‘We persevere, we organize, we connect with one another — and we remember.’
ANNA PIERSON Daily Staff Reporter
Content warning: This article contains mentions of gun violence.
The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government hosted a vigil on the Diag Thursday evening to honor the lives of Michigan State University students Brian Fraser, Alexandria Verner and Arielle Anderson, who died in the 2023 shooting at Michigan State University.
Candles were placed around the block ‘M’ in the center of the Diag, where attendees were welcomed to stand and share a moment of silence for the four students. CSG President Mario Thaqi shared opening sentiments, thanking everyone for coming to the event and coming together community.
“I thought it was important for all of us as a community at the University of Michigan to come together and show support for our friends at MSU,” Thaqi said. “Grieve together, come together and show that, here as a community, we’re stronger together.” Connor Le, Associated Students of Michigan State University president, spoke to the crowd about the reality of experiencing a tragedy such as a mass shooting.
“I hope we can all agree that we didn’t go to college to become a statistic, or to hide in a classroom or to use desk and chairs to make sure that someone can’t break into the room you’re hiding in,” Le said.
CAMPUS LIFE
when our words fail to capture the devastation within us,” Greenfield said. “We act, we advocate and we stand up for what’s right to honor victims of gun violence everywhere. We persevere, we organize, we connect with one another — and we remember.”
RESEARCH
Winterfest tournament hosted by Sigma Nu raises record $270,000
for charity
‘Having
fun
while you’re making a strong impact in people’s lives and communities is valuable to me.’
PATRICIA LEONCIO
Daily Staff Reporter
On Saturday, more than 5,000 people attended the annual Winterfest broomball tournament hosted by the Sigma Nu fraternity. In partnership with the Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Association, Sigma Nu has raised more than $270,000 so far for the Fisher House Foundation, Autism Alliance of Michigan and the Women’s Center of Southeastern Michigan. Donations for this year’s tournament will continue to be accepted until Feb. 23. Similar to hockey, broomball is a game in which players use broom-shaped sticks to score goals with a rubber ball. At Winterfest, the top eight fraternity fundraisers and top eight sorority fundraisers play in teams of six in a singleelimination tournament.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Caden Bellaire, Kinesiology sophomore and president of Sigma Nu, explained the fraternity has a long history of hosting the Winterfest tournament. Bellaire said significant preparation contributed to planning the logistics of the event and ensuring safety of players and attendees.
“In terms of player safety, we send out the rules and regulations for playing in the event and we have every team sign waivers for every member of the roster,” said Bellaire. “We also have security at the entrances in and around the
rink monitoring who goes in and out. Players obviously must have helmets before they get in the rink.”
Bellaire said he contacted the University of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Police Department and the Division of Public Safety and Security’s Community Engagement Department to ensure safety at the Winterfest tournament. Bellaire also said the fraternity hired private security, stationed several sober monitors at the event and secured an on-site ambulance as a precaution for potential incidents.
“Winterfest is a non-alcoholic event, meaning no alcohol is provided,” Bellaire said. “But people choose to do what they want to do beforehand. So we just try to take every preventative measure that we can to make sure that in the event something does happen, we are well prepared for it.”
Alberto Molina, LSA sophomore and philanthropy chair of Sigma Nu, explained the fraternity’s decision to support the three organizations donations are going towards. Molina said the three organizational groups involved in Winterfest each selected a charity to be supported by the event.
“What we’ve done is we’ve decided to let the Panhellenic Association, the Interfraternity Council and (Sigma Nu) choose one organization (each),” Molina said. “The Panhellenic Association obviously chose the Women’s Center of Southeastern Michigan, and
the Interfraternity Council has chosen the Fisher Foundation.”
Molina explained the donations are split evenly between all three charities after the tournament costs are accounted for. He shared it cost about $10,000 for Sigma Nu to host the tournament — including funding private security, safety gear, rink materials and other associated costs — leaving the remaining $260,000 to charity.
Molina said he hopes costs will decrease for future Winterfest events so they will be able to raise additional funding for charity.
“A lot of those costs are things where we just have to buy wood every year, but there are some costs that will go down eventually,” Molina said.
“For example, we buy tools every year and we try to reuse them. Hopefully our costs will go down as time goes by, and we can give as much money to charity as possible.”
Bellaire said it was gratifying to see the positive impact on organizations in the local community that came from Sigma Nu’s efforts.
“I know specifically that the Autism Alliance, they rely on us heavily each year,” Bellaire said. “I know that a portion of what they budget for each year comes from our donations. I think that’s great, being able to do that for an organization. As the face of this fraternity, being in charge of directing and communicating with people, the payoff is definitely worth it to me.”
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Martino Harmon, the University of Michigan’s vice president for student life, spoke at the event to remind students they are supported and shared different services offered by the University that those struggling can look to for support.
“We are united by our shared grief, but also by our shared commitment to support one another,” Harmon said. “I want to remind everyone here that there are resources available to support you from counseling, wellness, coaching and other services such as peer support groups. Please take advantage of those services.”
