United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg spoke at the Ford School of Public Policy Monday afternoon about transportation, public service, sustainability and equitable development. A part of the Policy Talks @ the Ford School series, this was one of Buttigieg’s final speaking engagements before his term ends Jan. 20.
Buttigieg was joined by Public Policy Dean Celeste WatkinsHayes for a conversation followed by questions from audience members. Buttigieg highlighted the success of the U.S. Department of Transportation over the past four years, including the implementation of President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which saw a $1.2 trillion investment into U.S. transportation systems.
“I believe we are leaving every form of U.S. transportation better than we found it, and it doesn’t mean our work is done,” Buttigieg said. “Take the infrastructure package, which is funding as of latest 72,000 projects around the United States … It was considered impossible to do something that ambitious, especially to do it on a bipartisan basis, but we got it done.”
Buttigieg served as the mayor of his hometown, South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020. In an interview with The Michigan Daily after the event, he said his identity as a Midwesterner has shaped how he approaches his role in public service.
“I think when you’re from the Midwest, you understand intuitively how important infrastructure is because so
UMich
many of our communities really are the way they are because of transportation,” Buttigieg said.
“I think there’s also just a way of doing things in the Midwest that has been helpful in Washington, where sometimes there’s a myth that the only way to get things done is to be intransigent and difficult and overbearing or even mean, and that tends to not be how we do things around here, and I think that cultural influence has helped me get things done in my job.”
Buttigieg also told The Daily he sees economic opportunities for Michigan in electric vehicles, given its historical ties to the automotive industry.
“I think Michigan has enormous opportunity in clean energy and transportation futures,” Buttigieg said. “That’s one of the reasons why we’ve worked so hard to make sure that the increasingly electrified auto industry is changing in a way that is made in America. I think this region has the talent, the workforce, the historic tradition and the resources to really thrive.”
At the event, Buttigieg spoke about striking a balance between economic development and sustainability concerns, specifically in regards to the electric vehicle market.
“I think we have to be honest that there often are trade-offs, and we’ve got to decide whether to do something in a way that is unconstrained but has terrible environmental consequences, or try to do everything just right from an environmental perspective, but overlook real, basic economic realities,” Buttigieg said. “I see now both an enormous risk and an enormous opportunity (in the) auto industry, first with electrification, and then a little bit with automation.”
reflects on his tenure, sustainability
In light of President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration, Buttigieg stressed the importance of resisting the pessimism present in today’s political climate.
“It’s the negativity,” Buttigieg said. “Sometimes it’s wrapped in dishonesty, sometimes it’s not, but it’s sadly what most people see when they see Washington. It’s what most people think of when they think of politics. It’s why so many people check out. Do not check out right now. I get the temptation, especially right now, to check out. I feel it. But in a democratic society, we can’t do that.”
The Q&A portion of the event featured two student moderators
who asked Buttigieg questions submitted by the audience. Paulina Trujillo, Public Policy graduate student and one of the moderators, told The Daily she enjoyed learning about infrastructure’s power to connect people from different communities.
“I think it was really cool to get his insight on the importance of infrastructure and transportation,” Trujillo said. “I thought his point about how we can connect and divide was really interesting. We have this phrase ‘wrong side of the tracks,’ and so thinking about how you can use that in a meaningful way, instead of using it to divide people, (using it) to connect people.”
releases 2024 annual report
“We can look forward to the next fiscal year with anticipation and confidence”
The University of Michigan released its annual report for the 2024 fiscal year Dec. 19, addressing major initiatives, research developments, construction projects and Campus Plan 2050. The report celebrated the University’s accomplishments and impact both regionally and globally.
In his opening President’s Message, University President Santa Ono addressed the launch of Vision 2034, which lays out the University’s goals for the coming years. These include four key impact areas: Life-Changing Education, Human Health & WellBeing, Democracy, Civic & Global Engagement and Climate Action, Sustainability & Environmental Justice. The plan also featured commitments to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; growing in areas of research, discovery and artificial intelligence; and engaging in partnerships and economic development. In the annual report, Ono wrote Vision 2034 would help support the University’s continued success.
“Guided by that vision, we will become the defining public university, educating learners, advancing society and making groundbreaking discoveries that impact the greatest challenges facing humanity,” Ono wrote.
The report also highlighted Campus Plan 2050, a 25-year plan announced by the administration in September. The plan, which includes Vision 2034’s four impact areas, encourages collaboration and connectivity between members of the campus community. It also features several physical changes to the
University, including a proposed transit system; development opportunities for the Central, North, Medical and athletic campuses; and sustainable building practices. However, some of Campus 2050’s initiatives have been the subject of criticism since the announcement. Engineering Planet Blue Student Leader, wrote in an email to The Michigan Daily that he worries the plan’s proposed Campus Connector automated transit system could have negative effects on the Nichols Arboretum.
“I think that Michigan is one of the top universities in the country that is spending a lot of time and money on being the ‘best’ at environmental practices and it is exciting to be a part of this work,” Kueffner wrote. “One of my biggest concerns for the university’s expansion is the proposed automated transit system that could go through the arboretum.
I think that going through with this plan would go against the
university’s commitment to increasing biodiversity and native grounds.”
Another project, Dr. E. Royster Harper Hall, which broke ground in October 2023, will allow Central Campus to house 2,300 additional students by summer 2026. The dormitory complex will feature energy-efficient building standards in the hopes the construction will receive LEED Platinum certification.
Ono wrote he hopes the growing need for student housing will be addressed by the new residential project especially as University enrollment continues to hit record enrollment numbers.
“The project will meet the needs of our growing student population and be transformative for both our Central Campus and the undergraduate experience,”
Ono wrote. “And that housing will be needed, since this fall U-M garnered a record enrollment of almost 53,000 students, making us the largest and most sought-after
public research institution in the state.”
Further construction plans include the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Health Care Pavilion, which will add an additional hospital to Michigan Medicine’s campus. Additionally, the new U-M Center for Innovation in Detroit, financed with a $100 million donation from U-M alum Stephen Ross, broke ground in December 2023. Tom Baird, vice president for development, wrote in his report that he hopes the building’s workforce development and graduate program spaces have the potential to positively impact the region’s economy.
“UMCI will be a worldclass research, education and entrepreneurship center designed to advance innovation and talentfocused community development to drive city, regional and statewide job creation and foster inclusive economic growth,” Baird wrote.
Public Policy graduate student Cara Clay said in an interview with The Daily that she enjoyed attending the event and hearing Buttigieg’s emphasis on resilience when it comes to enacting policy changes.
“One of the big takeaways from his talk today was just about maintaining hope in the face of difficult policy challenges,” Clay said. “It’s kind of a simple idea, but we didn’t go into policy because things were easy. Things have always been difficult, it’s just a matter of how we approach it and remain encouraged and determined in the face of those difficulties.”
When it comes to his future plans, Buttigieg told The Daily he doesn’t know where exactly he sees his role in public service.
“I’m certain about the things I want to work on, including a sustainable future for the industrial Midwest, the growth and recovery of cities like the city where I grew up, the future of a state where my kids are growing up now — in Traverse City,” Buttigieg said. “Questions of democracy, reform, technology and infrastructure, so I’ll find ways to work on those things. Whether it’ll be in or out of government or politics is a little too soon for me to know.”
Center for Campus Involvement hosts Winterfest club fair Roughly
The University of Michigan Center for Campus Involvement hosted the annual club fair Winterfest Monday and Tuesday evening to connect students with organizations on campus as the semester begins. More than 300 tables filled the first and second floors of the Michigan Union with student organizations distributing flyers and recruiting prospective members.
This year’s Winterfest differed from previous years, with the event’s expansion into the first floor of the Union. Joel Lauritzen, CCI student developer program advisor, told The Michigan Daily CCI scaled up this year’s Winterfest to include more student organizations.
“This year we were able to use not only the second floor of the Union, but also the first floor, which allows us to have more (student organizations),” Lauritzen said. “We’re looking roughly at about 360 (organizations) that are participating this year, up from 295 (last year).”
In an interview with The Daily, Public Health senior Bella Charfoos said she enjoyed meeting new students and sharing information about her student organization, the Sopranos A Cappella. Charfoos said she believed the event was a great opportunity for students to learn more about different organizations on campus.
“Especially for students who come in the winter or who didn’t get the chance to go to Festifall,
Winterfest is another opportunity to be able to get exposed to all the different kinds of groups,” Charfoos said. “I feel like there’s so much on campus that you wouldn’t even know exists. To be able to come here and have it all in one place is really helpful.”
After attending Winterfest, Engineering sophomore Nihar Ogale said he enjoyed being able to learn more about all of the student organizations in-person.
“It’s always nice to be able to see in-person the people there,” Ogale said. “It’s a more personal experience than just applying online.”
Engineering sophomore David Ren, who was representing the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers at the event, told The Daily he believes Winterfest helps students connect with student organizations looking to recruit new members.
“I think it really helps especially freshmen, but also other nontraditional and transfer students by letting them know what clubs are interested in recruiting new people,” Ren said.
Lauritzen said CCI’s ultimate goal for Winterfest was to help the University’s nearly 53,000 students get involved on campus.
“We’re really trying to make students feel like they can find people to connect with,” Lauritzen said. “Some of their lifelong friends can come from being involved in student organizations, and we know that students that get plugged in on campus enjoy campus more.”
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Haylee Bohm/DAILY
Chimera opens in Institute for the Humanities gallery
Exhibition by Rashaad Newsome open until Feb. 28
the murder of George Floyd and of environmental destruction.
More than 30 University of Michigan students, faculty and Ann Arbor community members gathered outside the Institute for the Humanities gallery Thursday evening for the opening reception of “Chimera,” an exhibition based on a film of the same name by Rashaad Newsome. The exhibit will remain in the space until Feb. 28.
While the exhibition is open, vinyl illustrations of bejeweled flowers will line the walls of the gallery room with two holographic collages resembling film posters hanging from opposing walls. On one wall of the room, the abstract science-fiction film
“Chimera” plays.
The new film serves to connect two of Newsome’s previous films, “Hands Performance” and “Build or Destroy,” both abstract sci-fi short films which highlight Black and Queer culture.
“Chimera” uses the spaceship location from “Hands Performance” and an abstract character voguing while on fire from “Build or Destroy.”
At one point in the film, a pair of robots debate deploying a weapon against humanity. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Newsome described the moment as commentary on social injustice and climate change, featuring images from
“As the robots who were deciding our fate…it was really important to juxtapose,” Newsome said.
“You see George Floyd with the knee on his neck and then you see the glacier sort of disintegrating. That is sort of like how our humanity, society as a whole, is just disintegrating.”
Newsome said the sci-fi genre of the films makes their serious themes less intimidating for viewers.
“I feel like sci-fi, or just (the) genre in general, is always a great place to have complicated conversations, because these conversations can be so heavy, and I just feel it’s a bit of a bait and switch, right?” Newsome said. “You can kind of dazzle people with the genre, but then you’re kind of having a much more serious conversation.”
Amanda Krugliak, a curator at the Institute for the Humanities, told The Daily she saw “Build or Destroy” in London and decided she wanted the institute to empower Newsome to create new work, leading to the commission of “Chimera.”
“I absolutely felt so moved by the work ‘Build or Destroy’ when I saw it in London, and had thought … that’s what I wanted to see in the gallery,” Krugliak said. “But then, like many of these projects, I come to realize that the opportunity is really about the artist getting the opportunity (to create),
and then what comes from that.”
LSA senior Luna Alkassem, an intern at the institute, will lead an event with Newsome later in the year. In an interview with The Daily, Alkassem said the exhibition captures viewers’ attention with its unexpected and captivating elements.
“When you first walk into it, it’s like something (you’ve) never seen before and you wouldn’t really expect to see, and you just kind of find yourself standing there and watching,” Alkassem said. “It’s really interesting. It uses a really phenomenal blend of digital art and futuristic stuff, but also talking about, like, identity and race and African American art and all kinds of stuff really.”
In an interview with The Daily, Jason Young, director of the institute, said he appreciates the level of research that went into Newsome’s work.
“I’m (a) historian by training, and so the thing that I see in
the work is how much historical research has gone into this art practice,” Young said. “It’s really heartening to me to see the different ways that you can manifest historical research to do all kinds of things.”
Prior to the opening reception for “Chimera,” Newsome gave a talk as part of the Penny Stamps Speaker Series. Ann Arbor resident Ali Newton told The Daily she enjoys attending Stamps School of Art & Design lectures when she can, and was excited by the opportunity to both hear Newsome speak and to see “Chimera.”
“The artists are really world class,” Newton said. “I like to be stretched and exposed to things that are outside of what my normal realm is, and this particular artist is really integrating tech, Afrofuturism, the Black embodied, lived experience and the Queer experience in a really incredible way.”
UMich experts on potential impact of Los Angeles wildfires on Michigan
“Wildfire smoke is becoming an increasingly problematic transboundary issue”
ALAINE HANSON
In light of recent wildfires in Los Angeles, researchers at the University of Michigan have expressed concern about their potential effects on Ann Arbor air quality.
In an email to The Michigan Daily, Paige Fischer, Environment and Sustainability associate professor, explained how wildfires can have wide-reaching impacts, far beyond where they are centrally located.
“Wildfire smoke is becoming an increasingly problematic transboundary issue,” Fischer wrote.
“Wildfire smoke, when generated in sufficient quantities, can be transported across large distances, creating air pollution in distant places. Wind, of course, transports wildfire smoke and atmospheric conditions like heat and low rela-
tive humidity dry out vegetation, increasing the chance of fire.”
If wildfire smoke does reach Michigan, vulnerable populations including individuals with asthma or other lung diseases are at heightened risk for short or longterm health issues, even at relatively low concentrations of smoke. Wildfire smoke contains high levels of PM2.5 particles — tiny particles 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller — that can penetrate the bloodstream and cause significant health issues.
In an email to The Daily, Ann Jeffers, Engineering associate professor and fire science expert, wrote that in addition to smoke, particulate matter from the wildfires may negatively impact health, referencing Michigan air quality warnings in 2023.
“Particulate matter, especially PM2.5 or particles less than 2.5 micrometers, can be quite high in wildfire smoke,” Jeffers wrote.
“PM2.5 are tiny particles that can enter the bloodstream directly and cause significant health effects. The air quality warnings in Michigan in 2023 reported very high levels of particulate matter, leading to air quality advisories that recommend staying indoors and wearing an N95 mask when outside,” Jeffers wrote.
Even short term exposure to wildfire smoke can cause health issues like itchy eyes, coughing, headaches and difficulty breathing. Long term exposure can increase the risk of cardiovascular problems and potentially contribute to conditions like memory issues or dementia.
