland and Barner may have squandered schemes and secondaries on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for some time now. But it doesn’t matter.

Because now the two tight ends terrorize teams on Saturdays, too.

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

The Michigan Daily — 12

TUNNEL

VISION MICH 49 | MSU 0

JEREMY WEINE/Daily Design by Lys Goldman

SPORTSWEDNESDAY

Amid NCAA investigations, McCarthy and Michigan stay focused in dominant win over MSU CHARLIE PAPPALARDO Daily Sports Editor

E

AST LANSING — Two years ago in East Lansing, on the biggest stage yet of his young career, J.J. McCarthy fumbled the game away.

With a lead midway through the fourth quarter, McCarthy botched a handoff and allowed Michigan State to score a late touchdown that proved to be insurmountable.

But two years later, the MichiganMichigan State rivalry game looked completely different. Through two straight College Football Playoff appearances for the Wolverines, a tunnel brawl and the Spartans’ internal turmoil, Michigan had risen to its highest point in decades while Michigan State had fallen to its lowest. But through all the changes of the past two years, there remained one similarity — McCarthy again decided the outcome of the game.

This time, it was in the No. 2 Michigan football team’s favor. And it wasn’t close.

Behind a defensive shutout, and with a lights-out 287-yard, four touchdown game, McCarthy piloted

the Wolverines (8-0 overall, 4-0 Big Ten) to a commanding 49-0 victory over Michigan State (2-5, 0-4) keeping the Paul Bunyan trophy in Ann Arbor for another year.

“The outcome of that (2021) game was definitely on my mind,” McCarthy said. “When I was packing the away bag, I was looking at this (blue workman’s shirt) right here, and I haven’t worn it since we lost that game. … I just looked at it and I was like ‘you know what, I’m not gonna live in fear. I’m gonna wear this with pride.’ ” On the night’s first drive, McCarthy set a precedent that held throughout by consistently making space for himself to convert both inside and outside the pocket.

On back to back third downs while being flushed out of the pocket, McCarthy rolled out and made accurate throws for major yardage.

With 74 passing yards on the first drive, and an ability to convert on broken plays, McCarthy set up a one-yard touchdown rush for senior running back Blake Corum.

“He’s just so dangerous when he’s out of the pocket,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said. “(He) keeps his eyes downfield and picks

the open receiver, or runs it himself.

It’s a double-edged sword with J.J. McCarthy.”

As McCarthy steered Michigan’s offense to success, the defense found a rhythm. Holding the Spartans to three straight three-and-outs, they gave McCarthy plenty of space to work with — and he used all of it.

The next drive, he threw for 55 yards and a touchdown to senior wide receiver Roman Wilson, buying time with his legs to make the throw.

On the drive after that, he threw for 48 yards and lasered a touchdown to sophomore tight end Colston Loveland. And two drives after that, he did the exact same thing — again marching down the field, and again finding Loveland in the end zone.

Not only was McCarthy accurate and able to extend plays, but he seemed to reach a new level. On both of his touchdown passes to Loveland, McCarthy fit the ball into incredibly tight windows. And consistently, on crucial third downs, McCarthy found ways to convert.

“He’s just a great player, that’s just what it is,” Harbaugh said. “The drop back game was just great, I mean A-plus-plus. The way he was throwing the ball, talk about lasers.

That’s what it was.”

By the end of the first half with the Wolverines leading 28-0, McCarthy had already thrown for 276 yards and three touchdowns.

And with Michigan’s defense having its most complete night of the season, and senior cornerback Mike Sainristil returning an interception for a 72-yard touchdown, there was very little need for McCarthy in the second half.

But he still threw one more pass — an 11-yard touchdown to senior tight end A.J. Barner — before leaving the game with a career best four touchdowns and a 42-0 lead.

With McCarthy pulled and the Wolverines adding one more score with a garbage-time touchdown from sophomore quarterback Alex Orji, it became clear just how much had changed in two years for Michigan and for McCarthy.

“It wasn’t of importance, but it felt damn good,” McCarthy said of the changes two years made in East Lansing. “But it felt damn good.”

McCarthy had made the statement he had intended to make.

And it read as a 49-0 victory and Paul Bunyan joining the Wolverines on the bus ride home.

Designed by Leyla Dumke Cover taken by Lila Turner

IMMERSION EDITION

2 — The Statement // Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Quitting caffeine

Miles Anderson makes tea in his apartment Friday, Oct. 13.