Thaqi concluded the guest speaker segment by encouraging attendees to stay for as long as needed and to write messages on a paper banner that will be sent to MSU students.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA junior Emma Johnston noted the importance of community in difficult moments and said the shooting affected her as a transfer student from MSU. “I went to State my
UMich researchers grapple with the effects of Trump’s executive orders
‘There is tremendous uncertainty.’
ABIGAIL VANDERMOLEN Daily Staff Reporter
Elizabeth Evans, Research Center for Group Dynamics researcher and lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, was working on an application for a grant that would allow her to implement Promoting Community Conversations About Research to End Suicide, a suicide-prevention and community-building program for Alaskan Indigenous communities in the state of Michigan. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Evans said the website went down before she could submit the application.
“I was working on the application one day, and the next day, the website was down, and that was it,” Evans said. “Within that week, they just said they canceled … They were not accepting any more applications.”
The grant Evans was planning to apply for was a National Institutes of Health Diversity Supplement, intended to supplement existing NIH grants that support researchers from underrepresented backgrounds. Although the funding would not have been guaranteed, Evans told The Daily her application would have gone through a limited review process and likely faced higher odds of receiving funding because it is connected to an existing grant. Instead, Evans said she has been scrambling to find alternative sources of funding.
“I feel optimistic that this is something that is fundable,” Evans said. “It’s just a matter of
(whether) I feel everyone else is also going to be doing that same thing. They’re going to be pivoting and it’s just a matter of whether or not you meet the focus areas of the foundation.”
Since President Donald Trump took office Jan. 20, 2025, he has signed a number of executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs in federal departments and among federal contractors. The pause in NIH Diversity Supplements complies with executive orders against DEI in federal agencies.
Evans isn’t the only U-M researcher to report feeling the impacts of federal actions under the Trump administration. In an email to The Daily, Darrell Hudson, chair of the Health Behavior and Health Equity department at the School of Public Health, described feelings of uncertainty in his department and said many faculty feared cuts to their projects or positions.
“There is tremendous uncertainty, with highly experienced staff at risk of losing their jobs and faculty seeing their life’s work directly disrupted,” Hudson wrote. “NIH meetings have been postponed, canceled, or significantly altered, despite the immense effort required to prepare for them. Faculty focusing on LGBTQIA health are particularly concerned, with some already experiencing proposal removals from NIH study sections.”
Hudson also explained how the effects of the anti-DEI orders are especially troubling for researchers from marginalized and underrepresented communities.
“For many in marginalized
communities, these policies feel like an attack on their very identity,” Hudson wrote.
“Flattening people and populations into language that the administration deems acceptable erases lived experiences and invalidates the struggles they continue to face. Regardless of where we stand on politics, we can all agree that every person deserves dignity and recognition. As a health equity researcher, it is deeply frustrating to see efforts to address real, systemic inequities under attack.”
The University’s Office of the Vice President for Research has begun posting updates on changes to federal research funding in response to new executive orders. The University’s Office of Public Affairs also has a webpage with updates on federal policy affecting the University, which says the institution will carefully monitor changes to research funding.
In an interview with The Daily, a social science researcher at the University who asked to remain anonymous for fear of her lab losing its NIH funding, described confusion caused by the short turnaround between federal actions being announced and going into effect. In this article, the researcher will be referred to as Kristine.
“There’s no opportunity for consultation, for questions, for discussion,” Kristine said. “It’s just these sort of edicts that are coming down from afar. So that is creating, I would say, a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about, well, ‘What’s going to happen tomorrow, or in two weeks?’” CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
LSA sophomore Aubrey Greenfield attended the event to represent March for Our Lives, a youth-led movement dedicated to ending gun violence. In her speech, Greenfield emphasized the power of unity in the face of tragedy and said organizing against gun violence is a way to honor the victims.
“Tonight, we stand together even
Bridgette Bol/DAILY Students line the Diag block ‘M’ with candles at the Candlelight Vigil for Michigan State University in the Diag Thursday.
UMich LGBTQ+ students and organizations react to Trump’s executive
order
on gender
‘There is a huge human need to be recognized as who you feel you are’
THOMAS GALA-GARZA
Daily Staff Reporter
President Donald Trump’s administration released an executive order on sex and gender identity Jan. 20, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government.” The order prevents federal funds from being used to promote gender ideology and redefines the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes: male and female. In compliance with the new policy, the order will require government-issued identification documents, such as passports and visas, to state the holder’s sex assigned at birth.
As the University of Michigan features the first center in higher education to support LGBTQ+ students, many community members have expressed concern over the new administration’s executive order.
Law School student Evelyn Pigott is a member of the LGBTQ+ student organization OUTlaws, which operates a pro bono clinic that provides legal assistance to transgender people throughout Ann Arbor. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Pigott said the lack of procedural details regarding transgender people’s passports under the order has created delays in passport offices.
“From what we hear in passport offices, trans people have been having a hard time getting passports approved,” Pigott said. “The offices don’t know what to do with their paperwork and applications; there’s no policy in place yet for how to handle those situations. A lot of trans people have just had their documentation detained indefinitely until that gets figured out, which obviously caused a lot of problems.”