In an interview with The Daily, Caroline Beckman, Rackham student and California native, noted areas that already lack protection from exposure to environmental contaminants may be at a greater risk for these health problems as a result of the Los Angeles smoke.
“Wildfire smoke sort of compounds underlying distributional inequities in the way that pollution is distributed in our society,” Beckman said. “If you would imagine an even blanket of wildfire smoke on top of that, you’re disproportionately harming the people who already have higher levels of exposure from other things.”
Fischer explained steps communities can take to minimize the potential impacts of wildfire smoke across the state.
“Michiganders could better prepare for smoke events by ensuring their homes, workplaces and community buildings are well sealed and equipped with HVAC systems, air purifiers and industrial air scrubbers,” Fisher wrote. “Communities can also invest in clear air shelters and services for people whose homes and workplaces are not well-equipped for smoke.”
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Harmonicist Peter Madcat Ruth performs at the Ark’s Folk Fest Kickoff: Live Since ’65 Friday evening.
‘Experiencing Queer joy’: Inside new LGBTQ+ bar Uplift
“To me, opening Uplift is a love letter to exploration, expression”
we can bring other folks to the forefront and give them a night that’s designed to them.”
When people walk down South First Street, they see classic Ann Arbor businesses such as Blank Slate Creamery, The Blind Pig and LIVE, and pass by hidden gems like Rabbit Hole. Among these longstanding eateries and clubs, a new bar has joined the ranks.
Uplift is a Queer bar located on 210 S. First St. that opened in October 2024. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Uplift co-founder Saharsh Hajela said the bar focuses on creating a space for the LGBTQ+ community in Ann Arbor.
“Uplift is a neighborhood bar during the week that has a lively club-like atmosphere on the weekends,” Hajela said. “We do tons of community-driven, engaging events and it’s a place for everyone who identifies as different to come and be authentically themselves.”
One of Uplift’s monthly events is Sapphire, a club night tailored toward Queer women, femmes and non-binary people that happens on the second Saturday of every month. Hajela said he hopes Sapphire can provide a space for those who are sometimes excluded from traditional Queer nightlife.
“If you explore the Queer diaspora of nightlife, there’s not necessarily a place where Queer femmes, queer women, femme non-binary people, non-binary people in general, feel like they’re the priority,” Hajela said. “So we wanted to make sure that we find these ebbs and flows where
ADMINISTRATION
As an entertainment space, Uplift regularly features artists and DJs at their events. University of Michigan alum Brooke Steele is a resident DJ at Uplift who taught themself to deejay while they were a student in 2023. Steele told The Daily they first heard about Uplift’s call for talent through a friend and decided to submit their work.
“My friend sent me a post stating that there was this new club Uplift opening and that they were doing open calls for just talent generally, (including) drag queens, DJs, everything,” Steele said. “I had a 15-minute cute little club DJ mix and submitted it. A few weeks later, Saharsh reached out to me saying he liked it, and he’d be interested in me doing a night there.”
Steele said they enjoy watching people at Uplift listen and dance to their mixes.
“I really enjoy being able to create a night that only I can experience, or that only I can create and being able to just put this feeling of ecstasy into the audience and seeing how they just become electric while I play is just so satisfying for me,” Steele said.
During the weekdays, Uplift organizes more casual events such as Sunday Drag Brunch, Trivia Tuesdays and watch parties for RuPaul’s Drag Race. As a part of Uplift’s community-based vision, Uplift features lightweight tables that can be moved around and a section of the bar that is lowered to an accessible height. Hajela said the bar is
intentionally structured to encourage conversations among patrons.
“At Uplift, we actually have a conversation circle that’s part of our bar,” Hajela said. “So if you come in and you meet someone new, or you come with a group of friends, you’re all facing each other, you’re all facing the same center of the circle, so that you can really organically get that experience.”
As the first city in the country to host a national Gay Pride Week, Ann Arbor has had a robust LGBTQ+ community throughout the years. The Ann Arbor business scene has also reflected this history, with LGBTQ-
LEO-GLAM kicks off bargaining with rally
“The University needs to put its resources and money into librarians and archivists because they’re the people who do the work”
GLENN HEDIN Daily Staff Reporter
Correction 1/16: A previous version of this article stated Sara Samuel is an informationist at the Rogel Cancer Center. The article has been updated to reflect that Sara Samuel is an informationist at the Taubman Health Sciences Library.
LEO-GLAM, the branch of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization representing workers in the University of Michigan’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums, held a rally on the Diag Wednesday to celebrate the commencement of negotiations between the union and the University regarding the union’s new contract. Among other demands detailed in their platform, the union seeks higher salaries for its workers, support for caregivers and extended sick leave.
The rally kicked off with chants of, “The workers united will never be defeated” and singing of “Solidarity Forever.”
Tobias Haus, a worker in the University’s Music Library and Organizing Committee Member of University Staff United, delivered the rally’s opening remarks. He claimed the University’s focus on profit is a contrast to the more egalitarian virtues of the union.
“It is excess that represents our leadership’s fundamental fascination and it is the pursuit of excess that is our leadership’s only true project,”
Haus said. “The profit motive that drives this forward can never be reconciled with the liberatory virtues of community and of freedom of expression that I see upheld… by the librarians, archivists and curators I have met and who I see gathered here now.”
Sara Samuel, an informationist at the Taubman Health Sciences Library and bargaining committee member for LEO-GLAM, spoke about the specific demands of the bargaining committee.
“I’m speaking today as a member of the GLAM bargaining committee, and in the stead of and in support of the bargaining team because you guys, they’re already hard at work for us,” Samuel said. “It’s so exciting. They’re out there. They’re getting the job done for us, so I really appreciate what they’re doing. They’re gonna be working hard today and over the next few months to help us secure a strong contract.”
Sierra Laddusaw, curator of maps and graphics at the Clements Library and LEOGLAM member, closed out the rally. Relaying a statement from UM-Flint LEO-GLAM member Emily Newberry, Laddusaw spoke of the harm inflicted on the Frances Wilson Thomson Library by the University’s budget measures.
“When I started my position at the Thompson Library at the University of Michigan-Flint in 2010 we had 10 librarians and one archivist,” the
statement said. “In the past 10 years, we’ve experienced austerity measures that have forced us into attrition and we now have five librarians and one archivist. Our library has lost a lot more than just positions though. We’ve lost the financial support to ensure that we can do what we need to do for our jobs and for our campus.”
Laddusaw’s speech on behalf of Newberry continued, praising the union for its work in securing salary raises and fighting against further austerity measures. The speech wrapped up by emphasizing the need for solidarity, using what happened to UM-Flint’s librarians, archivists and curators in its absence as a cautionary tale.
“We are committed to the platform that has been laid out by GLAM because we know what happened in Flint can be a predicator of what can happen anywhere when labor is undervalued; we are six LACs tasked with serving over 6,500 students,” the statement said.
The rally drew a varied crowd from LEO-GLAM members to supporters.
Rackham student Latitude Brown expressed their support of the union in an interview with The Michigan Daily.
“I hope they get everything they want and more,” Brown said. “The University needs to put its resources and money into librarians and archivists because they’re the people who do the work.”
friendly spaces and events like PRIDE Friday at Necto and Aut Bar which closed in 2020.
Hajela acknowledged the importance of Aut Bar to Ann Arbor’s LGBTQ+ community and said although Uplift is its own entity, it aims to continue serving the community members who frequented Aut Bar to honor its legacy.
“It was such a loss for the community, which is part of why Uplift came to be,” Hajela said. “My co-owner and myself experienced that loss firsthand, as did so many people. There’s no way to understate how important it is to have a physical, dedicated Queer space.”
GOVERNMENT
In an interview with The Daily, LSA sophomore Fiend Davis said although they believe Uplift is a necessary space for the LGBTQ+ community, it is open for everyone to enjoy.
“I went to (Sapphire), and my friend wanted to hang out,” Davis said. “He was like, ‘I don’t think I’d fit in at sapphic night.’ And I was like, ‘you can still come. It’s not necessarily for you and obviously this space is for certain people at certain times, but anyone can enjoy it.’ The point of a Queer community isn’t to exclude anyone. It’s to create a space where there wasn’t before for people who need it.”
As Uplift enters its third
month, Hajela said he hopes Uplift will be a place where people can be themselves authentically, like he wished for when he was younger.
“To me, opening Uplift is a love letter to exploration, expression and to that little kid who needed a place to go and ask questions, who needed a place to go and be free, who needed a place to go and experiment,” Hajela said. “Opening Uplift to me signifies that it is okay to be different, and being different is a badge of honor that you can wear if there are people around you who celebrate you for the things that are different and that it all can start with yourself.”
Michigan legislature passes school safety bills three years after Oxford shooting
The school safety bills order the use of threat assessment, BTAM teams and mental health support
KAELYN SOURYA Daily Staff Reporter
Content warning: This article contains mentions of gun violence.
More than two years after the 2021 Oxford High School shooting killed four students, the Michigan legislature proposed a package of bills in March to enhance school safety protocols during emergencies and improve student mental health Just shy of a month ago, the state Senate approved the school safety reform bills, which are expected to be signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
These bills are part of a bipartisan plan to increase safety and security in schools. Some of the bills include pediatric mental health care access, prevention of firearm purchase in prohibited juveniles, prevention of illegal firearm trafficking and a total of $1.4 billion in funding for violence prevention and intervention programs.
A third-party report by Guidepost Solutions, a firm in New York that manages investigations, compliance and security, introduced the possibility that the Oxford shooting could have been prevented if proper measures were taken to ensure adequate threat assessments. One of the bills was based on this report which calls for all Michigan schools to have Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management teams. However, 90% of Michigan public schools already have some form of a
threat assessment process to identify, evaluate and manage possible threats.
For example, Ann Arbor Public Schools has a threat and management program to investigate potential threats. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Liz Margolis, executive director of school safety and district operations at AAPS, said the district will see minimal changes to AAPS safety protocols when the bills are enacted.
“(The bills) don’t have too much of an impact on the Ann Arbor Public Schools because we do all of these things,” Margolis said. “Every single school has a threat assessment team, and we always assess after there’s been a tragedy in a school and we work with law enforcement. As an example, I took the Oxford report and I took every finding from the Oxford report, compared it with what our protocols are, so that we could check ourselves against those types of things.”
The University of Michigan’s active shooter safety guidelines emphasize staying calm and calling 911 in situations where an individual or group is using firearms to harm others in populated areas on campus.
Law enforcement on campus are expected to engage immediately to prevent further damage, and if the situation persists, the Emergency Management Plan will be implemented to control and manage the threat.
Oxford High School has undergone significant changes to their school policies following the shooting. In an email to The
Daily, Melissa Kree, Oxford High School psychologist, said changes made at Oxford include monthly staff meetings to increase awareness of schoolwide trends.
“We meet monthly as a building level collaborative group with the Executive Director of School Safety to discuss ongoing trends, needs and to debrief on any situations that have presented,” Kree wrote. “The collaboration between departments has been an essential part of this work. Unfortunately, professionals are often siloed and don’t have a chance to collaborate. That is the reason a core (Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management) team includes a multidisciplinary approach.”
The school safety bills order the use of threat assessment, BTAM teams and mental health support. In an interview with The Daily, Dr. Sarah Stilwell, research investigator at the University’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, spoke about the importance of threat and management teams and mental health support in gun violence prevention.
“We know that things like threat assessment can be a violence prevention strategy to make sure that if a particular threat has been identified, you can address it before it escalates into (something) larger,” Stilwell said. “I think sometimes schools don’t recognize that a social, emotional learning curriculum is a school safety strategy.”
EILENE KOO Daily News Contributor
Cole Carrico/DAILY
2024 has been a memorable year for movies, and it kept the Film beat very busy. We watched pulpy fan-favorites, searing dramas and heartfelt coming-of-age stories. We covered Sundance, SXSW and AAFF. We laughed, we cried and we spent a lot of time in the theater. It’s hard to condense all of that into a numbered list, but we’ve given it our best shot. Here are The Michigan Daily Film beat’s favorite films — ranked, reviewed and celebrated.
– Senior Arts Editor Lola
D’Onofrio and Film Beat Editor
Ben Luu
Honorable Mention:
“Megalopolis”
Francis Ford Coppola’s (“Apocalypse Now”) attempt at a magnum opus has haunted my dreams — I have seen it five times in a span of three months, and I have a feeling I will watch it again soon. Every rewatch was filled
CAMILLE NAGY & RAMI MAHDI Managing Arts Editors
If we’re certain about one thing, it’s that 2024 was a year.
The Best of 2024 B-Side
One in which things happened and events transpired. Nothing out of the ordinary. If we’re certain about two things, though, the second is that art has continued to be released, and Daily Arts has continued to
criticize it. (OK, maybe that’s three things). From the best of the best to the bottom of the barrel, our writers have seen it all. In case you were too busy paying attention to the news to consume any art, our six
The top ten films of 2024
wonderful beats have worked together to curate for you a list of the best (and worst) pieces of art from the last year in the hope that you, too, will love (or hate) them. Welcome to the Daily Arts’ Best of 2024.
with friends asking me to explain the plot or what a character’s motivation was. Every time I tried my best to answer — by repeating the film’s exposition or tying it to Coppola’s interviews — I would
ultimately laugh at my ridiculous attempts. “Megalopolis” is like the fall of Rome: For centuries, people will be debating why it happened even when the answer is obvious. When a colossal figure
like Coppola, after decades of acclaimed filmmaking, is allowed to create a bloated mess with no power restraining him, the inevitable conclusion is collapse.
“Megalopolis” is definitely not
as well written or excellently shot as the other films on this list, but it will be remembered long after many of them. It is a rich film full of literary allusions, Randian themes and extravagant performances made by an iconic director; future film students will assuredly wonder how it turned into an abysmal creative failure.
10. “Nosferatu”
Whenever a remake of an iconic film is announced, the natural question most people ask is “what is the point?” In an era where every Disney animated film or kids’ show needs to be immortalized and rehashed into live-action, remakes are often met with skepticism.
Director Robert Eggers’ (“The Lighthouse”) “Nosferatu” answers this doubt, not only by remaking the story with better visuals but also by adding new thematic and stylistic depth.
“Nosferatu” follows Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, “The Menu”) and Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp, “The King”) in 19th-century Europe as their lives are torn apart by the monstrous Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, “It”) — the titular nosferatu, or, when translated, vampire. While other vampire stories paint Orlok as a curse on the unwitting couple, here, he is summoned by Ellen’s sexual awakening and her subsequent sexual repression due to societal pressures. The nosferatu is sexual desire manifested, forced to hide in the shadows as a ghastly unspoken monster, entering into rooms with an imposing horniness.