Meleck Eldahshoury/DAILY

MILES ANDERSON

Statement Correspondent

I decided to do something I have never done before: I quit caffeine entirely. Cold turkey. Nada, none, zilch. Since my senior year of high school, I don’t think I’ve gone without caffeine in some form or another for more than a day at a time. I most definitely have a caffeine dependency, but addiction? I don’t believe so. I have a loved one who has struggled with substance abuse and addiction. This isn’t that at all. They dealt with intense withdrawals from serious and life threatening substances. They worked through these challenges, though, and today they have been sober for more than a decade. I am incredibly proud of them, and I know it took them so much time and effort to overcome their addictions. They suffered through extreme, unimaginable and life changing hardship while recovering from addiction. Me? I’ve got a headache.

Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant. It acts through a molecule called methylxanthine, which blocks neurotransmitters in the brain, mobilizes intercellular calcium and inhibits phosphodiesterases. In layman’s terms, caffeine causes changes to the chemicals in the brain which create the common effects: increased alertness, inability to fall asleep, frequent urination and nervousness. Plus, at least personally, my heart sometimes feels like it’s beating differently. Caffeine can cause dependence and, in some instances, can result in addiction. Yet, caffeine is still the most widely used stimulant across the world.

The Mayo Clinic reports that up to 400 milligrams of caffeine can be safely consumed in one day. I average about 300 milligrams of caffeine a day, usually consisting of an energy drink, some coffee and a pop of some sort (preferably Diet Pepsi). It probably isn’t an unsafe amount of daily caffeine, but it’s still a lot and likely not the best for my body.

My caffeine consumption really picked up when I got to college. The summer before my freshman year, I would drink about two to three Diet Pepsis a day and sprinkle in a cup of coffee for good measure, but I wasn’t doing that for the benefits of caffeine. I just genuinely liked the flavor of Diet Pepsi and a hot cup of black coffee. Sure, sometimes I would be tired and turn to my usual caffeinated drinks, but my main purpose in drinking was not to wake myself up.

It was to just have a little treat, and my treat of choice just so happened to be caffeinated.

But, when I arrived in my freshman dorm and got settled into my schedule, I noticed how exhausting it was to wake up for my 9 a.m. classes, try to get some exercise in, do some homework and go meet new people every single day. Life was draining. I would get up in the morning and feel like I had already worked a nine-hour shift. I was tired beyond reason, so I eventually turned to energy drinks.

I’d finish one nearly every morning, and if not, I would get a red eye with an extra shot of espresso at one of the local cafes. Later in the day, I would re-up my caffeine intake with a Diet Pepsi from the dining hall pop machines. It seemed to work — I was more alert and didn’t feel the weight of my existence on my shoulders so much. Sure, I would get jittery and not be able to sit still for longer than a couple minutes, but that was just the price I had to pay for the boost.

My caffeine habit more or less continued the rest of my freshman year and through the summer. It would ebb and flow with the stressors of life. Around midterms and finals, my intake would spike to upwards of 500 milligrams a day, but it would simmer down to a steady 200 to 250 milligrams on weekends and breaks.

I was satisfied with this routine.

I was used to the high expenses of multiple daily coffees or energy drinks and the feeling of my body shaking.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 // The Statement — 3

I drew this article AWMEO AZAD

Statement Correspondent

There is a sexier version of this article. When I originally pitched the idea for the Immersion edition, I told Statement editors that I would finally dedicate time to my lifelong love of art and maybe gain acceptance from my prodigious father along the way.

Sketches! Watercolors!! Inktober!!!! I immediately threw a copy of Betty Edwards’ “Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain” in my bag.

I made plans to attend an experimental rave in Ypsilanti and spray paint in graffiti alley with my roommate, DJ. I had the killer idea to cap it all off by recreating famous pictures of masters at work: Jackson Pollock hunched over a canvas, Vinent Van Gogh with his bound head, Art Spiegelman chugging India Ink. This is not that article.

In the last month, I have not opened Edwards’ book. I did not attend the rave. My roommate rudely rejected my request to visit graffiti alley despite the fact that I gave him a full two minutes notice. I’ve fallen into that damp, drizzly November of the soul. Why keep writing this article after failing so spectacularly? I thought that the Immersion Edition might offer dedicated time to explore a major untapped passion, but we’re far past the event horizon for any real progress.

Instead, business as usual. Every couple of years, my Youtube feed overflows with CalArts sketchbook tours and Mattias Pilhede pep talks encouraging me to draw every day. I check out a manual from the library, and I schedule time to practice — until I abandon my resolution in a couple weeks. Essays, extracurriculars, family — everything gets in the way. Quite frankly, without an article deadline, things would follow the same pattern.