In an interview with The Daily, Abby Stewart, Sandra
Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University Professor of psychology and women’s and gender studies, said the order’s language around sex attempts to deny the existence of certain groups, such as intersex people.
“That is a biologically based reality,” Stewart said. “Such people have the secondary sex characteristics of both males and females — to use their words —and they exist at birth. So you can’t actually define them out of existence by saying there is no such thing. There is such a thing.”
Stewart said she feels it’s important for a person’s identity to be recognized by society, a sentiment not aligned with the goals set out by the order.
“There is a huge human need to be recognized as who you feel you are,” Stewart said. “As a psychologist, I want to say there is a very long documented understanding of the meaning of identity, and being affirmed
socially in your identity is very important to human beings’ well-being. To challenge that is to challenge something profound in human beings, and that’s what this document does.”
In an email to The Daily, Spectrum Center Director Jesse Beal wrote that students can utilize resources like free mental health support, virtual office hours and community social spaces during uncertain times.
“Spectrum Center staff have heard a great deal of fear and concern from our students,” Beal wrote. “Our community has a long history of taking care of one another through times of hardship. This important work continues today. The Spectrum Center offers a wide range of resources and supportive programs to support our community.”
Recent
terminations leave ResStaff fearful of eviction and loss of financial aid
Former resident adviser who referred a resident to mental health resources fired and evicted
DELILAH
Content Warning: This article contains mentions of suicidal ideation.
After LSA junior Christopher Son, a former resident adviser, referred a resident to mental health resources, he faced an unexpected outcome: He was fired and evicted.
Son told The Daily after learning of a suicidal statement by one of his residents, Son filed a report to direct them to other mental health resources instead of immediately calling a crisis hotline.
“I got terminated essentially because I had mishandled the protocols for suicidal ideation,” Son said. “Housing saw me as a threat, in their own words. It was a meeting I had on Jan. 31, 2025, with one of the (ResStaff Allied Organization) members and some of the higher-ups in Michigan Housing. One of them said I was a danger or a threat to my residents.”
Approximately 70% of University of Michigan undergraduates receive financial aid, with many of those students
receiving their aid by working for University Housing. However, recent ResStaff terminations given on short notice after first offense violations, such as Son’s recent eviction, have created a fearful atmosphere among student workers who cannot afford to lose their position.
Son added that he later reached out to the student and confirmed they were not struggling with suicidal ideation, but this did not change the outcome of his termination after he brought it to his supervisors.
“I did follow up with them after, and they confirmed that both the nights (University) Housing was so concerned about, and during my follow-up with them, they were not suicidal at all,” Son said.
“Even still, with me telling this to my hall director, my supervisor and the supervisor’s supervisor, they did not care.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Mark Tallents, president of the U-M ResStaff Allied Organization — a labor union of resident advisers, diversity peer educators and ResStaff coordinators — said
RAO’s mission is to represent University Housing’s student workers on campus by advocating for their needs.
“Our goal is to essentially create a more equitable residential experience here at the University,” Tallents said. “We are the people who interface the most with residents and with students, and by extension, we know their needs better than anyone. When the voices of the student leaders that the University has chosen to lead their communities, in forms of R.A.s, aren’t being heard, we have to organize and make sure that they’re heard.”
According to Tallents, each R.A. is represented by a member of RAO. Even with this representation, when facing termination or eviction, ResStaff workers do not have the opportunity to appeal decisions and are given little notice or alternative options to termination. Tallents said he believes this system prevents R.A.s from serving their community to the best of their abilities.
“(R.A.s are) going to be given 48 to 72 hours to get out of the room, and that’s the end of it,” Tallents
said. “That’s a really, really toxic environment when you’re trying to be a leader in a community, learn people’s interests and try to help them out with their classes and be that shoulder that that R.A.s can be, while at the same time you’re being condemned to the whims of MHousing when they’re trying to enforce policies that, frankly, do not help our community in any way.”
In an email to The Daily, University spokesperson Kay Jarvis wrote that for each termination situation, the cases are reviewed individually rather than following a precedent.
“In disciplinary situations where termination is contemplated, the specific details are reviewed on a case-by-case basis with Michigan Housing Leadership, Student Life Human Resources and University Human Resources,” Jarvis wrote. “Each situation is evaluated on its own merit and the individual is informed that they may include their RAO union representative in the meetings.”
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PHOTO OF THE WEEK
Jenna Hickey/DAILY
Students throw snowballs during the annual snowball fight on the Diag Thursday night.
From The Daily: It’s all been building to the SAFE suspension
n Jan. 30, Students
OAllied for Freedom and Equality announced that it had been suspended from
Early spring 2024
In direct response to SAFE’s contentious protest at the 101st Annual Honors Convocation two months later, the administration released a draft Disruptive Activity Policy that detailed what exactly constituted an acceptable demonstration. In essence, nothing did. Rather than uplifting “open inquiry and spirited debate,” the DAP intended to squash it. This editorial board warned that such policies — including a prohibition on protests that “impede the free flow of persons about campus” — could be easily weaponized against the student body. To their credit, Ono and the board sought community input and, facing outcry, axed the DAP. They would not ask for input again.