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Every step Orlok takes and word he speaks casts a spell upon his victims. Skarsgård’s unnerving performance is upstaged only by Willem Dafoe’s (“The Lighthouse”) campy performance as the Van Helsing stand-in — answering many of the audience questions on the occult world of vampirism. Dafoe and Depp’s characters together illuminate the truly unique aspect of this adaptation: Ellen is not the virgin to be crucified and sacrificed to the beast, but the hero who transgresses social boundaries. It is through Ellen embracing her sexuality that she finally conquers Orlok.
With this grotesque addition to his filmography, Eggers makes his mark on the gothic horror genre. And while yes, the film is sometimes as subtle as a Michael Bay film explosion, perhaps it’s OK in a niche as overflowing as Dracula adaptations to drop the vague metaphors and focus on substantial stories. 9. “Conclave” Combining airport novel pulp and airtight cinematography, “Conclave” follows the ecclesial struggle to elect a new pope following the passing of the preceding Holy Father. Its weaving
plot combines current divisions within the Catholic Church with speculation on the historic conclave that will inevitably follow the Pope’s passing. Warring factions mirror the church’s own divisions. Progressives like Stanley Tucci’s (“The Lovely Bones”) Cardinal Aldo and Ralph Fiennes’ (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) Cardinal Thomas — the audience’s point of reference throughout the film — attempt to forge a church more open to a litany of reformist causes, such as making political statements welcoming refugees, giving religious sisters more influence and a new reluctance likely to make overt condemnations of LGBTQ+ identities. Reactionaries, led by Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto, “Don’t Move”) insist on the use of Latin within the church and avoid “meddling” in the political welcome of migrant s. The church in “Conclave” increasingly fears losing its numbers and strives to repair its image from scandal in the age of postmodernism, post-truth and post-New Atheism. The strain of these tasks weigh quiet but heavy in the backdrop. Further confusing these camps of cardinals, the skeletons in the closet of the film’s papal contenders and the arrival of Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz, feature debut), a bishop in pectore, basculate the conclave. Filthy politicking, dramatic twists (which drew literal gasps from the audience) and a fantastic monologue from Isabelle Rosselini’s (“Blue Velvet”) Sister Agnes distinguish “Conclave” from what might otherwise be a film created to be a “serious” straightforward contender for awards. “Conclave” fits in neatly as The Daily’s number nine. 8. “Love Lies Bleeding” The beginning of 2024 gifted us the neon-gothic American thriller, “Love Lies Bleeding,” and as muscle enthusiasts everywhere cheered, we — devoted thriller enjoyers — had to be removed from the theater by force, crying on hands and knees thanking director Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”) for her service to the genre. The film centers on the sapphic romance between gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart, “Spencer”) and bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian, “Twisters”) as they run from the past and chase their ideal futures. Glass drives audiences through a fever dream of a bodybuilding bloodbath in a rusted truck playing ’80s music with the volume all the way up. Embodying the idea of “blood, sweat and tears,” the characters shed a whole lot of all three throughout the film’s runtime. As Lou deals with her estranged hitman father and Jackie chases her dream of being a bodybuilder, they both sacrifice everything to ensure the other gets what they want, all the while we hope to watch the main pair avoid the common sapphic tragedy trope and run away into the sunset together. Embodying the idea of “blood, sweat and tears,” the characters shed a whole lot of all three throughout the film’s runtime. As Lou deals with her estranged hitman father and Jackie chases her dream of being a bodybuilder, they both sacrifice everything to ensure the other gets what they want, all the while we hope to watch the main pair avoid the common sapphic tragedy trope and run away into the sunset together.
Haylee Bohm/DAILY
The Michigan Daily Book Review’s favorite books of 2024
The new year has passed and another failed Goodreads challenge has taught us absolutely nothing about setting realistic goals. For me at least, I fell short of my 30-book goal, but you better believe when prompted for my 2025 goal, I typed 30 right back in. It’s the small things.
At the very least, many books were started last year. Whether they were finished is yet to be seen, but the industrious writers of The Michigan Daily Book Review have most definitely fared better than I have. From another hopeful Sally Rooney novel, multiple memorable memoirs and even the discovery of an author that though not new was new to us, The Michigan Daily Book Review has assembled seven of the best books we’ve read this year. So, if you have a New Year’s Resolution to read more or better books, this might be a good place to start.
— Senior Arts Editor Cora Rolfes and Books Beat Editor Alex Hetzler
“My First Book” by Honor Levy It’s easy for books that reference modern topics like the internet or AI to somehow feel disconnected.
Instead of portraying a moment in time, authors can sometimes
freeze it, date it or, worst, misunderstand it. Honor Levy did not fall into this trap in her short story collection, “My First Book.”
In the collection, released in May, Levy curates a compilation of vignettes dedicated to the generation that lived through formative life experiences online — and who are perhaps all too aware of the world as a result. Levy covers the online relationship in “Love Story” and the everexpanding internet language in “Z was for Zoomer,” alongside wealth disparity and the shades of suffering that come with it in my favorite story, “Hall of Mirrors.”
While not every story hits its mark, Levy’s prose is pseudopoetry, meticulously crafted for those who are unafraid to pull up an Urban Dictionary tab without losing sight of the connection that binds us. It is fresh and biting and worth a read simply for how Levy is able to spin subjects that often disengage and isolate us, internet politics and oppressionolympic doom spirals, and imbue them with an undercurrent of connection — something that is increasingly important to look for in our modern online world.
You can read my full review (linked at the end of my opening
paragraph) for more, but the gist is that, in “My First Book,” Levy sparks a conversation that is fresh, timeless and entirely representative of the mode in which we currently live, making it entirely worthy of a place among 2024’s highlights.
“The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden
Given my fixation on the man, I was tempted to nominate a John Green novel (some are great, even if others have their flaws) as my pick for this list. Unfortunately, I must yield to common sense and instead recommend Yael van der Wouden’s debut, “The Safekeep.”
Set in the Dutch countryside after World War II, the novel follows Isabel, who lives alone but tends her house with an iron fist. Unmarried, she fends off the romantic advances of a family friend, unable — or unwilling — to understand why he repulses her. When her brother’s girlfriend, Eva, arrives for a months-long stay, everything about Isabel’s life is thrown into disarray. An obsessive affair soon sparks between the two women, forcing them to contend with the lies they tell each other and themselves.
The Music Beat’s best tracks and albums of 2024
MUSIC BEAT WRITERS
2024 has seemingly been a year defined by the shuffling of sonic seasons, a game of musical chairs with album aesthetics and eras. Throughout this past year, we’ve seen it all — from iconic albums entered into political campaigns to lyrical lows from beloved artists. Despite all the turmoil 2024 has brought us, certain albums and tracks stood out among the wreckage. Here are the music beat’s favorite tracks and albums of 2024! — Music Beat Editor Mivick Smith and Senior Arts Editor Amaya Choudhury “ROCKMAN” - Mk.gee
As the best track of 2024, “ROCKMAN” is everything. Spiritually, it’s the grandson of the ’80s soft rock ballad. Sonically, it’s somewhere between sultry new wave and marimba-heavy reggaefunk. Within a succinct three minutes, there’s keyboard, there’s bongos, there’s reverbdrenched guitars and even a few (oddly fitting?) bird noises. Over all of this, the crown jewel is no doubt Mk.gee’s voice. Layer upon layer of silky harmonies that soar over the instrumentals, Mk.gee’s meticulous vocal arrangement gives the track its sleek, effortless feel. Forgive me for being trite, but no musical overview of 2024 would be complete without mentioning TikTok (and bitesized social media in general) acting as the newest avenue to— or gatekeeper of — artistic fame. With the success of tracks now dependent on one perfect sound to backdrop a trend, it’s refreshing to hear “ROCKMAN,” in which the whole song is the perfect catchy sound bite.
While catchiness is an initial draw, the track’s greatest strength is its unlikely cohesion.
Mk.gee manages to borrow from his influences without robbing them. He effortlessly bending genres; ultimately creating something that is entirely both then and now. This spirit of genre-fluidity and unlikely combination is what drove the most successful tracks of 2024, including “ROCKMAN.”
Aghori Mhori Mei - The Smashing Pumpkins
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed the most about The Smashing Pumpkins (besides their complete disregard for stagnant industry standards) is their impressive tonal range. On their most recent album, Aghori Mhori Mei, it’s undeniable — almost to the point that it reads like a manic emotional oscillation from one song to the next. From grandiose references to the past to energetic exclamations about individuality, this album was an incredible encapsulation of the weirdness of the human experience and the strange visceral rawness that was 2024.
Aghori Mhori Mei is a gorgeous experiment in controlled chaos responding to a mess of a year. With its ability to capture a range of emotions through esoteric narratives, coupled with love letters to prog rock hidden in remarkable riffs throughout the album, it shouldn’t be surprising that it was one of the best alt-rock pieces produced last year. So, as I personally flip off 2024 and welcome 2025 with a desperate hopefulness, I’ll also be expecting more strange uniqueness and emotion in our art this coming year — all thanks to this album.
What Now - Brittany Howard 2024 was a year of fleeting
Digital Culture’s 2024 Year in Review
2024 was a wild year for the internet. Filled with momentous online beefs, freaky game releases, fascinating film adaptations, pop star discourse and platform legal troubles, this year was truly a riveting one for the internet’s archives. Before the new online year finds its way upon us (with its TikTok ban and Elon Musk’s continuing changes to X rapidly shifting how we make culture online), we must reflect on our experiences with this captivating year online. Here are the Digital Culture beat’s assorted thoughts, our year’s standout moments, from memes to discourse to good and bad releases, from the online year that just kept on giving.
— Senior Arts Editor Holly Tsch and Digital Culture Beat Editor Campbell Johns
“Barbie” Oscar ‘snubs’: 2023’s “Barbie Summer” did not stay contained to 2023. Greta Gerwig’s (“Little Women”) film has continued to grip the internet with the strength and ferocity that the iconic and original promotional pictures garnered. “Barbie” produced some of the strongest discourse about a film the internet has seen yet, which carried into the new year with the release of Oscar nominations.
“Barbie” was nominated for the 96th Academy Awards eight times, with Ryan Gosling (“La La Land”) and America Ferrera (“Ugly Betty”) receiving supporting role nominations. Lead Margot Robbie (“Suicide Squad”) and director Gerwig, however, were notably left off of the ticket. To many, this absence reeked of the misogyny the film worked to combat, and as such led to a completely out-of-control online swarm. This discourse got so large that Hillary Clinton chimed in and many members of the cast released statements.
This was all happening after Jo Koy’s controversial Golden Globes monologue calling “Barbie” a film about “a plastic doll with big boobies,” another stone thrown into the pit of whirling dialogue about the film’s reception and sexism. While many productive conversations about performative feminism came out of all of this, a lot of this discourse — especially in retrospect —seems to be immensely heightened from a summer drenched with bright pink where everybody had a say on “Barbie.” Death of a Wish release: 2024 was so packed with good indies it’s easy to forget some of them came out this year. On that note, melessthanthree’s Death of a Wish was the surprise hit of the year for me. It’s a hack-and-slash with an art style that extrapolates the teenage DeviantArt “Warrior Cats”-esque style into a striking impressionist neon look with scratchy lines and beautifully edgy character designs. The gameplay makes effective use of the crunchy 2010s era screenshake and freeze frames, and start to finish it was a joy to play.
The story is where the game might lose people — taking the angry gay kid beefing with their Catholic parents and extrapolating the entire world out from that center. It’s a bit immature and maybe also a bit of an acquired taste. It has its moments of genuine beauty and grace in storytelling, but just as often channels the cry-typing implied by its artistic influences. Death of a Wish is everything I love in a best-list slot. It’s a game that swings constantly and looks damn good doing it. For the gritty, screen-freeze combat, the all-time great art style and the story that takes itself just as seriously as that emo teenager, check it out.
Drake vs Kendrick: While the Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud started long before
2024 (and has already been written about here at the Daily), it was in April and May of last year that it escalated and became the center of pop culture and online discourse: Lamar, of course, “won” the beef, releasing songs that were more incisive, less self-sabotaging and overall just … better. “Not Like Us,” released May 4 (and then performed five times at The Pop Out), was the final nail in Drake’s coffin, but the feud has continued to shift and escalate. While Kendrick released his newest album, GNX, and J. Cole, the oft-forgotten third player in the beef, released a song claiming that his pulling out of it was somehow a noble act, Drake was filing paperwork. He sued Universal Music Group, alleging that the stream numbers on Kendrick’s disses were inflated by controversyseeking labels. This lawsuit, of course, has only provoked further mockery, not helped by Drake once again releasing and then deleting a song. His continued insistence that he’s unaffected by the beef contradicts his actions and looks more pathetic every day.
While Drake’s coffin is temporary, the impact that this feud had on 2024 was immense. For the first time ever, Kendrick Lamar, an artist known for his layered lyricism and Pulitzer-winning songwriting, surpassed the monthly listeners of the poppiest rapper on Earth. Not to say that Lamar doesn’t have pop sensibilities — DAMN. proves otherwise — but it’s odd to see an artist as critically acclaimed as he is also become one of the most popular in the world, largely over an internet beef at that. While I’m glad to see an artist I love get his flowers, it does mean that saying Lamar is my favorite artist has become the equivalent of saying Ed Sheeran is the GOAT. As of now, I’m looking for a cooler, more underground “favorite artist.”
Arctic Eggs release:
album seasons, each rapidly overturning the last — Cowboy Carter spring, Brat summer, Imaginal Disk autumn, the list goes on. But if there was one album that stuck with me the entire year, it’s Brittany Howard’s stellar second solo project, What Now.
The record exchanges the probing tenderness of Howard’s previous album, Jaime, for something even more daring and dynamic. Where the former — even at its most audacious — found itself coloring within the lines of exquisite, but traditional song structures, What Now has set that formula on fire and inhaled its hallucinogenic smoke.
Howard’s croons layer and stretch luxuriously over “Earth Sign,” the record’s opening track, until thunderous drums and a buzzing synth join the fray. Then it’s off to the races. Though many of the tracks have a pop backbone, they play more like a jam session — a flurry of funk, jazz, electronic and psychedelic soul arranged into organic and often turbulent soundscapes, weaved together by Howard’s virtuosic vocal performance. Songs like “Every Color in Blue,” with its spiraling vocals and piano riffs, and “Prove It To You,” a slappy house song swaddled in What Now’s industrial flair, show her at her most unencumbered. These high-octane moments are paired back to back with meditative interludes featuring singing bowl performances and tracks that ooze more than they romp, including my personal favorite, “To Be Still,” where the album’s opening kaleidoscopic frenzy settles momentarily into a daydreamy haze.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
For the Holly Tsch certified bizarre-shit-game-of-the-year, The Water Museum’s Arctic Eggs takes the cake. While Mouthwashing swept the end of the year awards for the uncomfortable-unconventionalPS1-inspired-science-fiction-gamethat-takes-about-two-hours-tofinish award, my choice goes to Arctic Eggs.