But my name is on the content calendar for this edition, so I’m sworn to see this through.

I began to doodle small sketches to no avail; my rendition of Noam Chomsky looked like a shabbier Beaker. As time dwindled, I dashed to the

Awmeo Azad spray-paints in Graffiti Alley Tuesday, Sept. 17.

Jeremy Weine/DAILY

Awmeo (left) and Elise Dobrzynski (right) draw each other on a bench in the Diag without looking at the paper.

Diag to recruit others for the cause, randomly asking passersby if they’d be willing to draw caricatures of each other. This immediately improved my mood. Engineering sophomore Cindy Yang agreed to help, but cautioned she was a terrible artist. Thank God. Sitting across from another bad artist, struggling to make basic shapes and giggling the whole time made everything all the more enjoyable. It’s like cooking with friends: even if the pan catches on fire, even if you burn the omelets, even if your mother never trusts you with a spatula again, the chance to laugh together is the real appeal. If drawing was always this approachable, maybe I’d never do anything else.

Soon, a duo of art students overheard me approaching others on the Diag and gleefully volunteered to help. We sat down, one of the two

STAMPS junior Katelyn Ma sketches Awmeo.

young women carefully grabbed a blue pen and the air immediately changed.

To an amateur like me, watching her fingers glide was like watching a Formula One race. Meanwhile, with my failed Noam Chomsky, I was left racing Hot Wheels on an area rug. After five minutes of twitchy silence, she produced a four-toned portrait of me, capturing every crook in my nose and every fold in my beanie.

One of my favorite folktales warns about good artists. It tells of a painter who always drew expansive, exotic menageries of wild beasts but was always careful to draw his animals with only one eye. If he added both, his paintings would be too perfect, too real, and rhinos, elephants and tigers would race through Tokyo’s streets. Good artists command the world. My father is the best artist I know.

With a battered Strathmore sketchbook, the last inches of a Ticonderoga and three unwavering strokes, he could put my sleeping sister on a paper. On some days, the picture would snore louder than the person. In a past life, my father attended Bangladesh’s most prestigious art program, later working prolifically as a muralist and graphic designer.

His training filled the house in other ways too. In my middle school years, after we bought a new home, he immediately started renovating. He would make plans and take measurements; he would install patios and kitchens and new walls. When a contractor friend would leave suggestions, my father would quietly reject them, only for the contractor to later admit to preferring my father’s vision.

Read more at michigandaily.com

4 — The Statement // Wednesday, October 25, 2023

A culinary portal to a home I never knew

Joseph Fisher cooks jollof rice in the kitchen of Luther Cooperative House Thursday, Oct. 1.

Ruby Klawans/DAILY

JOSEPH FISHER

Statement Correspondent

Fred and I sat hunched over his laptop in a busy Ann Arbor coffee shop — which is not a particularly uncommon scene these days. Today, however, the glow of the blue light LED screen reflected a Google Form entitled “Luther House Cooks Ingredient Request.” Fred and I both live at Luther House, one of Ann Arbor’s numerous housing cooperatives, famous for fitting 49 people into two yellow houses on Hill Street (and thousands more for our annual Halloween party). To complete his weekly chore requirement, Fred is one of our Thursday cooks, mean-

ing he is responsible for churning out a dish to feed 50 people every Thursday. A week before each meal, he has to request all of his ingredients on a Google Form so that other people can go pick it up from the store as their own chore.

This Thursday, Fred was at a loss. Surrounded by college students typing away on their laptops, he turned to me and asked me if I had any ideas.

I’m still not sure what made my brain drift back to the shores of West Africa that day, but almost instinctively, maybe to give my Danish exchange student best friend a challenge, I told him that he should make Jollof rice.

Immediately, he flipped my own

challenge back on me.

“OK I’ll do it, as long as you’ll help me get it right.”

Fred knows I love to cook, especially foods from across the world. It’s not too uncommon for my housemates to find me in the kitchen for hours making anything from Shanghai soup dumplings to Argentine chimichurri. As a kid, cooking was my way of connecting with a wide open world that seemed out of reach to my 10-year-old self growing up in the suburban South. Now, after many years of cooking, I’ve amassed a pretty large collection of kitchen gadgets and niche ingredients which allow me to feel confident enough to take on almost

any culinary challenge. So, of course Fred thought I had made Jollof rice before, especially since it is the food of my people, my ancestors.