This pattern of despotic behavior from Ono and the board culminated in SAFE’s suspension. They spent the last 13 months dismantling the guardrails on their power, and now, they’re governing completely unchecked. It was only a matter of time before the University debuted its newfound authority. It
campus for up to two years. The pro-Palestine group, a legacy organization founded more than 20 years ago, has long been a target of the administration’s ire. Increasingly controversial demonstrations were met with increasingly repressive
changes to U-M policy that laid the groundwork for the group’s eventual removal.
University President Santa Ono and the University Board of Regents’ decision to ban SAFE represents a gross attempt to silence free speech and a
forced SAFE into the office of Student Organization Advancement and Recognition with a complaint from an outside consultant, Stephanie Jackson of INCompliance Solutions, and disregarded the verdict of the Central Student Judiciary.
The CSJ, a student-led judicial body, conducted the
initial review of the allegations against SAFE and issued its findings based on the Standards of Conduct for Recognized Student Organizations. In its ruling, CSJ found SAFE responsible for certain violations, but not others, such as posing a safety hazard at Festifall or for violations related to the protest at Regent Sarah Hubbard’s (R) home. It determined that SAFE’s organizational responsibility for the latter was unclear. The administration, however, found SAFE guilty on every charge.
CSJ’s recommendations — which this editorial board finds far more productive than the University’s two-year ban — focused on restorative measures, including a onemonth probation on reserving outdoor space, a $75 fine and educational training for SAFE leadership. The suspension effectively removes SAFE from campus recognition until at least winter 2026, marking a fundamental divergence from CSJ’s peerdriven accountability process and the University’s broader institutional authority.
flagrant violation of proper disciplinary procedure — and the most severe blow yet to proPalestine advocacy on campus.
In the months following Oct. 7, 2023, as protests intensified from marches to occupying the Ruthven Building, the University
Mid-spring 2024
A little under a month later, the Diag became the site of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. After several weeks and a conveniently timed fire concern, Ono and the board razed it to the ground. Whatever good will students still had toward the University in the wake of this controversy, it was fully squandered when the administration revised the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities to ensure a quiet return to school. In violation of its own policy and against the wishes of students and faculty alike, the board voted to amend the document in just 40 seconds with no public comment.
approved and adopted a set of Principles on Diversity of Thought and Freedom of Expression.
The page-and-a-half document amounted to empty rhetoric outlining the administration’s purported support for “open inquiry and spirited debate.”
The principles were good in theory, but the vague language and toothless plan to implement them left much to be desired. If the document has any merit, it is in demonstrating how far the University has strayed from its stated mission.
The amendments granted the University sweeping and unprecedented power in disciplinary proceedings against students, allowing the administration to act as a complainant in misconduct grievances, shortening the time that defendants have to respond to allegations and removing the right to a fair appeals process.
Going forward
CSJ has a role in disciplinary actions for a reason. Its involvement ensures that the administration can’t unilaterally dissolve clubs for ideological reasons. When the University disregards CSJ’s role, as it did in SAFE’s case, student organizations effectively lose their right to due process and can be subjected to unfair punishment. Thus begins a slippery slope in which the line between what’s right and what’s politically expedient is blurred.
By banning SAFE, the University appears to be sending a message. There are still 99 active organizations in the broader TAHRIR Coalition that continue to pursue divestment among other goals.
The selective punishment of SAFE — the most well-known pro-Palestine group on campus — looks like an attempt to intimidate other groups into submission. Given the broad power the administration has amassed over the last year, instances of selective punishment like this become far more likely going forward.
This editorial board is opposed to the silencing of protesters on campus. We are even more concerned about the administration proclaiming that a singular group — the de facto Palestinian student association — no longer has jurisdiction on campus. This move has further broken the trust between students and University leadership.
The University of Michigan has grossly overstepped its authority in banning an organization composed of, by and for U-M students. No matter where you stand on the war in Gaza, the suppression of SAFE should mean something to you. Watching as the administration denigrates the rights and liberties of our community members with abandon should concern every student on campus. Across the country, Students for Justice in Palestine chapters are being suspended, and this trend won’t stop here. The University and its peer institutions are going down a dangerous slope of authoritarianism. Students, faculty and staff should not stand by apathetically.
THE MICHIGAN DAILY EDITORIAL BOARD
Lila Turner/DAILY
University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor residents march through the streets to protest in support of Palestine and in protest of Santa Ono’s statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict Oct. 13, 2023.
Alum Kate Hua/DAILY
Timothy Lynch, the University’s vice president and general counsel, speaks at The Board of Regents’ special meeting to vote on the University’s commitment to free speech in the Ruthven Building Jan. 16, 2024.
Alum Jeremy Weine/DAILY Students and Ann Arbor community members protest the University’s investment in Israel outside Hill Auditorium after the Honors Convocation, Sunday afternoon March 24.
Meleck Eldahshoury/DAILY
SAFE president Salma Hamamy announces updates for campers at the organized encampment on the Diag on Apr. 23.
Ruby Klawans/DAILY
off Diag after the removal of the encampment May 21.
Cole Carrico/DAILY
University of Michigan Ann Arbor Police Department stands in the Diag during the “Die-In Demonstration” protest for Gaza Aug. 28.