Built on top of a strange and clumsy mouse-based frying pan gameplay, Arctic Eggs guides the player through short writing on the nature of skill development, contraband and scarcity, along with a bit of interrogation on the nature of this type of “weird game.”
Where Mouthwashing struggled to connect its game to the writing, Arctic Eggs has a skillful fluidity and unity that makes it click. The mechanical clumsiness bleeds into the interpretive dialogue and the dreamy imagery. In just two hours, it hits comedy, tragedy, body horror and an open, peaceful ending.
If you have a taste for floaty, open-ended dialogue and crave games with cohesion in writing, play and theme, do yourself a favor and pick up Arctic Eggs.
Shin Megami Tensei V release:
When Shin Megami Tensei V released, it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. I only
had two major criticisms: it being exclusive to the Nintendo Switch — a console that could barely run it — and an incomplete, seemingly rushed story. This year’s rerelease was an opportunity to fix both of these issues and create a definitive
Shin Megami Tensei experience — whether this was achieved is debatable.
On ‘Clairo shade’: This year Clairo released Charm, an album of extreme importance to me which also welcomed in something possibly more important — the concept of Clairo shade. While Clairo shade is everything and everywhere, I will break it down as best I can. Clairo shade calls attention to the inherent mistreatment of Clairo when any other piece of music or artist is being discussed and praised online. Some of my favorite examples include the lack of Clairo on former President Barak Obama’s famous summer playlist and the idea of Katy Perry trying to pull focus from Charm. There was also what has come to be known as the “lesbian rooftop party Bushwick incident,” where at a party with a cake iced with “Clairo shade,” somebody allegedly crashed through the skylight. What became joked about as another instance of Clairo shade, pulled attention away from Charm.
One thing isn’t debatable; it’s no longer a Switch exclusive, which is fantastic news. Getting to experience Shin Megami Tensei V’s gorgeous art style in crisp 4K at a consistent 60 FPS made Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance worthwhile by itself. There are also many gameplay improvements — Atlus has a knack for rereleasing their games with gameplay changes that make the originals look like garbage in comparison — new areas, new bosses, new demons, a redesign for the main character and a new story. Unfortunately, the story is still not great, replacing the rushed, empty feeling of the original’s with a confused plot that doesn’t quite take advantage of what makes Shin Megami Tensei so great — its ability to force difficult moral choices onto the player. Somehow, the story of a game that has been in development for eight years still feels like it’s not quite there. That said, the gameplay is still so fantastic that I have no qualms about recommending this game, simultaneously one of the most accessible and deep experiences that Atlus has ever made.
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Minor choices, major impact
“So, like, you know I’m not an English major, right?”
That was my response when a friend of mine first suggested I join The Michigan Daily. Fast forward, and here I am, a nursing major writing for The Daily. Turns out, I’m not as out of place as I thought. Business majors, engineers, future health care providers and countless others with presumably “unrelated” majors bring unique and diverse perspectives to this organization. And honestly? That mix makes everything better.
Health care students like myself often gravitate toward activities closely tied to our career paths.
Pre-medical associations, health care-focused minors and research in biology or psychology dominate the calendars of students aiming to become medical practitioners.
Pre-law students across the country often follow a similar pattern, being drawn to activities that deepen their knowledge of political science, economics or criminal justice. These choices, though logical, often arise from a singular goal: to look impressive for graduate school applications or future employers.
While there’s no denying their value, a singular focus on activities within one’s major can limit exposure to new fields, stifle innovative ideas and hide passions that might otherwise reshape a student’s education and life. Regardless of their career aspirations, pre-professional students should branch out by exploring clubs, minors and interests outside their major. Doing so enriches their education, builds interdisciplinary skills and reduces stress through creative outlets.
Making the active choice to step into fields unrelated to your major gives you the opportunity to express your creativity and hone interprofessional communication
skills — opportunities you would not otherwise have in major-related classes or clubs. Take health care students as an example: participating in a creative writing workshop could teach them how to express narratives in a more organized or intentional way, making it easier to converse and educate patients.
Similarly, future doctors or nurses could develop management and advocacy skills to more effectively navigate hospital management or healthcare reform.
Pre-law students could see similar benefits. Joining an improv group might strengthen the quality of their refutations or sharpen reaction times, while exploring a public health minor could complement their policy expertise with a broader understanding of public health policy. These ventures cultivate multidisciplinary collaboration and development, qualities employers and graduate schools increasingly value.
Pursuing interests outside your major can also provide a muchneeded break from the constant grind of being a full-time student. Regardless of major or career path, many students balance demanding schedules with lectures, labs, discussions and study sessions. Burnout is hard to avoid and making time for selfcare and stress relief seems nearly impossible. Finding joy and stress relief through extracurricular activities — whether playing an instrument, joining a sports team or painting — can re-energize
students and improve their overall well-being.
Admittedly, some students might resist branching out due to concerns about their academic performance. The fear of jeopardizing their grade point average by taking classes outside their comfort zone is understandable. A pre-health student tackling an art history elective might worry about balancing unfamiliar material with their rigorous science courses. Others might find logistical hurdles daunting, such as traveling to different parts of campus or fitting non-major related courses into an already packed schedule.
While these concerns are valid, the benefits of broadening one’s horizons often extend beyond college. Stepping outside your comfort zone encourages a mindset of exploration and adaptability, qualities crucial for success in any field. The ability to engage with diverse ideas, adapt to unfamiliar situations and collaborate with people from different backgrounds is invaluable in today’s interconnected world. Whether it’s a lawyer working with urban planners or a doctor collaborating with policymakers, the ability to think beyond one’s immediate expertise often leads to better outcomes. These interdisciplinary skills make students better professionals, problem-solvers and collaborators.
Put the just back in justice: The Supreme Court needs reform
SOPHIA PERRAULT Editorial Page Editor
In less than a week, President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated and start his second presidency. Norm-busting presidencies like his often deal with new and interesting Supreme Court cases. Given Trump’s tendency to expand executive power, it will be up to the court to decide if his actions are within the constitutional bounds of presidential power. With a second Trump presidency right around the corner, Americans will need to rely on the court to rise above partisan divides during these uncertain times and hand down decisions that clearly follow the law. Implementing updated ethics rules and term limits for justices help to ensure that the court stays an impartial harbinger of justice for America.
Prior to Trump’s second term, there have been issues with SCOTUS’ blatant partisanship. This was most evident with the Court’s unprecedented decision in Trump v. United States. In a May 2024 piece for the Brookings Institution, Richard Lempert, a professor at the University of Michigan Law school, discussed the problematic nature of the decision, explaining the lack of constitutional backing and how it left many details unclear. Lempert clearly states that partisan politics could be part of the motivation behind this decision. Chief Justice John Roberts authored a lackluster majority opinion, indicating to the public that the court’s argument was weak and that partisan affiliation ultimately led to the decision.
It certainly seems like there is an issue with partisanship on the Supreme Court.
While conservatives might applaud the current partiality, the Constitution does not. Judges, including justices, are supposed to be impartial. When they make decisions based on partisanship, justices subvert American democracy. The U.S. relies on impartial judges as a way to maintain a consistent legal framework. In order to protect our constitutional democracy, Supreme Court Justices must be held accountable.
Right now, it seems like justices’ partisan leanings might lead to decisions based not on the Constitution, but instead on party affiliation. This could lead to cases that continue to overturn precedent, specifically regarding recess appointments and executive privilege — which allow the president to fill vacancies in federal office without confirmation when they arise during a Senate recess and withhold certain information from the legislative and judicial branches.
In fact, Trump posted on Truth
Social that, “any Republican Senator seeking the coveted leadership position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments.” The former president wants to use recess appointments to bypass the confirmation process, and Senate leadership would agree by not holding pro-forma sessions. One can assume that he will use this bully pulpit tactic to push through some of his more controversial cabinet picks. However, depending on how the president-elect uses recess appointments, legal precedent could be revisited.
The National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning decision offered some rules regarding recess appointments. When this decision was originally handed down, there was a debate of whether the recesses must be intersession or intrasession. SCOTUS decided not to rule on that issue, and kept it open for future determination.
The current SCOTUS may answer this question during Trump’s presidency. If he uses a recess appointment during an intersession recess to push through his cabinet nominations without authorization from the Senate, a third party could sue. Then, the court would finally rule on the inter versus intra situation.
Based on the current partisanship of the court, there is a high chance they would decide this question using partisan politics instead of the Constitution. This could lead to new rules that would aid Trump in his use of recess appointments and make it easier for him to circumvent the confirmation process with his controversial cabinet picks.
Another case that could be revisited is United States v. Nixon, more commonly known as the Watergate case. In the case, the court ruled that presidents cannot use executive privilege to cover information sought after for criminal proceedings. Recently, Trump claimed executive privilege to get out of offering information regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol. In that situation, SCOTUS blocked his bid to deny information. Nonetheless, Trump has not shied away from using executive privilege, and he could wrongfully claim executive privilege again.
The SCOTUS ruling blocking Trump’s use of executive privilege came before the immunity ruling. It is quite unclear how Watergate’s precedent will intersect with the immunity decision, and as the Washington, D.C. District Court releases more information, SCOTUS could oversee a new case about the intersection of Watergate and Trump v. United States. With the current partisan makeup of the court, Watergate’s precedent could be overturned.
Going forward, the court needs to be insulated from partisan politics. SCOTUS is meant to be
an impartial body that relies on the Constitution to inform their decisions. To insulate the court, updated ethics rules and term limits need to be put in place. Stronger rules would stop the use of favors and gifts that sway justices’ decisions. For instance, Justice Clarence Thomas has taken gifts and luxury trips from Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican donor. Justice Samuel Alito has also taken luxury trips from billionaires, like Paul Singer. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have been seen at Republican events, rubbing shoulders with prominent right-wing figures and politicians. Obviously, there are clear ethical issues with the current court.
New guidelines could stop these trips and gifts and make it harder for justices to attend outrightly partisan events. After all, taking trips from billionaire Republican donors doesn’t make it seem like decisions are purely based on constitutional reasoning. Being at closed door events hosted by or affiliated with a certain party doesn’t help either. Right now, it seems like the court is an arm of the Republican Party, which new ethics rules could end. The Supreme Court’s average age is 64 years old. Three justices are more than 70 years old, and as they get older, their mental capacity to make impartial decisions seems to decline. With term limits in place, certain justices could be removed from the court. While Trump would still get to appoint new justices, there could be fresher minds that might be more likely to rely on the Constitution itself and not partisanship. Lempert even comments on how Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s concurring opinion for the immunity decision outlined a resolution that dispelled partisan politics claims and gave Trump what he wanted. It isn’t much, but it’s at least something that could allow for a more impartial court. The hardest part of implementing both term limits and ethics rules will be getting them through Congress. Currently, both the House of Representatives and Senate have a Republican majority. It’s unlikely that anything to protect the court from political pressures will actually get passed. Moreover, the president can use the veto power. New legislation would need to have overwhelming support in both chambers of Congress in order to override a more than likely veto. It’s unlikely that any legislation introducing ethics rules and term limits would get passed with a Republican trifecta. Before Biden released his plan for Supreme Court reform in July, Trump posted on Truth Social and said Democrats are, “calling for an illegal and unconstitutional attack,” on the court. Nonetheless, ethics rules and term limits aren’t actually unconstitutional.
LEAH HUANG Opinion Columnist
Lara Ringey/DAILY
LINDSEY SPENCER Opinion Columnist
On Jan. 20, Presidentelect Donald Trump will take on the executive mantle for the second time. After a tumultuous election cycle filled with criminal convictions and candidate dropouts, the United States has ended up in the same place it was eight years ago: with Trump in office and millions of people grappling with what to do next. It’s easy to ask where the nation went wrong this past November. Reelecting a now-convicted felon and comparatively unsuccessful president to the Oval Office was an unwise decision for the future of the American people. His plans for the economy are inept, his rhetoric on immigration flip-flops and his climate plans are dangerous. It’s difficult to imagine why 77 million voters chose him to be the leader of the free world. But one thing is true: America deserves what is coming these next four years.
The United States of America is, more than anything, defined by its people. In a country with over 340 million residents — of which three-quarters are over the age of 18 — the fact that a majority of eligible voters selected Donald Trump as their president means something. Additionally, Trump was the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote, a historic turning point for the American political conscience. America’s majoritarian principle, a beacon of the “consent of the governed,” made a fateful decision at the ballot box this last fall. A majority of Americans wanted him, so — by that simplistic logic — America deserves him.
The United States and its institutions abide by certain
America deserves Donald Trump
codes of conduct. They are founded upon mutual respect and individual responsibility, with an emphasis on professionalism and democracy. Trump — a convicted felon, sexual abuser and riot-inciter — is completely antithetical to these ideas.
Headlines and online postings galore have spread this news across the country, making it hard to believe that any citizen would be uninformed about how this former — and future — president behaved incongruently to the Constitution. Even still, he was reelected.
Donald Trump won’t only become president next Monday, but will once again become the manager of the Republican party. Republicans have also strayed from the principles they claim
to hold dear, and they too were rewarded. Republicans claim to value “common sense” and tradition, but their leader is nonsensical and unorthodox. The GOP reflects the nature of the American people, equivocators who say they appreciate the goodness of what America can be — in reality, they are anything but.
In recent years, the American people have experienced a backslide in the practice of empathy and taking responsibility. As the rich get richer and people get sadder, an ideal nation would make political choices that can eliminate these hurdles. But, incidentally, we haven’t. Instead, we’ve elected a political figure and his lackeys who directly contribute to rising anxieties. The landslide victory
How Jimmy Carter’s legacy will shine in Trump’s America
Just three days before the start of 2025, and about two months after his 100th birthday, the country coped with the passing of former President Jimmy Carter. Carter will always be remembered as a trailblazer, serving as a devout public servant, and paving the way for a variety of contemporary political causes like climate awareness and human rights. Furthermore, his term came at a crucial time in the country’s history, where — much like today — there was a faltering sense of trust between the government and the American people.
Following a few years of political turmoil and controversy, the nation sought an individual who embraced the humility and transparency that had once been a staple of the office, and the country selected Carter. Now, as the country deals with many similar problems, the people have reelected Donald Trump to the Oval Office — an individual who lacks all the modesty and warmth that made Carter stand out 50 years ago.