I hadn’t. In fact, it had never hit me until that moment that in the 10 years I’ve used the kitchen as my vessel to see the world, I had never once cooked a dish from the shores of West Africa.

I didn’t grow up in Africa; in fact, where I grew up felt like the farthest place from it. Off of Georgia Highway 120, a couple of miles between Roswell and Marietta, is a white picket fence community called East Cobb.

East Cobb is a place I now describe as my prison, the place

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 // The Statement — 5

where I plotted, for 18 years, to break free from. It took me 17 of those years to even figure out why it felt so unsettling to exist in that place: It was white, and I was not.

My parents grew up in two different worlds. My mom comes from a Polish immigrant bloodline in the working class towns of northern Rhode Island. My dad comes from a line of Black revolutionaries, operating in and around Philadelphia. The two met in Boston and made their way south to the Sun Belt to raise a family, after my dad landed a white-collar corporate job at IBM. My dad’s solution to the racism he faced in the workplace was to leave his Black identity at the door in order to assimilate into white, corporate culture. He and my mom shared this sentiment and thus decided to raise their two mixed-race children in the heart of the Deep South.

Growing up, I had no connection to my Black identity.

I simply did not even think of myself as Black. Why would I, when I was existing in a society where no one looked like me and it was simpler to not even question that fact? It got a lot harder to ignore my identity once it began being weaponized against me. Once I started getting slurs carved into my lunch table and started having a bit too many unpleasant police confrontations for comfort, it became almost impossible to ignore that this society, which had always felt alien to me, was in fact built against my existence. The final nail in the coffin came when I watched a man who looked like me suffocate to death on a Minneapolis street at the hands of a cop.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, I stumbled into a community I should have known my entire life. In anger, I took to the streets of Atlanta, and was both surprised and comforted to be met there by an

uncountable number of fearless Black organizers who did the same. They embraced me with open arms, and promised to teach me the revolutionary history of our people. We weren’t just slaves in past lives — our ancestors freed themselves, over and over. They created culture, food, ideologies and struggles all informed by the continent we were stolen from all those years ago.

Africa, as a concept, occupies a very interesting space in the Black community marooned here in America. Most Black Americans have never been back to the continent of their ancestors, but the traditions passed down from our historic lineages across the Atlantic are still ever-present in our culture.

It’s not uncommon to see a Black man sport a dashiki or for a cookout to be hallmarked by a pot of Jambalaya. In many ways, Africa feels so close to the Black consciousness in America, but in so many other ways it remains forever distant. I knew that if I made the choice to immerse myself in my heritage, it would mean something two-fold: I wanted to investigate and celebrate my roots in this land, but it also became a unique priority for me to honor and cherish the continent that birthed and nurtured our people for millennia.

After telling Fred I had actually never made Jollof rice — or any West African dish — before, he was still adamant I help out and even take the lead. I was getting excited about it; not only would this be a very new culinary venture for me, but I also had never cooked for this many people before. I always loved cooking for my housemates, but I always did it on my own terms. It was only when I had time, with whatever ingredients I had and usually a familiar recipe that I knew would impress.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Joseph and his housemate Frederik Gøtske chat in the kitchen.

Joseph and his housemate Laylah Perez high-five in the kitchen.

6 — The Statement // Wednesday, October 25, 2023

24 Hours to Receive a Sign from God

Mary-Kate Mahaney sits in a pew at St. Thomas the Apostle Church Sunday, Oct. 16.

Meleck Eldahshoury/DAILY

MARY-KATE MAHANEY Statement Columnist

“Have you ever heard of a girl named Mary-Kate?”

The above is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to Pope Francis when I was 11 years old. I thought, perhaps, there might have been a prophecy about me that I hadn’t yet heard of, and I wanted the answers straight from the source. While I now look back and adore the wholesome and comedic nature of this question, my younger self’s vulnerable desire to have been created for something divine still lingers with me. In middle school, I frequently looked toward religious statues, hoping they would miraculously speak to me. I stared at them, my eyelids spread as wide apart as they could. If they did indeed come to life, I imagined that God would

then tell me my life’s purpose. Finally, I’d feel secure about my future.

I am no stranger to the Catholic church; I attended Catholic school for 12 years. But now, as I am removed from that environment, the time between my church visits keeps getting longer and longer. Within the past four years, the only times I went to church were either to cry in the quietness of the pews or to attend a funeral (during which crying was also the main activity). As I exposed myself to other cultures, took classes about Islam, read therapy books and gained more life experience, the less I knew about my relationship with God. I feel too Catholic for nonreligious people and like a fraud to the active parishioners.