Journal for all life’s journeys
Asurprising change that came with studying abroad was my new habit of journaling. Before these past few months, I struggled to journal consistently. In hindsight, I now know I was putting pressure on myself to only write what was interesting in my life and the steady rhythm of schoolwork and extracurriculars never felt interesting enough to record, so the pages of my journal remained nearly empty. For almost a year, the olive-green journal I bought with the intent of writing for writing’s sake was written in once, twice, three times but never more.
Once I started my study abroad experience, I finally felt my life was engrossing enough to start writing down. I wrote about cultural differences, the places I visited and what I learned about myself. And then, after a couple months, something happened: Studying abroad became my new normal. Not everything was as titillating as it was on arrival. Still, journaling remained a habit. It wasn’t a daily task, but something I could return to every so often for reflection and self-expression.
I call my former fixation on journaling profound encounters and musings “deliberate journaling” — the practice of journaling only about things that interest you, make you happy or you have the perfect words for. Only by letting go of deliberate journaling and embracing my journal as a place to write what I want, when I want and how I want, was I able to truly embrace the activity.
Journaling boasts many
benefits, including boosted creativity, reduced stress and anxiety, improved memory and increased self-awareness. These benefits make it an especially good outlet for college students. In the often fastpaced, task-filled college life, we all have something to gain from introspection and creative expression. Journaling is also, thankfully, an inexpensive hobby: All you need is something to write with and some time set aside for yourself. Beyond the psychological benefits, recording how we feel or what we’re paying attention to now gives us something to look back on in the future. This does not mean we need to become a diarist at the level of, say, Virginia Woolf: Sometimes, a journal is just a canvas for reminders of something as simple as everyday tasks or as reflectors of who we are at a given moment. I acknowledge that, as hard as it was for me to get into journaling, it’s harder for others to even get into writing, period. Taking time out of the day to try to capture an innermost thought or a moment that has already passed can feel pointless, especially when journaling is really just for ourselves.
Luckily, there are countless ways to journal, some of which don’t even require writing. We can bullet journal to organize our lives in different formats from week to week. We can scrapbook to store photos and keepsakes we collect daily. We can use an art journal to express ourselves in visuals instead of words. Video diaries can capture aspects of our lives through clips and a commonplace book can capture small bits of information, from quotes to song lyrics to everyday observations. At its core, journaling is about recording experiences and reflections. However journaling looks for you is valid because your journal is yours. Though I love to write, I’ve allowed myself to journal in whatever way feels natural to me. Sometimes, it’s a traditional diary, and other times, it resembles a commonplace book. There are days when I have little energy or no words, and instead, I’ll write down the lyrics to my current favorite song or doodle or press flowers. A journal is an expression of who you are today — allowing the pressures of deliberate journaling to guide you won’t get you far. CONTINUED AT
You don’t know joy until you’ve had a brisket sandwich from Buc-ee’s after an hours-long road trip in a cramped car. Wash it down with a sweet tea, and you’ve just had the perfect meal. This feeling of such inner peace is only possible in the American South.
The South comes with some baggage. Its rich yet complicated history is laden with profound sadness, violence and bigotry, all of which are hard to shake. Despite the fact that Southern society deems faith, family and freedom — in that order — to be of paramount importance, there are seldom depictions of these ideals in Southern policy. In my home state of Tennessee, you can carry a gun in public without a permit, school vouchers are the norm and minors are legally barred from receiving genderaffirming health care. While the stereotype of Southern hospitality is absolutely true, it doesn’t always apply in the realm of politics.
But this doesn’t mean that the South is the evil place that Northerners — particularly Northern Democrats — make it out to be. The slew of misconceptions targeting the Southern region and people — including claims of universal racism, homophobia and conservatism — aren’t rooted in fact: They’re rooted in prejudice and intolerance. Northern liberals are under the impression that all Southerners, no matter their allegiance or ideology, ought to be punished for what they imagine to be a blanket conservatism in the region. This uneducated impression is inherently classist and counter to the principles that liberals claim to preach.
People in the North — both in the media and in my own personal experience — don’t like the South. Trite terms such as “redneck” and “hillbilly” have been completely normalized in modern lingo, and assumptions fly freely. To them, the South is a poor, rural wasteland, where Trumpism is the norm and white nationalism is in the water. The South, to the average Northerner, is stuck in the past.
But the past says differently.
Martin Luther King Jr. admonished the rhetoric of Northern liberals, claiming that their lack of tolerance for the diverse South only accelerated
segregation and racial injustice. The politicians above the Mason-Dixon line wanted immediate solutions to what they believed was plaguing the South, all without researching its true desires or needs. The North has created an image of what they imagine the South to be, distracting themselves from one simple fact: They have problems, too.
Racism, economic distress and brutality aren’t issues hyperlocal to the South. The North has also subjugated marginalized communities with targeted policies, developments that have gone uncriticized because of the easy target in the once-slaveholding South. This biased and rather uneducated vision is completely unfair, especially given the fact that the South is the most diverse region of the country. It has not only grown increasingly majority-minority both in suburban and urban areas, but it also represents a wide range of socioeconomic statuses.