During their respective campaigns, both Carter and Trump ran as D.C. outsiders, promising to serve as honest alternatives to a lying, fraudulent and out-of-touch establishment. While this might have been his promise at the start, his multiple impeachments, various court proceedings and flagrant disregard for general decorum have shown that Trump is not interested in honesty or humility, but rather in cutting corners to hoard power and aggrandize his ego.
Even before the start of his political career, Trump had long been condemned for his greedy character and morally dubious personality. But, his disregard for ethics took on a whole new
meaning after he launched his first campaign in 2015. Since then, the former president has frequently sowed doubt and fear amongst the populace by propagating lies and falsehoods. These methods have severely impacted the U.S. government’s credibility, leading many to feel as if the government no longer has their best interests in mind.
Trump’s perverse aversion to honesty and his attempts to weaponize the bureaucracy have led many to draw a comparison between Trump and another Republican president: Richard Nixon.
Nixon’s years as president were marked by constant bickering with the press, a gross overexertion of presidential authority and the large, looming shadow of the Watergate scandal, in which Nixon was discovered to have personally sent investigators to spy on his political opponents ahead of his reelection campaign. This exploded into one of the largest controversies in presidential history, and Nixon became the only president to resign as a result of an impeachment inquiry.
Much like Carter’s victory in 1976, Joe Biden’s 2020 victory offered the country a chance to reconcile with its lack of faith in government, and move past the anger and division that was a staple of Trump’s time in office. For a short time, it seemed like this was a real possibility. However, with Trump’s overwhelming victory last November, and distrust in the government still riding near an all-time high, it seems that the public has chosen to continue down Trump’s road of inflammatory rhetoric and divisive leadership style.
Many are quick to defend Trump’s character, arguing that his controversial nature is necessary for dealing with the federal government’s rampant corruption.
Although corruption is an issue, the consequences of his constant lying, aversion to ethical leadership and oftentimes illegal tactics will completely erode the already faltering relationship between the government and its people. This would threaten the mere survival of U.S. democracy, far outweighing the costs of a corrupted government.
Jimmy Carter was by no means the “perfect” president. In fact, he presided over a time when high inflation and some serious foreign policy blunders greatly impacted the nation’s well-being. However, his dedication to service through organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center helps illustrate his humility, selflessness and compassion, all traits which are exceedingly important in good leadership.
Carter’s good character and kind, ethical persona made him perfect for the daunting task of returning trust, honor and respect to an office that had been battered and bruised by controversy, crime and corruption.
As the country — and world at large — prepare for four more years of Trump, many will look back at Carter’s legacy to search for a point in time where the president was an idealistic reflection of the antiquated American longing for moral and ethical leaders. With this hunger for principled leadership, the American public shouldn’t be afraid to challenge the blatant disregard for American values normalized by Trump’s administration.
As the main representative of the United States, the president should be an ethical character who inspires humanity and compassion among his people and throughout the world. While Carter isn’t considered the “best” president, his 50 years of public service after his term aimed at protecting the average American surely makes him the greatest human to be president.
of Trump is a direct reflection of where our country currently stands, which is a state of selfishness and arrogance. We deserve this upcoming term because we — whether we like it or not — embody its leader’s qualities.
Democrats may attest that they are absolutely unlike Donald Trump, but it was their similarly self-serving tendencies that contributed to their defeat.
To start, President Joe Biden ran for a second term at the age of 81, then refused to drop out despite popular demand. Additionally, Democrats have failed to take accountability for their misguided campaign and have become a party of billionaire devotees. Vice President Kamala
paid particular attention to painting herself as Trump’s antithesis, focusing on who she wasn’t, not who she was. But, in some regards, it was difficult to separate the two. It could be unfair to say that all Americans deserve what is coming to them. People of Color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women and immigrants are all at great risk under a Trump presidency. But this deservedness is not confined to individual people and marginalized communities: It’s a symptom of America as a governing body, as a national collective. America has shown us what it really is — a forgetful, insensitive nation. We have failed to remember what Trump did to
tenure and refuse to acknowledge the damage he could do in his next.
This past November, America made a choice. And now, for the next four years, we will be forced to reckon with that decision. Whether it be those Republicans who voted in favor of a deceitful crook or those Democrats who failed to conduct a proper campaign, all of us must recognize that we have come to a crossroads in American history. Our collective inability to take the blame or recognize our severe lack of principle squanders any and all of our credibility. The first Trump presidency cost us the ideals America was founded upon, and we are no longer the country of promoting “general welfare” or protecting the republic. The inauguration doesn’t just signify the beginning of a new presidency, but also the start of a deep period of questioning. How did we get here, and where do we go next? We already know the answer to the first question: We’ve always been here. The United States, since its birth, has been a country dedicated to individual advancement at the expense of justice. The earliest Americans were focused on protecting themselves, not serving the will of the group. Trump is the embodiment of this unbecoming yet real American ideal. As to where we go next, we must understand this: We all did wrong, and there aren’t any immediate remedies to this dilemma. All we can do now is recognize that, at its core, America wanted and deserved this outcome. Donald Trump is a representation of our country’s past and present, but if we work to overcome the unconscious afflictions that brought us here,
Natasha Eliya/DAILY
MATEO ALVAREZ Opinion Columnist
MIKAELA LEWIS Statement Columnist
Each night the New York Rangers played, I could be found sitting in the basement between my brother and my dad, eyes fixed on the television screen. Each commercial break allotted for two minutes of mini sticks, and intermissions were reserved for a bubble hockey tournament. Those three hours every game day were almost ritualistic — everything was about hockey.
Obsessed with the sport, I spent my free time shooting at the garage door or playing 1 v. 1 against my older brother in the street. With each scrape of the wooden sticks against asphalt or an unpredictable ricochet of the ball, I craved what I envisioned to be the smooth feeling of my blades gliding across the ice. However, my mom was adamant that ice hockey — complete with contact and high risk of injury, played against boys rapidly outgrowing me — was not an option.
Growing up, I tried a plethora of sports, but never felt a particular attachment to any of them. In middle school, my parents had the brilliant idea to try to get the knack for hockey out of my system by signing me up for field hockey — close enough, right? Field hockey was just too choppy: running hunched over, gripping the short stick, fighting to dribble the ball in tall grass. Again, I hankered to play on ice so I could soar.
With freshman year looming, I was pressured to choose between soccer, cross country or field hockey to be my fall sport. That same summer I had my 14th birthday and my mom asked what I wanted. All I begged for was a few hockey lessons just to see if my zeal was legitimate. After ample convincing, my parents begrudgingly agreed to sign me up for a single lesson. I was dressed in my brother and neighbor’s hand-me-down gear complete with rental skates and a stick six inches too tall for me, but I was dressed like a hockey player. Even before touching the ice, I was beaming as my mom began to realize the can of worms she opened. Like a toddler learning to walk, I skated off-balance and stumbled over my own feet.
An ode to the PWHL
Matthew Prock/DAILY
She and my other favorite players — Hilary Knight, Megan Keller and Amanda Kessel — signed that jersey. Coyne even scribed a message to me on my ‘Go USA’ poster: “To Mikaela, dream big!” The heartfelt gesture brought upon a wave of dejection. Hanging on my bedroom wall, the message taunted me. The dream of pursuing professional hockey never seemed attainable in my girlhood and suddenly my ripe age of 15 felt ancient. So what was there left to dream for? Watching Knight and Keller joke around reminded me how I desperately wanted to experience the camaraderie that accompanies team sports. Briefly, I saw that opportunity when a teammate’s dad invited me to try out for a girl’s team. The excitement for building bonds with teammates subsided due to the inaccessibility of programs intended for women.
I am extremely lucky that I have had to pack up my entire house and move every two years throughout my childhood. Not many people view this as “lucky,” and there have been many occasions where people have regarded this experience sympathetically, including my own mother. My father, however, whose ever-changing career has been the reason for each of these moves, has never sympathized with me over it, so I have learned to do the same. As I consistently navigated new schools, states and friendships, I learned that luck isn’t about ease, but rather about finding growth in challenges.
The constant moves were extremely upsetting at first. I would spend two years making myself comfortable, finding new friends and settling into a new house and school — then one random day, I would be told to start packing. Over time, these “random” days became something to expect whenever I hit the two year mark in a new town, and with each move, I learned to appreciate my time more in each place.
One of my hardest moves was from South Dakota to New York. It happened in the middle of my third grade year, when I had not yet realized that these moves would continue. I thought the friends that I had made would be around forever. I exchanged wallet-sized school photos with addresses scribbled on the back with my friends, and we promised to never stop writing letters to each other. By the time I had
However, in the reflection of the glass panes lining the rink, I caught a glimpse of myself wearing my mismatched gear and felt overwhelmed with pride. There was no denying that my love for hockey was allencompassing. Every minute of daylight after school was burned practicing in the driveway, evident from the hundreds of dents in my parent’s garage door. When the sun was down, I was engrossed in watching the NHL network. Not without hesitation, my parents succumbed to my relentless request. I wouldn’t have to go through the motions of soccer or cross country or field hockey — I could try ice hockey. There was just one stipulation that set off alarm bells in my head: despite enrolling in a co-ed league, I was the sole girl.
Countering my excitement to play, my first season playing hockey uncovered glaring disparities between myself and my teammates. The vast disconnect left me othered. It was apparent with each instance that the coaches referred to the team as ‘boys’ or ‘guys’ and then awkwardly tag on ‘and girl’ when we locked eyes. Although my
unpacked my boxes into my new New York bedroom, the letters had already slowed, and I realized how fleeting friendships can be.
My friends didn’t stick, but I got to choose a new color to paint my bedroom. I would have to relearn concepts at each new school in every new state, but at least my sewing machine would always be waiting for me when I got home — wherever that was. The weather patterns changed, but I found a best friend in my brother. There were plenty of losses, but I learned to find comfort in the little things that stayed the same. The one thing that stuck with me through each town was my hobbies. No matter where I lived, I knew I could still lay in bed with a book, still go on a run, still sew a new makeup bag or pajama set. When I moved to Pennsylvania at the start of seventh grade, my mom signed me up for the middle school cross country team. Practice started two weeks before school did, so on my first day, I already had a group of friends to eat lunch with and to accompany me to unfamiliar classes. I immediately felt like I belonged, due completely to the hobby of running that I shared with 10 other girls.
My hobbies weren’t just a comfort to me — they were a conversation starter with others. They became a bridge to new relationships and showed me how to be confident in what I love.
I found it easy to make friends with people who shared similar interests, and regardless of the town I lived in, I discovered a close friend in a sewing class or on a cross country team. I was content with this all through grade school, actively becoming
ardor was soured by the unequal treatment and lack of sisterhood, nothing would prevent me from playing the sport I loved.
The women’s locker room at my home rink was really a gear closet with a bench, although the 4-by8 foot room had a strange way of feeling large when no one was there to accompany me. Through the wall separating us, I could hear my teammates chatting and laughing ahead of our games. Each game day, one of the several male coaches would break my silence when the Zamboni was wrapping up to summon me for the game plan. Walking into the boys’ locker room, fully dressed with my water bottle in hand, I felt twenty pairs of eyes on me. I would drop my head and grab a seat by the door, before peeking at our head coach for instruction. I could feel the stares return when my name was announced starting at center. Anything my teammates could do, I could too — win faceoffs, score goals, even lay hits. But despite my ability on the ice, I could never be one of them, a fact underscored by my solo walk in the other direction after the final whistle sounded. To add insult to
Finding
friends with people I considered to be almost clones of myself.
My hobbies helped me to achieve a feeling of stability, but they also helped connect me with others, something that became essential when I was planning my big move to college. This past summer, though, I had a lot of time to reflect on how limiting relationships that blossomed primarily from hobbies tend to be.
Having friends who are similar to me is nice, but it ostracized me from relationships with incredible people who were not like me at all. I found too much comfort in familiarity, in the friends that I knew I could always make.
I was lucky to easily make friends through the hobbies I was comfortable with, but I knew that I had to learn to branch out in college. I was lucky to have people who wanted to participate in the same events as me, but this comfort in familiarity prevented me from meeting new people at said events. I knew I had to go to a college that wasn’t just high school 2.0, but this time, I wanted to find people who I could learn from, not just share interests with. I was very lucky, but I had so many more changes ahead of me.
Starting college felt like yet another uprooting in my life, a familiar feeling from my childhood. But this time, it wasn’t just about change. It was about growth. Moving to a new place of my own accord — rather than my father’s — helped me to reflect on my past moves and understand how much I have grown in the background of my life. I know now that I have so much more time to keep growing on my own.
injury, some of the teenage boys I played with truly disgusted me. Hearing how they spoke about women in my presence was disturbing, but having close friends on the team share what was said about me in my absence was especially jarring. To one older teammate, I wasn’t viewed as a hockey player, but rather his prey for inappropriate sexual advances.
Then, the 2018 Winter Olympics commenced, proving to be a pivotal moment: my first time watching women’s hockey. I was an avid viewer starting from the preliminaries all the way to the gold medal game. Set in Pyeongchang, the final game began just past midnight eastern time. It was tied through all 60 minutes of regulation. Even the 20-minute overtime period wasn’t enough to break the stalemate. Now, past 3 a.m. on a school night in the sixth round of the shootout, Jocelyne Lamoureux dekes and scores to end it — an image that would soon be memorialized in a poster above my bed.
I witnessed history as team USA took down team Canada to bring home gold for the first
time in two decades. Although miserably tired at school, I was thrilled to wear my Kendall Coyne jersey — custom-made, of course, as women’s jerseys were not being produced for retail in 2018. No one in my high school freshman classes knew — or cared — that team USA had just won gold in hockey simply because it was women’s.
Toward the end of 2019, I begged my dad to drive us to Hartford to see USA and Canada face off in the flesh in the Rivalry Series. With my Coyne jersey on, we made the three hour trip north. Knowing what this meant to his teenage daughter, he surprised me with seats on the glass directly behind the net. Minutes into the game, Alex Cavallini deflected a puck out of bounds and into my hands.
To this day, that puck still sits on display in my childhood bedroom.
After the game, a few USA players were hanging around the rink and I got to show Kendall Coyne my jersey — or her jersey. The surprise and joy on my idol’s face when I showed the back of my jersey made the additional fee to customize it well worth it.
After three days of tryouts, I made the team. Unfortunately, living in rural New Jersey, the nearest rink with a girl’s team was 45 minutes away, not to mention away games hosted by other teams in the league were up to three hours from home. Sadder still, I was still more than a year away from getting my drivers license. Each of the several 90-minute round trips for practice plus weekend games as far as Long Island every week did not appeal to my parents. To appease them, I stayed put on my original team, still surrounded by boys. Hockey was created for them and I remained the outcast.