In the past, when I’ve embarked on revitalizing my faith, I’ve been weakened and ultimately obstructed by social pressures. I

was fearful of my peers witnessing my worship and thereby assuming I led a conservative lifestyle. Instead, I wished they’d see me for my boldly honest, stubbornly friendly and loyal Irish-Catholic ancestry.

Oftentimes, the judgment others hold toward other Christian organizations gets applied broadly to Catholics. For example, evangelical Protestants have been closely tied to right-wing extremism, especially as the term “Christian nationalism” enters the mainstream vernacular. In truth, Catholics are more of a mixed bag politically and have been historically less represented in American politics (there have only been two Catholic presidents while there have been 41 presidents of other denominations). Rather than connecting America and God, my family’s commitment to celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is on nearly equal

footing as being a practicing Catholic. Nevertheless, social pushback stifled my public relationship with God. But, recently, I’ve become exhausted from living within the ambiguity of my faith. The Holy Spirit has been weighing on my mind, yet I can’t bring myself to take any action. Am I a believer? Or is my tie to Catholicism merely cultural rather than spiritual? I want an answer.

Based on this desire, I decided to immerse myself in church for 24 hours. A full sunrise and sunset length of time to reckon with my faith.

I took my first few steps into St. Thomas the Apostle Church for the evening mass, and my stomach mimicked the sensations of being on a rollercoaster. The tall, arched ceilings flaunted their spine-tingling murals while the stained glass windows ushered me into the hal-

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 // The Statement — 7

lowed space. Wow. I was really doing this. And I was nervous as hell (a pun, but not really, as the painting of Jesus looked fixedly at me).

Father Daniel of St. Mary’s Student Parish was visiting and delivered the homily, a sermon typically elaborating on lessons of the previous liturgical readings. As he spoke, he made a remark about how God invites us to life of fullness, and still, sometimes, we deny it. My stomach dropped with this comment. It rang true to me: I have withheld participation from the many graces of God, namely not spending enough time in reverence of Jesus. However, my jittery ego quickly got defensive. I began to argue with myself, mentally citing all the offers from God I have humbly embraced: I use my talents as a vehicle for change, I spend time appreciating the nature he created and I do all I can for my loved ones. Father Dan’s speech broke up my harsh cross-examination of self as he mentioned gratitude. Finally, I was provided with something I could latch onto. I felt confident in my ability to practice gratitude and implement something new, yet tangible, into my daily life.

After mass, approximately 30 people remained silent in their seats.

I never fully understood the oxymoron “silence is deafening” before that moment. Dozens of people, in perhaps the most echo-inducing room in Ann Arbor, engaged in personal prayer, and my ears were in genuine pain. There was a high-pitch ringing to the quiet that made me ache. I rejoiced when someone would shuffle in their seat or walk down the aisle, as the noise momentarily filled the room.

However, others weren’t bothered by the lack of noise, as their thoughts and presence were submerged in their faith. My mind was frozen. I was too nervous I’d cry loudly if I prayed and too afraid of being blasphemous to let my thoughts drift elsewhere.

As the church attendees exited, I was told I could not stay at St. Thomas overnight, so I traveled to an adoration chapel 20 miles away. However, when I reached the door, I found that I needed a code to enter. A sign on the wall said that any member of the parish staff would give out the code if asked. So, at 10 p.m., I found myself calling the personal phone number of a priest and leaving a voicemail. My ef-

forts were not fruitful, and I was tasked with finding another 24/7 chapel. I became frustrated, tense and fiercely determined to complete my 24 hours.

If I stopped trying, I feared I’d forever exist as a lapsed Catholic unsure of my relationship to God. I needed to find another chapel.

As I entered my car to continue the journey, I took a step back to check in with myself. A new passion was rising in me — I was actively fighting for my faith. My soul was in anguish, and I craved to be in a holy space. In an empty, dark parking lot, as I furiously googled local churches, the first “shift in faith,” as I like to call it, occurred. I could feel my tie to God again — I was right there tugging on it. Something I had forgotten how to do.

Thankfully, another open, code-less chapel existed. I spent the night and early morning there. It was about the size of my bedroom, with only two rows of seats. In my time there, I read all of the “Book of Genesis,” some portions of the “Gospel According to Mark,”and, in a journal, wrote out my train of uninterrupted thoughts on religion, which spanned 10 pages. At the

same time, a man spent the hours of 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. on his knees, looking at the painting of Jesus on the wall. Was I selfish, in comparison, by spending these same hours thinking about my own relationship with Catholicisim instead of putting my focus on the Savior?