The wealthy, white voters of the Northern United States have found an easy target in the diverse, rural voters of the South, which only exacerbates inequality and allows the cycle of poverty to continue uninterrupted.
Creating a monolith out of the American South can be demoralizing for its residents, but it also makes liberalism seem less attractive. When Northerners view the South as backward, laugh at its perceived ignorance or make generalizations, the supposed allure of the Democratic party becomes all the more unappealing. Their elitist perspective has routinely — and very recently — distanced the Democrats from the working class, costing them elections and a larger coalition. Democrats have failed to understand the Southern people and their norms, all of which tend to resemble the features of the political left: A commitment to helpfulness, sincerity and charity. Liberals are to blame for this distancing; the shame, disgust and punishment directed toward Southerners only worsens their discontent with the establishment.
Additionally, liberals don’t recognize that their progressive brethren also exist in the South. A slew of Southern organizations specializing in law, politics and community development tirelessly work
to advance the rights of marginalized communities and causes. Some of the most powerful racial and social justice leaders originated and fought for equality in the South.
The late John Lewis himself, former representative from Georgia and storied activist, believed in the progressive future of the South and the tenacity of its people. Despite what we see on the news and from liberal pundits, the South isn’t all “red.”
Of course, it would be impossible for me to deny a heavy conservative presence in Southern suburbs and metropolises. I live five minutes away from a Confederate battle memorial, have seen some incredibly creative pro-Trump bumper stickers and watched as destructive Republican policies hurt my neighbors. There are absolutely problems in the South, but the failure on the part of liberals to see the potential for good is misguided and uneducated. Making jokes about missing teeth or systemic policy problems that Southerners can’t control, or immediately solve, is the antithesis to what Northern liberals claim they’re all about. The South is imperfect, but so is the rest of the country. The climate crisis, economic disenfranchisement and gender inequality don’t abide by geographic or partisan boundaries: All of us are vulnerable. While perhaps not at the same frequency, the same dilemmas can be felt in both the North and the South. We’re all humans, all American, all worthy of progressive policy that accelerates and promotes our well-being, no matter where we reside. You learn quite quickly, as you enter the realm of the Southern United States, that only some of the rumors are true. The people have a charm that you’ll seldom find elsewhere, and respect governs each and every one of your interactions. Northern liberals have their own biases about the South and yearn for it to “get better,” but it’s their rhetoric and inability to adapt that leaves Southerners in the dust. So, next time you hear a classmate is from the South, don’t say “sorry”; if you hear about a negative news story from Florida, don’t assume it “makes sense.” Practice the same Southern hospitality that the South has been preaching for years, and it will do y’all well.
AUDRA WOEHLE Opinion Columnist
LINDSEY SPENCER Opinion Columnist
Avery Nelson/DAILY
Closing the education gap surrounding sustainability on campus
I’ve worked as an employee for Michigan Catering for almost three years. While many sustainability initiatives and issues have changed over the years, one has stayed consistent — event attendees don’t know how to compost and recycle. Practically every time I work an event, I put out compost bins. And practically every time I clean up, I need to throw the compost bags in the trash because they are contaminated with trash. Not only is this disheartening as an environmentalist, but it also counts against the University of Michigan’s goal of diverting 50% of its waste from landfills by 2030.
So, who’s responsible for this? Is it on the University to better educate students?
Current zero-waste initiatives are mainly performative because the student body’s lack of knowledge about sustainable practices makes them ineffective — but with better advertising, the University could do more to close the education gap. At the same time, progress is impossible without students thinking more intentionally and actively participating in U-M educational programs.
For context, MCatering is a branch of Michigan Dining, which houses almost all the food service branches that are on campus, from cafes to the dining halls. MCatering works exclusively in University Unions, but will also do off campus events occasionally. MCatering in general tries to run most of its food services as zero waste. Zero Waste Events aim to divert as much waste as possible. The University Office of Campus Sustainability sets guidelines for what these events should look like. In short, they need to have compost bins and some sort of education on what can and cannot go in the bins.
The problem often arises, however, that students and event participants don’t know what to do with the containers. Most people don’t take a second look to see what they are throwing away and where they are throwing it. But it’s not their fault — composting and recycling can be confusing. The University’s lack of advertisement reveals their performative intentions in hosting the events.
Even after three years, I
still have to look up what is and isn’t compostable. And recycling rules change between buildings. You can recycle glass in a house in Ann Arbor because the city pays for glass recycling but you can’t recycle glass in campus buildings because the University doesn’t pay for glass recycling. These inconsistencies make it confusing for students, even those who are climateconscious.
The University already does some of this well. For example, they are working on improving their compost bin signage and have actual people directing guests what to compost at many high-profile events, like the alumni tailgate at the U-M Golf Course. The “Where to Throw” initiative gives students the tools to look up more than nearly 300 items , a brief presentation on frequently asked items and a map locating all of the compost bins on campus. The only issue with this program is that most students have no idea it exists. I would consider myself a climate-conscious person yet I hadn’t heard about this initiative until intentionally looking into the University’s composting program for this article.