Regardless of the slew of systemic issues that made me want to quit my favorite sport, women’s hockey is becoming more accessible. Instead of waiting four years for the next Winter Olympics, I can just flip on the TV to a Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game. While Detroit does not yet have a team of its own, Little Caesars Arena hosted a matchup between Ottawa and Boston in March 2024. When the game was sealed by Hilary Knight’s shootout goal, I looked down at her signature proudly displayed on the front of my jersey.
My story is an extreme version of something that every college student has faced: learning to adapt when things change. Life will change, and so will we, and we are so lucky to experience that.
I moved into Couzens Hall one day before my roommate, whom I met on Instagram. She played hockey, soccer and lacrosse. She was from Maine. We had very little in common. This was a good thing. I got lucky. There was not a single person on the floor of my dorm who moved to Ann Arbor from Pennsylvania, like me. I got lucky. Every person I met during the first week had a different prospective major. I got lucky. I knew no one. I had so much to learn. I got so lucky. My closest friend is in the College of Engineering whereas
I am in the School of Education.
She has two sisters; I have one brother. She is from Maine; I am from Pennsylvania. Her hobbies could not be more different than mine. She lives two doors down from me. I am so lucky. The best friendships aren’t always the easiest ones. People don’t need to be identical to belong together. One of my favorite memories from the first weeks of school was making a birthday cake for a boy who lived in the room next to mine. We were not particularly close, but I recognized how hard it would be to experience your first birthday away from your family and the people you hold closest. Everyone on my floor sat in the hallway and sang and ate cake while we compared our hometown grocery stores. I realized that even though we all came from
incredibly different backgrounds, we all shared the same nervous excitement about being somewhere new. New beginnings are so important — not just for me, but for everyone. It is so easy to feel like you are completely out of place when you experience something new. It is so easy to avoid challenging yourself out of fear of an uncomfortable outcome. It is so easy to seek comfort in familiar faces when in a sea of thousands of people. But living easy is not always the best way to live. Branching out is difficult, but it is necessary. Trying new things can be scary, but they will bring you so much farther. It’s hard to find luck in a situation that you don’t feel lucky to be in, but it’s easy to find if you have the right mindset.
RIYA KOMMINENI Statement Columnist
Three days before Jan. 1, I laid down in bed and stared at my ceiling. As the blades of my fan spun around, slightly shaking the room, I thought about what my New Year’s resolutions would be for 2025.
Every December, during an inevitable period of boredom during winter break, I devise a list of unrealistic goals for myself for the upcoming year. Last year, when I appeared to be at the height of a health kick, I wrote down “practice Ayurvedic medicine” and “do not eat processed foods under any circumstances.” I remember rushing to the Whole Foods health aisle, scouring the shelves for ashwagandha, black seed oil and brahmi. Those three-month supply supplement bottles have been sitting on my desk shelf for almost a year now, mostly untouched.
When I was 16 years old, I wrote that for 2023 I would “work on self-awareness.” When I told my mother, she was perplexed.
“Do you think you need to be more self-aware or less selfaware?” she asked me.
“I think it depends on the situation,” I’d told her. “Sometimes I think I’m too self-aware, but other times I definitely need to be more self-aware.”
She’d sighed at that and wished me the best of luck.
This year, however, I am attempting to be more realistic with my resolutions. I have come up with 15 practical goals for myself, all of which I think are relatively achievable. I tried to be specific with each one, so as to not be misguided by the vagueness of a goal. I decided to focus on my personal, academic, physical and financial well-being. I am going to try to read 30 books, call my grandmother weekly, finish a screenplay by the end of the school year, walk 10,000 steps a day and put half the money I earn each month in a Roth IRA or an S&P 500 index fund.
I shared my 2025 resolutions with a few of my friends and they all agreed that my goals seemed achievable and realistic. Then,
Counting down each second made the bird’s chirping morph from a musical composition to individual rhythmic beats: slow, steady and still. I clenched the brown rayon of my two-day-old batik, embroidered with oblique stripes. Each pattern was silkthreaded; they swayed under the sunlit rays beaming from a stained window. Or perhaps I was just imagining movement in hopes that something would cut through the ripples outside. That the water encasing my home — burying us deeper in isolation — would be sliced by a sliver of rescue.
Dawn at 5:30 a.m. Jakarta, Indonesia. June 15, 2016. Day eighteen with toasted pistachios.
“The bake on them is different today. Couldn’t use too much energy considering we are limited on generator gas. Still managed to make them slightly golden, however.”
My father spoke serenely despite the intensity flickering within his almond eyes. Our conversation, parted by a temporary pause, left a crevice of tension that permeated through the pistachio fragrance and the atmospheric humidity pressed against my cheeks. He continued.
“I received a local alert; the flood is progressively subsiding and barricades have been installed to temporarily hold off the dam water. It’s not been the most effective but we have some resources. Enough, at least, to last us a few more days.”
“No one’s coming to help us.
Right?” I hesitantly asked.
The looming dread of hearing that persistent reminder of “soon” hung in the air. Threaded with a long chorus of silence, the distorted radio tunes anchored us back to reality, jolting a half-hearted response from my father.
STATEMENT
New Year’s resolutions: The ritual of trying
they shared a few of their goals with me. One of them resolved to listen to one new album a week and spend less time on social media.
Another said she was going to make the dean’s list and try to pass the Bechdel test at least once this year. My best friend said she wasn’t going to have any resolutions this year besides attending a Corepower yoga class twice a week.
“I’m not even going to make a list because my goals change every two hours. There’s no way I can keep up with all of them — I’m just setting myself up for failure,” she said to me over a text message.
In a sense, she is right. Every January, millions of people across the world, myself included, tell ourselves that this will be the year we establish order in our lives. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we have the willpower to withstand our wants. We are supposedly making a lifestyle change that will make us better, more satisfied people. Resolutions are steps on the path to self-fulfillment and realization. The little changes we make in our lives will ultimately
“They will come soon. I promise.”
There it was again. A neverending chain of false promises.
As the days progressed, my father’s utterances wavered more and more, mimicking the involuntary motion of my cracked lips as I chewed on a brittle pistachio chunk. We sat only thirty centimeters apart at the dining table, a slight gap between the raven leather chairs, yet the distance extended beyond any canyon’s depth as hope slowly slipped away. Over time, I could tell my father’s distress was suppressed under recurring “we’ll be fine” phrases, just as my mother’s blank stares signaled hopelessness.
I was gravitating toward a pit of memories. The 2013 Jakarta flood. A momentary flashback of raging waters reminding me how the fragility of life often prevailed where darkness would be the vivid and hope would be the vague. For throughout these weeks of being surrounded by roaring currents, I was a pistachio. Frail and fragile, vulnerable to everything but the stillness I preserved. I was an olive green nut cradled in tan walls, swimming in a ready-to-eat package on a shelf of Wonderful’s Roasted & Salted Pistachios in an empty grocery aisle. Anguished as feet passed by, hands swayed across and the expiration date inched closer. Waiting for a pair of hands to crack open my two-tan shells. Hoping that a response team would emerge from the distant waters. Praying that a light laid at the end of this darkening tunnel.
Ironically, as much as Jakarta’s flooding isolates people, its prevalence is not an isolated problem. No one-size-fits-all solution of simply sending more response teams, more emergency resources and more promises of investing in dam management will suffice. The flooding’s roots are grounded in the effects of
help us become better versions of ourselves.
Yet, we rarely keep our resolutions. Research suggests that only 9% of Americans complete the resolutions they’ve made and 23% of people give up by the end of the first week, and I am no exception. Despite it hardly being 2025, I have already begun lapsing on a few of my resolutions.
I’ve promised myself that I will walk 10,000 steps a day, which I usually achieve in Ann Arbor because of the walkability of the city. But during winter break, when I’m at home in Dallas, this seems like a Sisyphean task. Why would I change out of my pajamas and into my running shoes to mindlessly stroll around my neighborhood? As much as I adore the fresh January air and the opportunity to observe my neighbors and their happenings, the comfort of my house, where I can watch television and doze off on the couch, beckons me more. It’s an inconvenience for me to change my routine to accomplish this goal of mine. For me, and likely many others, resolutions are
unattainable because they require an actual change within ourselves. I have to force myself to overcome the wonted comfort of my current life. I need to put forth a sustained effort to improve myself. That’s just too much to ask when I could easily continue sustaining myself the way I always have. What leads so many resolutions to fail, I think, is this desire to remain in the placidity of our lives. From my own resolutions and the ones that have been shared with me, it’s clear that most of them are fairly attainable. At most, they require small lifestyle changes that ask of us a few hours of our weeks, like promising to go to yoga bi-weekly or journaling every night. Yet, it is so hard to do these things. It’s not the actual activity itself that’s difficult — I thoroughly enjoy the static repetition of Vinyasa flows in a dimmed studio after a long day — it’s that I have to go and actually do it myself. Our minds are fickle things: they tell us to give into our senses, to skip out on what’s good for us, despite our subconscious knowing otherwise. With resolutions, we tell
ourselves that we always have more time, especially in the earlier months of January or February. I could start on my goal of walking 10,000 steps during winter break, when I have ample time to do so. But couldn’t I just start on it when I’m back at school, where I’m forced to walk anyways? How awful could it really be to push it off by a few days? I have the whole year, don’t I? It’s this mindset of thinking we always have more time that kills resolutions. The first time I skip walking, I think to myself “oh, it’s just this one time. I won’t do it again.” The next time it happens, I think “it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I don’t walk. I’ve already missed it before and the year has just started.” And then I’ll taper off on this goal, telling myself each time that it’s fine if I miss one more day before I give up on the resolution all together in the next few weeks. And when I do give up on these resolutions, I’ll tell myself that it was inevitable. I’ll say it was an unrealistic goal for myself and make excuses on why I couldn’t do it. I’ll cast them as
silly promises I make to myself each year, as a game to see how long I’d really last before I give up. But really, it’s me coping with my own inertia, my own lack of action. I know very well that I could have followed through on my resolutions. But I’ll probably let my senses win, as they do every year. Yet, despite the fact that I recognize the inherent failure that comes with new year’s resolutions, I will continue to make resolutions for myself every year. I don’t necessarily think I’m setting myself up for failure. Instead, I find it somewhat admirable that I know what I need to improve in myself. It’s about the ritual of making a resolution, the naive optimism of my December-self thinking I can do better, than about the resolution itself. And though I never complete all of my resolutions, I try to, at least for a while. For a brief period, I try to better myself, as do many others. There lies a genuine earnestness in our collective drive to do better, and that should remain year after year, even if we give up eventually.
rapid urbanization: a country walking the fine line between the remnants of poverty and industrial development. When infrastructural progress is localized in central Jakarta, the capital’s coastal outskirts often fall to the unwatched threats of land subsidence and poor drainage systems. 2024 was a testament to this overlooked phenomenon and an indication that struggles faced a decade ago can amplify in reach, rippling towards greater communities and displacing extensive families. As tidal floods continue to sweep Sunda Kelapa, dominating North Jakarta’s seaports, environmental sustainability and climate concerns have resurfaced local conversations. Local soon evolved into national, as governments began to increasingly shed light on Jakarta’s rural challenges. Spanning from east to west, these conversations have woven diverse experiences through a string of social justice. They created a social
spirit seeking to renew the nation’s stronghold of political intervention for the climate by merging the stories of the people in a united voice.
Jakarta’s floods may have started as a fight for survival. But now they are a fight for rights. A fight for life. A testimony that cannot be spoken by one, but must be voiced by many. These revelations first started to flow as I was cleaning up after that morning’s pistachio breakfast, 8:00 a.m. now striking on the clock.
I lowered a tissue onto the pan, as pistachio fragments latched onto the sheet, forming an interlocking pattern of crumbs. I observed the chain intently, its textured surface against the burnished layer of the paper towel, its dynamic shades against the white of the tissue: light green, light brown and tan, all harmonizing in collectiveness.
In the spur of that moment, I truly realized life was not designed for the alone. The Wonderful’s box of roasted and salted pistachios contained others; hundreds of
pistachios emitting parallels of light green, brown and tan hues. Though uncertainty swarmed, we were interconnected by faith, enclosed in one box, purposed for one life. We were conjoined by the continuous anticipation for a pair of hands to arrive, for two fingers to unlock liberty as they open our shells, for the abrupt diversion in the tranquil flood to emerge.
Acknowledging that humans are social creatures may seem selfexplanatory. Yet, its importance is often overshadowed by competition, pitting people to fall prey to the bystander effect and take a stand only when it benefits themselves. Jakarta’s flooding has shown me that we are all humans in need of one another, residing in a space where community supersedes our ability to individually fend for ourselves. It is pressing instances like these — when life is literally on the line — that humanity’s strength is precisely tested. And there it was. After eighteen days, cradled in my decaying
pistachio shell, silence was sliced by hope.
I clutched the tissue, reobserving the shaded tones that evolved from streaks into a homogenous blur of colors. Time briefly stopped, as a crescendo of voices arose from downstairs with the faint sound of boat propellers that trailed in the distance.
“Akhirnya, mereka datang! (Alas, they’re here!),” yelled my sister from below. Her footsteps becoming faint while mine gained momentum.
I weaved through the couches toward a window, hearing a muted crack as I anxiously clenched my palm into a fist. A grey boat was chopping through the surface of the waves, the brown water lapping inconsistently in its wake. Liberty flowed through the atmosphere as I pulled back the pleated curtains. The birds’ melodic chirps became soothing again, reverting back to their musical composition. The silhouettes on the boat gestured their arms emphatically to indicate that aid was on its way. The pair of hands we anticipated was here to hoist the lid of the Wonderful’s box of roasted and salted pistachios; the lid that confined hundreds, similar to me, encapsulated in a situation that relied on faith. Amidst a destructive, isolated and unjust world, I gained a glimpse of hope in humanity, beautifully echoing the symphony of life.
In the heart of my palm lay a pistachio shell, golden-tan in the radiance of afternoon sunlight, shattered into pieces. The breeze swept each fragment away as the somber figurines on the polymer boat became clearer. I envisioned two fingers gripping the tan walls that surrounded me, cracking it open gently as my olive skin became exposed: a pistachio, bare without its shell.
For I now know, not anticipate, that the pair of hands are here — that within life is also hope.
TIFFANY SUDIJONO Statement Columnist
Caroline Guenther/DAILY
Emma Sortor/DAILY
Rather than coming out with something to prove, the No. 20 Michigan men’s basketball team walked in disheveled. Experiencing their first Big Ten loss just three days prior, the Wolverines came in lacking any aptitude to avoid their second-straight disappointment.
But if Michigan has learned anything this season, it’s that graduate center Vlad Goldin is its anchor.