It was nearing three in the morning when I decided to copy my fellow worshiper. Suddenly, kneeling to Jesus, I began to see the image of his face move. Goodness gracious! Was it finally the jubilant sign from God I had spent more than 20 years searching for? Definitely not. I was sleep deprived and made the decision to stop venerating Jesus in this fashion to avoid hallucinating another “miracle.”

I returned to my journal, and by sunrise, I had combed through the ideas and questions that kept me distant from religion: Can my personal politics and morals live alongside my religion without being a hypocrite?

Why is it that every girl I went to Catholic school with no longer goes to church? Should I suffer in some way in order to show devotion to Jesus?

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Jenna Hickey/DAILY

8 — The Statement // Wednesday, October 25, 2023

I worked on a hog farm, and now I am at peace with mortality LIAM RAPPLEYE

Statement Correspondent

A few hours before I arrived at Sabbath Farm in Ann Arbor, I was at a rave 130 miles away in a warehouse in Grand Rapids, banging my head to techno music. I wore plastic sunglasses shaped like middle fingers, baggy pants and combat boots. I was there until 2 a.m., and I slept on my sibling’s couch.

When I woke up in the living room of the party house three hours later, I put on two long-sleeved shirts, a wool button-down, Carhartt insulated overalls and a pair of forest green Hunter rain boots. I stepped over the sleeping, post-rave bodies strewn across the floor and drove across the state.

I was going hog farming.

My neck hurt. My ear drums were throbbing. I had a headache that even coffee couldn’t fix. Somewhere along the 2.5-hour ride to the farm, I became certain I had made a grave mistake, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so wrong.

I met David Cobler, the proprietor of Sabbath Farms, on his 20-acre

property at 9 a.m. When he greeted me, I wasn’t sure I was shaking hands with the right person. Cobler doesn’t look like a typical farmer. With a trimmed beard, bald head and bright red glasses, he looks like an insurance salesman because, well, that’s what he is. He lives on the farm, which he first broke ground on in 2019, with his wife and three kids, splitting his time between his day job and farm work.

But do not let his day job or bright glasses fool you: Cobler is a farmer. I am not.

I weigh 140 pounds when soaking wet. 110 pounds is the most I’ve ever bench-pressed. I grew up in a tidy home with parents who had desk jobs, and sometimes I like to wear a collared shirt underneath my sweaters because it makes me feel important.

I’ve worked outside, perhaps to mow a lawn or clear some snow, but I’ve never been asked to do it well or for very long.

A few days before I met Cobler, I asked a number of local farmers if I could be put to work on their farms. I wanted to tap into a side of myself that

had never been tapped into to understand the importance of a day of farm labor, preferably in the company of livestock (fun!). Cobler was the first to email me back. We spoke on the phone, and he warned me to wear waterproof boots. “You will undoubtedly be stepping in various types of animal feces,” he told me (not fun!).

I’ve written about poop before, but when he requested said boots so matter-of-factly, I realized I was going to be treading in unfamiliar territory.

In the spirit of immersion, I chose to step into it blindly and agreed to show up on his farm at 9 a.m. that Saturday.

I spent a moment chatting with Cobler and his family in their quaint farmhouse before he put me to work. He showed me the farm and explained the agenda for the day: We’d be moving 50 ducks, 20 hogs and 20 heads of cattle around so that they had new grass to graze — Or, as Cobler put it, “a greener, less shitcovered pasture.”

We began with the ducks. We moved their fencing stake by stake, slowly but surely inching their pen

Lila Turner/DAILY

onto fresher grass. Cobler also taught me how to feed the ducks without getting duck poop all over my hands, which proved to be surprisingly valuable knowledge. As I lugged around buckets of water for them, the ducks quacked and danced. I laughed. I liked them.

But what more can you do with 50 ducks on a farm?

If it were up to me, I would shuffle around with them for a while. I’d laugh at their strange gait and quack back, feigning conversation. Unfortunately, I am incredibly naive, and that is not how this works.

The ducks will die soon. They will be sold at a market and eaten.

Duck is a delicacy, especially when raised on good pasture, Cobler told me. And, look, I’m no farmer, but I’m certainly not a fool — I know livestock farms raise animals for the commodity they provide, but I was still a little stricken. I had spent the last 20 minutes befriending the silly ducks, and I would never see them again.

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