While the University has extensive resources to help students, they don’t advertise them well. And the people who do use them tend to already be interested in reducing their food waste and combating climate change. To fix this, I propose that the University add environmental educational initiatives that are required for students to complete. For example, the University already makes students complete Canvas courses about alcohol and drug use, sexual assault prevention and mental wellbeing for students. Extending
this to a topic like sustainability and recycling would be an easy way to educate students. At the very least, the University should require that student organizations that host zerowaste events complete preexisting zero-waste courses.
Students also need to take their own initiative and start paying attention to what they are throwing away. If enough trash is thrown into a compost bin, it contaminates the entire bin, ruining others’ efforts to be more sustainable.
There’s an argument to be made that the Campus Sustainability Office’s time is better spent elsewhere on “big ticket items,” like diverting the University off the natural gas coming from the Central Power Plant to cut its carbon emissions or investing in research and development efforts for new green technologies. After all, 80% of global carbon emissions are from about 60 companies, not students forgetting to recycle or compost. Yet, by addressing this education gap now, the University will be creating stronger climate thinkers in the future as well as reducing its own carbon footprint.
To make the campus more sustainable, the University must invest in its education systems. This starts with educating students about their trash, compost and recycling. These small initiatives will add up to aid the University’s 40% waste diversion goal by 2030. Not only will educating students contribute to U-M goals, but it will also create better forward-thinking individuals equipped to fight climate change. The onus also needs to be on students to think about their choices more. The collective action problem of climate change will only be solved with the support of
Family members are not medical translators
About 40% of healthcare providers ask patients and family members to help with translation. After all, these individuals already speak the language, so why not save time and money by having them step in? While this might seem like a quick fix in the moment, it’s a risky practice that could lead to dangerous miscommunications due to translation inaccuracies. And in health care, inaccuracy can cost lives.
Even fluent speakers of a language might not know how to explain medical jargon. Think about it: Do you even fully understand all the doctorspeak you hear in English? Words like “hypertrophic cardiomyopathy” or “sepsis” aren’t part of everyday vocabulary, even for native speakers.
Translating these terms into another language accurately, especially under pressure, is nearly impossible for someone who’s not medically trained. This isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a patient safety risk. A mistranslation could lead to anything from misunderstanding medication instructions to failing to convey critical symptoms to a provider.
In medical settings, people who speak another language are often asked to translate for loved ones during critical moments, which puts unfair pressure on them, especially when they are also grappling with the stress of a difficult diagnosis or an urgent procedure. Imagine being nine years old and having to explain to your mother that she needs emergency surgery. It’s emotionally overwhelming and forces kids into roles they’re not equipped to handle.
Unfortunately, for many children of bilingual families, being the bridge between their parents and a world that doesn’t speak their language is already an everyday occurrence. Whether it’s navigating a conversation about a school form or explaining a utility bill, these kids grow up balancing two worlds. The stakes are much higher, however, when this role extends into medical settings. Asking a
A date with stress
child to interpret during a health care visit isn’t just unfair; it’s risky. A wrong word, a missed nuance or an incomplete explanation could jeopardize a patient’s care. These children aren’t just translating words; they’re trying to convey meaning they may not fully understand themselves, all while bearing the weight of their family’s health decisions. It’s a burden no child should have to carry.
While students training in health care may have a better grasp of medical terminology than most, they’re still learning. If a bilingual nursing student was asked to explain a procedure to a patient while still trying to process the details themselves, it could compromise patient safety with potential miscommunication. Nursing and medical students are there to learn and grow into competent professionals, not to fill systemic gaps in interpreter services. Asking them to take on this role undermines their education and the quality of care patients deserve.
This approach can seem especially appealing in fast-paced environments, where getting a professional interpreter might take too long or appear logistically challenging. Additionally, it might feel more personal and comforting for patients to hear information from someone they already know or trust rather than through an unfamiliar third party.
However, professional interpreters and translation services exist for a reason. They’re trained to bridge the gap between patients and providers. Although it can be convenient and cost-effective to rely on students, relatives or bilingual staff, especially in emergent situations, convenience shouldn’t come at the expense of patient safety and competent communication. Personal comfort and convenience cannot outweigh patient safety.
Some institutions have taken steps in the right direction. For example, many hospitals now use phone or video interpretation services, allowing providers to access professional interpreters 24/7. These services can handle dozens of languages and ensure accurate communication without putting untrained individuals
in high-stakes situations. Although Michigan Medicine does a fantastic job making these services accessible, many under-resourced communities outside this hospital hub still struggle without adequate access to translation. Implementation is inconsistent, and some providers hesitate to use them due to perceived time constraints or costs.