“Vlad Goldin, man, he’s a spectacular teammate and even better player,” graduate guard Nimari Burnett said. “He’s relentless on both ends of the floor. Offensively, he’s hard to stop, obviously. And guys didn’t think he can shoot and he shows you, I can step out and shoot threes as well. So he’s definitely a huge weapon for us, and he makes everybody else’s jobs easy on both ends of the floor. And he’s the reason why we’re a really good team.”
The Wolverines began the game a mess, then their 7-foot-1 leading scorer’s ability to produce from all over the court stabilized their offense and powered them past a lethargic start. After Gold-
in’s gargantuan 31 points pulled it into a close contest, Michigan (14-4 overall, 6-1 Big Ten) ultimately avoided another upset, defeating Northwestern (11-7, 2-5) in overtime, 78-74.
The Wolverines began the game a far cry from the “really good team” that Burnett alluded to — the one that started the conference slate 5-0. It took the Wolverines over three minutes to make a basket. And before they made a second field goal exactly five minutes later, they opened the game an abysmal 1-for-13, while missing all seven attempts from deep.
Then the ball found itself in Goldin’s hands. Though he usually grounds Michigan by imposing himself in the paint on both ends of the court, he’s shown the ability to hit from deep throughout the season. And in this moment, that’s where the Wolverines needed him to pull the offense back together.
Over two-and-a-half minutes, Goldin nailed three-consecutive shots from up top to give the Wolverines a narrow 19-18 lead. His trio of triples didn’t quite whip Michigan’s offense into form, as its shooting clips came in under 30% from both the field and deep in the first half. But the Wolver-
ines still slugged out the remainder of the half to go into the locker room down 35-30 — well within reach for Goldin to again pull them back.
“Vlad does a lot for us, and now he’s knocking in free throws and the threes early when we were struggling to get anything going,” Michigan coach Dusty May said. “In theory, it loosened them up. The one thing I was disappointed in is we’re a team that likes to get out in the game to open up. We don’t really want to be in a bunch of wrestling matches. And for most of the game, we played in a wrestling match.”
For a while, the Wolverines continued to let Goldin tussle down low. Just 12 seconds into the second half on the first possession, he hit a dunk. Moments later, junior guard Tre Donaldson connected with Goldin for an emphatic alley-oop and 42-40 lead.
Just 45 seconds before the 16-minute mark, Northwestern called a timeout, now aware Michigan’s offense was going to be what it has been all season — and the game wasn’t going to remain a “wrestling match.”
Goldin started to frequent the charity stripe, as the Wildcats struggled to stop him from turning his attention back to the interior. Instead of Northwestern building off a 3-pointer that put them up 61-58 with five minutes to play, Michigan fed the paint and Goldin converted a threepoint play to tie it back up. Goldin made the slow, messy start a moot point. Tied with a minute to play, the Wolverines didn’t need to be in perfect form, Goldin allowed them to just need a few final shots. Junior guard Roddy Gayle Jr. found a lane and drove for a two-point lead which eventually paved the way for an overtime with both teams
Michigan shows promise at Windy City Invitational
This past weekend, the No. 4 Michigan men’s gymnastics was offered a glimpse at what its conference competition would be with the matchup against Illinois at the Windy City Invitational. Despite losing out on four events, the Wolverines still showed that they’re ready to make a name for themselves in the Big Ten. Michigan (2-1) lost the meet to Illinois (1-0), with a final score of 321.700-316.600. Although The Wolverines didn’t do enough to bring home the win, Michigan put in a strong effort taking two event titles on the high bar and parallel bar, in addition to five podium finishes. With freshman making debuts and veterans taking charge, the Wolverines showed the depths of talent that this team holds.
This early-season event allowed the Wolverines to find areas for growth and foster positive team culture for the rest of the season. These events sparked camaraderie and an understand-
ing of each other’s skills, especially for freshmen Aaronson Mansberger and Charlie Larson who made their debuts at this invitational — Michigan hopes to take lessons from the loss.
“I think right now I can see a lot of greatness in the team. Some of the freshmen have never competed but I see big things coming for them,” Michigan coach Yuan Xiao said. “Robert Noll did great leading the team on the high bar, a strong sign for this team. Even though we are still the underdog going into the season we are pushing for greatness to become the top dog.”
High bar was the strongest event for the Wolverines with the team earning a score of 54.950, beating the fighting Illini’s 51.150. Junior Robert Noll brought in a first-place finish and improve his score from his past performance in the season opener. He was dominant in the event, bolstering Michigan’s proficiency on the high bar.
“Going to the high bar, all I’m really thinking about is the kind of corrections I have to fix and focus on. I’m not really worried
about the score,” Noll said. “So I just think about little cues here and there and then whatever happens happens.”
Noll showed confidence and demonstrated that he is a strong leading force for his team. His leadership carried through to younger athletes, including youngster Mansberger who made his debut on the pommel horse, placing second with a score of 14.450. The Wolverines look to build on their success and cultivate a cohesive, driven team dynamic that can carry them through the rest of the season.
“I had a lot of fun being with the team, especially in a new environment,” Mansberger said.
“Things were not going our way. I had to center myself and show that no one affects my routine except for me. So I set the focus on my routine and went out and did my job.”
Michigan also demonstrated significant improvement in other events, showcasing its potential for growth as the season progresses. Sophomore Logan McKeown stood out on the parallel bars, earning the event title with a score of 14.350, marking a 0.600-point improvement from the season opener. Sophomore Akshay Puri closed out still rings for the Wolverines with a score of 13.650 to finish in second. His score improved by 0.750 points compared to the season opener.
“Before the meet, we talked about team goals,” Puri said.
“One of mine was sticking my dismount and achieving that was huge for team morale. Every great team faces challenges like this and climbing those mountains is what makes a team truly great.”
65 apiece. After a pair of drives from Gayle and Burnett, they went back to Goldin for an
Upperweight dominance leads Michigan to first Big Ten win
A week ago, when No. 10 heavyweight graduate Josh Heindselman stepped onto the mat for the Michigan wrestling team’s meet against Maryland, he didn’t realize the dual’s outcome was riding on a bonuspoint win. The Wolverines were down by three team points going into the final bout and, due to tiebreaker criteria favoring the Terrapins, they needed bonus points to secure victory.
But Heindselman wasn’t aware. So while he claimed a decision win against his opponent, Michigan fell to Maryland in its Big Ten opener.
One week later, against the Wolverines’ next conference opponent, Heindselman stepped onto the mat with last week’s results fueling his mindset after he’d just told Michigan coach Sean Bormet he would score a tech fall within the first period. And that’s exactly what he did.
Heindselman’s dominant victory was the exclamation point on No. 15 Michigan’s (4-1 overall, 1-1 Big Ten) bounceback win against Northwestern (2-4, 0-3). Despite a slow start, the Wolverines surged past the Wildcats, winning all of their bouts after intermission to deliver a 26-10 victory.
Michigan didn’t start the dual off with the same dominance it ended with, as Northwestern earned a 14-0 major decision win over the Wolverines in the 125pound bout. And in the next bout, at 133 pounds, a new face was still adjusting to the weight class for Michigan. After a knee injury ended NCAA All-American
graduate Dylan Ragusin’s season, redshirt sophomore Nolan Wertanen was left not only with big shoes to fill, but also a big adjustment as he had originally been wrestling at 125 pounds. Taking over for Ragusin a week ago, Wertanen was pinned in his weight class debut against Maryland. Against the Wildcats, Wertanen lost again, but by a much slimmer margin of 8-6.
Michigan finally got on the scoreboard at 141 pounds, with No. 11 sophomore Sergio Lemley’s major decision win over former-Wolverine Chris Cannon. While Lemley had a sense of familiarity wrestling a former teammate, that connection ultimately wasn’t a huge contributing factor to his mindset. By showing his offense early to score a first-period takedown and garnering a hefty riding time, Lemley gave a glimpse into how the Wolverines were rectifying their first-period scoring problems from last week.
“The guys put in a good week of just some key work in coming off last Friday,” Bormet said. “We definitely are moving in the right direction. Much better fight and start to these matches tonight in that first period.”
In the 149-pound bout that followed, redshirt freshman Dylan Gilcher maintained his defense throughout three periods that culminated in a last-second takedown to push the matchup into overtime. In the tiebreaker rounds, Gilcher secured a tight victory through riding time advantage. Michigan dropped the last bout before intermission, with No. 15 graduate Chase Saldate falling to No. 10 Trevor Chumbley in a 5-0 decision. While the Wolverines went
into intermission trailing Northwestern, that quickly and decisively changed. In fact, Michigan did not let a Wildcat get their hand raised again. After a slow start, the upperweights put the Wolverines back on track with three bonus-point and two ranked wins.
Redshirt freshman Beau Mantanona started the Wolverines off by narrowly claiming a 4-3 decision in the 165-pound matchup. At 174 and 184 pounds, redshirt seniors Joseph Walker and Jaden Bullock both wrestled strong matches, with Walker earning an 11-1 major decision and Bullock blanking his opponent 5-0. At 197 pounds, No. 3 graduate Jacob Cardenas extended his undefeated streak by capturing his 10th bonus-point victory of the season through scoring three takedowns and capturing four back points over No. 12 Evan Bates to earn a ranked win. And for the final bout of the night, Heindselman kept true to his word to Bormet. After scoring five takedowns, Heindselman scored one last go-behind takedown with 10 seconds to spare in the first period before rolling his opponent to obtain nearfall points and finishing the night early.
“(Heindselman) started fast, he just kept the pedal down hard and ended up getting it,” Bormet said. “So great to see that was his goal, and he set the pace to do it.” While Michigan had already clinched its victory going into the final bout, Heindselman didn’t let the team’s security hold him back. And topped off by Heindselman’s performance, Michigan cruised to its first Big Ten victory.
the month of November was impressive, especially for a team full of new faces still developing chemistry so early in the season. Despite losing five of their top-six point scorers from last year, the Wolverines looked as though they avoided the learningcurve phase fated to most reconstructed rosters. Two months later, it’s clear Michigan only delayed its rough stretch. That’s not to say the Wolverines are down for the count, because splitting a weekend with
the top-ranked team in the country is objectively a good outcome. But Michigan already showed what it could be back in November. It showed that every game is winnable, regardless of the opponent. That’s why ugly losses, a scoring drought lasting 247 minutes of play and inexplicable lapses are hard to swallow at this point in the season. When the Wolverines have won games in recent years, they’ve often attributed it to sticking to their “Michigan hockey identity.” And when they’ve lost? You guessed it. They didn’t stick to that “Michigan hockey identity.” After getting shut out twice against Minnesota at the begin-
ning of December, Michigan coach Brandon Naurato repeated the party line and expanded on what exactly the Wolverines’ identity is.
“We just didn’t play to our identity,” Naurato said Dec. 10. “We weren’t hard, we weren’t winning races and battles. We just got away from everything.”
The identity Michigan thinks it has right now certainly hasn’t been enough to keep it consistent throughout the season. Lately, it hasn’t even been enough across a weekend series. Since the series against the Golden Gophers in December, the Wolverines have split all four of their subsequent weekends. They look like they’re back in the same rut as last season
when they didn’t manage a conference sweep until February. But again, this year’s version of Michigan seemed to peak in November with three-straight sweeps, making their struggles since all the more frustrating.
“It’s almost like guys are trying to do too much to take care of the next guy, and then everyone’s out of rhythm and not connected because they’re over extending their hand,” Naurato said. “And during that time, we’ve completely gotten away from who we are.”
Being “out of rhythm and not connected” seems to be a common denominator for a lot of the Wolverines’ problems, beyond just this season.
For three-straight years, Michigan has fallen just one game short of playing for a national championship. It seems like the Wolverines should have figured it out by now. But for three-straight years, their roster has been turned on its head in the offseason, keeping them in a perpetual state of rebuilding.
The departure of the four topfive NHL Draft picks Michigan boasted in 2021, 2023 Hobey Baker-winning phenom Adam Fantilli, 2024 Big Ten Player of the year
Gavin Brindley and plenty other highly talented players have left massive voids for the Wolverines each year. Of course, Michigan has managed to fill the voids each time with new players who accrue
their own accolades. But the constant turnover has created an identity crisis. Roster turnover is par for the course at elite hockey schools, as the best players leave for the NHL after one or two years. Naurato does right by his players by helping them get to the next level when they are ready — even when it leaves his team in the lurch. That season-to-season roster turnover isn’t going away, so the Wolverines need a through line. They need their identity to transcend seasons. Right now it often doesn’t even transcend weekends.
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Alyssa Mulligan/DAILY
REKHA LEONARD Daily Sports Writer
ICE HOCKEY
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Freshmen push Michigan past Rutgers, 87-71
It wasn’t always pretty, but the Michigan women’s basketball team got the job done — thanks to its freshmen.
Overcoming some shaky stretches in the first half on Saturday, the Wolverines’ freshmen delivered to give Michigan (13-5 overall, 4-3 Big Ten) an 87-71 win over Rutgers (8-11, 0-8), combining for 56 points, 16 rebounds and 13 assists, while triggering scoring runs that kept the Scarlet Knights at arm’s length.
“What makes this team so special is that freshman class,” Wolverines coach Kim Barnes Arico said.
It took Michigan some time to knock off the rust against Rutgers, playing mistake-prone basketball
at the start of the first quarter. The Wolverines turned the ball over three times in the first five minutes, including a moving screen call and two live ball turnovers on fumbled passes, putting them down 13-10.
But Michigan’s freshmen quickly answered the call, catalyzing a 12-4 run to end the quarter and give the Wolverines a 10-point lead. Freshman guard Olivia Olson started things off with a 5-0 run of her own, hitting a midrange jumper before nailing a 3-pointer from the corner.
stretch, the Wolverines turned the ball over four times, which led to two Rutgers’ baskets, and the Scarlet Knights eventually cut their deficit to just two points.
Again Michigan’s freshman answered the call, sparking a 9-2 run that gave the Wolverines a ninepoint lead heading into the break.
the favor, the Wolverines forced Rutgers into seven turnovers of its own, scoring six points off of those turnovers. Late in the quarter, backto-back threes from senior guard Greta Kampschroeder and Olson, and then a layup from Hobbs, expanded Michigan’s lead to 16 points entering the fourth quarter.
Swords nailed a three on an assist from Olson to put Michigan up 31-26, and Holloway found fellow freshman guard Te’Yala DelFosse for a layup that put the Wolverines up seven points. Near the end of the half, Swords hit two free throws to put Michigan’s lead back up to nine.
In the course of four months, Juda, a graduate gymnast on the Michigan men’s gymnastics team, and Richard, a junior, traveled from Columbus to Texas to Minnesota and finally to Paris. During their travels, they placed second at the national championship where they also won individual accolades, competed at the U.S. National Championships, qualified for the Olympic Trials, made the Olympic team and won the U.S.’s first team medal in men’s gymnastics in sixteen years.
“Light work,” Juda jokingly told The Michigan Daily.
They’re now back in Ann Arbor after a summer and fall full of oncein-a-lifetime experiences. Richard took time after the Olympics to
To spur the scoring barrage, freshmen guards Syla Swords and Mila Holloway created opportunities for their teammates, with Swords finding Hobbs in the corner for a 3-pointer off of a pick and roll, and then Holloway pushed the pace to get junior guard Brooke Quarles Daniels an easy layup. Finally, Holloway capped off the run with a 3-pointer on an assist from Swords, and then hit two free throws, giving Michigan a 27-17 lead at the end of the quarter.
“(Our freshmen are) so unselfish,” Barnes Arico said.
“You could see that today by Mila Holloway having seven assists. They just make extra passes, they find each other. They play basketball the right way.”
However, some of the Wolverines’ mistakes persisted in the second quarter. Michigan started the quarter 0-for-6 from the field, and its only point in the first five minutes came on a free throw from Hobbs. During that
Again, when Rutgers came within striking distance, the Wolverines’ freshmen delivered a blow to give them a sizable lead.
Michigan’s play largely stabilized in the third quarter, limiting scoring droughts and Scarlet Knights’ scoring runs. Returning
“Anytime somebody makes a three like that, it just sparks up the whole court,” DelFosse said. “It makes us want to play defense and want to make more threes and keep moving the ball around.” In the final quarter, Swords went on a scoring spree of her own, tallying eight points, including two made threes, to protect the Wolverines’ sizable lead. On a day when Michigan needed them to, its freshmen stepped up to the challenge, providing enough to eventually propel the Wolverines to a blowout win, 87-71.
With Olympics in the rearview, Juda and Richard set sights on national championship
see Paris and travel, while Juda met two of his golf idols, Scottie Scheffler and Wyndham Clark. The two met plenty of other highprofile athletes, a trend which only continued on their next stop: the Gold Over America Tour. From September to November, the two traveled the country performing in front of adoring crowds alongside their Olympic teammates and women’s gymnastics counterparts.
Richard and Juda acknowledged that the crowds were mostly there for Simone Biles. But plenty showed up for the newly popular men’s team, which was exactly the kind of visibility the duo hoped their performance would bring to their sport.
“I don’t want it to be the climax, because I think we have so much more to do, so much more (to) show how amazing the sport is,” Richard told The Daily. “But it’s been an amazing start, seeing how many
people recognize you on the street, how many people are inspired by the journey. They said watching our competition was the most inspirational show of what America is. So that was really cool to hear.”
Juda echoed Richard’s sentiment, emphasizing his hope that their performance had impacted younger generations.
“The best part is that for the younger kids that got to watch, specifically the boys, is that they got to watch triumph from guys that may or may not look like them,” Juda added. “We came from all different backgrounds … And then that it wasn’t in a sport just like basketball or football. … They got to see victory and success in another sport.”
Now, finally, they’re home. Back in Michigan and back to a normal routine full of gymnastic practices as they prepare for one last shot at a national championship together. But on a team full of seniors aiming to
reach the mountaintop, Juda is just one of many — even amid newfound stardom.
“Personally, I would trade every single thing that I’ve won individually for a team championship,” Juda said. “I want everyone to feel what Fred and I have on the elite level side. And when everybody gets to go home with a national championship plaque, that’s pretty darn awesome.”
Michigan’s season doesn’t lay an easy path there. The Wolverines will be away for five of eight meets this season, but the most important meet — the national championship — will be at home for the first time since 2014. For both Richard and Juda, who have reached the pinnacle of the sport, it’s the next step after that Olympic success. And their fellow Wolverines have risen to the new standard they’ve set.
“The standard has risen, whether consciously or unconsciously,”
Michigan water polo builds momentum on opening weekend, taking 2 of 3 matches at the Polo-Palooza
With just three minutes left in overtime, Fresno State scored to expand its lead over the Michigan water polo team to 16-14. As time ticked down, the Wolverines took a timeout to reset, but plagued by turnovers and missed shots upon their return to the pool, they eventually succumbed to the Bulldogs. But that was the last time Michigan fell to an opponent at the Polo-Palooza.
For their opening weekend, the Wolverines (2-1) traveled to California for the Polo-Palooza tournament. The weekend showed hints of what Team 25 may look like this season, highlighting new faces and integrating them into their aggressive game play. Over the span of the tournament, Michigan clearly defined its roles on the team and gained both momentum and confidence, taking two of the three matches.
“It was a lot of everyone learning to play with each other again,” junior utility player Brooke Ingram said. “Everyone was adapting to new roles and it’s one of those things where you’re just thrown in the deep end. … Seeing how everyone was able to react to the uncontrollables and how we’re going to go about that for the rest of the season. We started off really strong.”
In the first game against Fresno State (2-1), the Wolverines struck first against the Bulldogs, with freshman attacker Ari
Karampetsou netting the first goal after just 19 seconds. Following a quick turnover, senior attacker Ashley O’Neil followed suit and added another point to Michigan’s tally. Already up 2-0, the Wolverines were off to a hot start.
In the first quarter alone, Michigan scored five goals, propelled by its aggressive highpress. But Fresno State was playing an offensive game of its own, and with both teams focused on finding the back of the net, goals were frequently exchanged. By the end of two periods, the Bulldogs held a slight edge on the Wolverines, ahead 10-9.
“Offensively it was awesome to see so many people stepping up and wanting to be big time shooters,” Ingram said. “We’ve been focusing a lot on reading other teams defenses and adapting to that and learning how to capitalize off of those opportunities.”
Without a consistent defense, scoring often wasn’t enough for Michigan to hold off Fresno State completely, losing its first game of
the season, 16-14.
The Wolverines’ second match of the weekend, this time against San Jose State (0-4), looked markedly similar to their first. Michigan continued its offensive momentum and maintained a healthy lead, thanks to a host of attackers. Against the Spartans, nine different Wolverine attackers found the back of the net, almost doubling that of the first match.
To further aid its offensive drive, Michigan’s defense began to shore up in game two. The defense was the Wolverines’ weak point throughout the tournament, but their massive scoring offense compensated for any defensive gaps. Such play allowed Michigan to take its second match over San Jose State, 15-13.
“I know we can score,” Wolverines coach Cassie Churnside said. “But if we can get stops, we’re going to be golden. Defensively is where I want to focus on a ton for the girls. If you’re putting up 16 goals, 20 goals a game, that’s a lot of goals. But if you’re giving up 15
or more, that’s also a lot of goals to give up.”
Michigan’s final performance of the weekend, taking on Pacific (0-1), was a culmination of the tournament, securing a dominant 21-10 victory. Junior defender Issy Jackson had a quiet impact throughout the weekend, but Sunday against the Tigers, the spotlight was all hers. Jackson forced a multitude of turnovers, often leading to bursting offensive attacks down the pool.
Jackson accounted for four of the Wolverines’ goals in the matchup. She was aided by Karampetsou, who began the match with backto-back penalty shots to give Michigan an early 3-1 lead. The high-scoring game allowed for many attackers to get involved, leading to a true team victory to end the tournament.
“The biggest thing is that the girls got more comfortable,” Churnside said. “… They got more comfortable in communicating and playing with each other. So we saw some consistent improvement from each game.”
In the final two minutes against Pacific, the Wolverines secured a final goal paired with three last minute saves. Instead of plotting a last minute surge, Michigan played calmy, content with the 10-point buffer it had built thanks to its aggressive offense.
By developing their team mentality and staying true to their aggressive offensive identity, the Wolverines found their footing throughout the tournament, and set a solid foundation for the season ahead.
Richard said. “It’s not just a college gym anymore. We breed Olympians. We breed the highest level of gymnastics. There’s no excuse to settle for anything less. And so everybody’s mindset, whether they know it or not — I could feel it, because I’ve been here the other years. We just have this slightly higher standard, and that’s what it takes to get to the next level.” They still keep in touch with their teammates from the national team, all of them still processing the magnitude of what they accomplished this summer. But for now, Juda and Richard are back at home — and ready to win it all there.
TRACK & FIELD
Dominant performances across
the
board leads Michigan to victory at Simmons-Harvey Invitational
XAVIER CHOUSSAT For The Daily
In its first scoring meet of the season on Saturday, the Simmons-Harvey Invitational, the Michigan women’s track and field team welcomed competitors from both Michigan State and Purdue. And with the help of a few new records, the Wolverines took home a victory in dominant fashion — scoring 126 points to the Spartans’ 109 and the Boilermakers’ 49. Graduate Aasia Laurencin started off the meet hot. She ran the 60-meter prelims in just 7.48 seconds, shaving off 0.05 seconds from her personal record she set a week ago at the Wolverine Invitational. And shortly thereafter in the 60-meter finals, Laurencin ran 7.48 again, just barely beating out Michigan State’s Amani Nuels by 0.01 seconds for first place.
But Laurencin didn’t stop there. Warmed up from the previous races, Laurencin took to the line again for the 60-meter hurdles, looking to earn another win. And this time there wasn’t a photo finish, with Laurencin running a 8.30 race and convincingly taking first by 0.26 seconds.
“I think our women’s sprints group has been really strong the last few years,” Michigan coach Kevin Sullivan said. “We’re continuing to grow there. Every
year we graduate out some people and it seems like we kind of just reload.”
The Wolverines continued to showcase their dominance in the sprints, taking first place in both the 200- and 400-meter dashes. Senior Savannah Sutherlands and freshman Payton Smith both set meet records, with Sutherlands running a 23.49 in the 200 and Smith running a 54.40 in the 400.
“I think the last few years (assistant coach Steven Rajewsky) has done a great job building up the program and instilling confidence in these girls,” Sutherlands said. “So that we can go and not only perform well, but perform with confidence and fearlessness.”
In the mid-distance races, Michigan continued to add to its point total, albeit without as many records falling. In the 600, 800 and mile races, the Wolverines failed to break into first but they earned 26 team points in these events with a smattering of second, third and fourth place finishes.
However, Michigan continued with its dominance in the 3000. Graduate Mary Caroline Heinen willed her way to a personal record 9:31.27, and in doing so, took first place. And in the last event of the day, the 4×400 relay, the Wolverines yet again utilized their best sprinters to find their way to a win.
Georgia McKay/DAILY
JORDAN KLEIN Daily Sports Writer
Ruby Klawans/DAILY
Ava Farah/DAILY
HOMEBODIES
On
Wshifts you knew it was gonna be a physical game, more physical than normal.”
Despite the expectation of physicality, though, it took some time before the clashes picked up. That’s because the Spartans lit the lamp early.
After Michigan State dumped the puck deep into the offensive zone, Hady couldn’t control it, leading to a battle on the boards. After a successful forecheck, Spartan forward Karsen Dowart ended up with the puck on his stick, and his shot from near the end line went through the five-hole of graduate goaltender Logan Stein.
Though the goal horn stayed silent for the remainder of the period, the rivalry didn’t.
The big hits galore and penalties going both ways proved the bad blood between Michigan and Michigan State was alive and well. Senior defenseman Ethan Edwards went to the locker room to be checked out for an injury, while the Spartans’ medical staff spent time evaluating skaters on the bench — both evidence of the brutal nature of the rivalry. Even the referees weren’t safe from the tenacity, as one fell to the ice after being hit by the puck.
“It’s really physical,” Stein said. “The net front is very chaotic, there’s a lot of bodies. It’s hard to see pucks. The forechecks are both very vicious. Both teams are punishing the other team’s D. So it’s a really tough series.”
Those ferocious exchanges are exactly what got the Wolverines on the board, and all it took was Hady’s hit. With that aforementioned hit, Hady drew the attention of Michigan State defenseman Nicklas Andrews, who took a penalty as he slashed Hady’s stick out of his hands.
On the subsequent power play, sophomore forward Evan Werner sent a one-timer missile toward the net. In front of Spartan goaltender Trey Augustine’s net, freshman forward Will Horcoff ever so slightly tipped the puck in. While trading big hits and shoves, rushes and scoring opportunities, the rivals were tied up at one apiece. But Michigan State answered in the middle of the third period with a goal by forward Joey Larson, who found the back of the net after a crafty pass and a backhand flip of the stick.
EAST LANSING — In the first two minutes of the game, Michigan State forward Tiernan Shoudy cross checked Michigan junior defenseman Luca Fantilli, slamming him forcibly head first into the boards. While slowly skating back to the bench a few minutes after, Fantilli and the rest of the Wolverines felt the early repercussions of an aggressive game that became a penalty-filled affair. The top-ranked Spartans (19-3-2 overall, 9-2 Big Ten) subdued the No. 10 Michigan hockey team (149-1, 8-6) to walk away with a split series between the in-state rivals, 4-1.
opportunity on Saturday became enough for Michigan State to strike first. Spartans Forward Matt Basgall slapped a shot from the blue line to sneak by both senior defenseman Ethan Edwards and graduate goalkeeper Logan Stein. Michigan State capitalized off the first chance it saw, and it was only the beginning of the Wolverines’ penalty troubles for the night. Moments after Michigan killed off another penalty, a cluster of both Wolverines and Spartans players crowded Stein in the net front. Without much speed or force behind the puck, Michigan State forward Charlie Stramel tipped the puck in to snatch the Spartans’ second goal — and the only evenstrength goal of the night. Michigan started the second period fresh and earned more time in the offensive zone, as it looked for open gaps in the tightlydefended space. Even with momentum on their side, nothing materialized for the Wolverines. And instead of finding another chance to score, Michigan found itself in the penalty box for its fifth time.
“(We wanted) to really take advantage of those opportunities,” Michigan State forward Charlie Stramel said. “Whether it’s the kill or (power play), a lot of times who wins the special teams can win the game.” Just five minutes into the second period, Michigan State utilized its power-play chance with a one-timer from forward Joey Larson to skate a third goal past Stein. The Wolverines earned another opportunity for a special teams goal to combat their handful of penalties holding them back. But rather than allowing Michigan to convert on the power play, the Spartans showed they weren’t done just yet — ending the penalty with a shorthanded goal of their own.
Michigan spent the rest of the second period attempting to string together shots to recover from the four-goal deficit and its abundance of penalties. But Michigan State goaltender Trey Augustine wasn’t giving up any room as he snagged 19 saves in the period alone.
In the third period, the Wolverines faced that same wall Augustine established early on. Though Michigan produced more shots on goal than the Spartans, it struggled to break through as it attempted to escape its penalty-riddled past.
“It’s really emotional out there,” graduate forward Philippe Lapointe said.