To address this, health care organizations must prioritize interpreter services as an essential part of patient care. This might mean allocating more funding to hire on-site interpreters, investing in better training for staff on how to use interpreter services effectively or incorporating translation technology where appropriate. Yes, it’s an investment, but it ensures safety, builds trust with patients and would cost less in the long term. There are multitudes of online courses that can certify you for medical translation. With just one search, many options come up. All you need is a GED, documentation of some sort of bilingual proficiency and to be over 18 years of age. We could create a more linguistically diverse workforce by offering these courses as continuing education hours for healthcare professionals maintaining their certifications. Partnering with community organizations outside the hospital to provide language training and cultural competency workshops for family members could significantly improve access and communication. At the same time, students and staff should advocate for themselves if they’re asked to translate in situations they’re not qualified for. It’s okay to say, “I’m not trained for this,” and push for professional interpreter support instead. Speaking up can help shift the culture toward prioritizing patient safety over convenience. Ultimately, health care is about trust, communication and care. To uphold those values, we need to stop relying on unqualified individuals to fill the gaps in translation. Whether through better interpreter services, training programs or advocacy, we have the tools to make this change happen. It’s time to use them.
ELIZA PHARES Opinion Columnist
Emily Schwartz/DAILY
LEAH HUANG Opinion Columnist
CECILIA DORE Senior Arts Editor
The year is 2025. I’m putting on Glossier liquid blush, and yeah, it kinda makes my face burn a little. That’s probably because I got this blush for my birthday — my 16th birthday, that is. Which was almost six years ago, in 2019. Maybe this is gross, or even borderline unsafe, but I can’t help it. I’m a sentimental person, and I can’t let go of anything.
Letting go can be really difficult. But it can be rewarding and refreshing at the same time. Cutting off hair, moving to a new place — or throwing away your six-year-old liquid blush — are possibilities for new beginnings as much as they are departures from a well-known past. In this B-Side, these writers explored what letting go means to them — and who knows, maybe they’ll also inspire you to let go of something that’s been weighing you down, even if it’s scary. After all, as Imogen Heap sings in the Frou Frou song “Let Go” — “there’s beauty in the breakdown.”
The Letting Go B-Side
On gender identity and letting go of expectations
MORGAN SIERADSKI TV Beat Editor
Growing up as a girl is a grueling process. There are rules and expectations thrust upon you from the moment you are born — how to look, how to act, how to feel. It is an endless web of contradictions that traps girls in a constant state of “not enough.”
I was in elementary school when I first understood the baggage that came with girlhood. I was already carrying expectations, but it was in kindergarten that I finally realized how heavily they weighed upon me. There is a threshold you must reach to avoid being othered, a standard for how acceptably you fit into the category of “girl.” Even if that standard is met, the word “girl” carries a connotation of inferiority. The words “for a girl” were tacked onto the ends of compliments: you are smart, funny, athletic — for a girl. I heard those words so many times they started to sink in.
I liked traditionally feminine things — I wore dresses, played with dolls, everything you would expect a little girl to do. I fit neatly into my concept of “girl,” yet I was still disregarded by many of my peers. Soon, the word “girly” had become synonymous with “unworthy” in my mind, and I began to think the only way to free myself from the label was to reject it entirely. I convinced myself that I hated being “girly” in hopes that the world would suddenly make sense, that I would earn the respect and visibility I deserved. Instead, it only left me more unsure.
What I struggled with the most was my own desires. There was the desire to fit the expectations placed on me by society, and there was the desire to swap those for a new set of expectations in the hopes they would provide better opportunities. Regardless of which I chose, I was still centering patriarchal ideologies. There was also the desire to do what I wanted, but my preferences came second to how others perceived me.
I flipped back and forth for years, longing to embrace my girlhood yet trying to separate myself from it as much as possible until I had nearly driven myself insane. Fortunately, there were plenty of women in my life to support me, many of whom had experienced similar struggles. Over time, I grew to accept my femininity again, and I stopped considering my gender as a personal flaw. There was still a lot of progress to be made, but I was on the right track. Yet something was still missing.
Just as I was starting to accept my girlhood, another curveball was thrown. Around junior year of high school, I began questioning my gender identity. I had several nonbinary friends, so I knew what the term “nonbinary” meant, but I had never considered that it could apply to me, too. When I listened to them discuss their experiences with gender, I found myself relating to it more than I expected. The label “girl” — or by then, “young woman” — wasn’t negative, but I didn’t entirely resonate with it either. This, I could relate to.
I considered a new label for some time before eventually
Abigail Schad/DAILY
settling on “genderfluid,” an identity falling under the nonbinary umbrella. I wasn’t entirely a woman, but I wasn’t entirely a man either. I rested somewhere in between and fluctuated from time to time. With this label, everything clicked into place. I thought of all the times I prayed for a flatter chest or wished I could shapeshift or wondered what it would be like to live as a man. It wasn’t constant, but it was too common to brush aside. Now, I understood my dissatisfaction and had the words to describe my feelings.
Unfortunately, with my realization came a new series of doubts. Having grappled so tirelessly with internalized misogyny, it was difficult to distinguish those thoughts from ones of gender dysphoria. I recognized there was a difference, but in my worst moments, it was almost impossible to tell them apart. There were days I could hardly face myself in the mirror, and having the vocabulary for it didn’t stop it from happening. I was satisfied with my new label, but I wasn’t satisfied with myself. In my head, I formed a picture of the “ideal” nonbinary person, and criticized myself because I didn’t resemble that image. I presented more femininely; I wore skirts and dresses, put on makeup and kept my hair long. When people looked at me, they didn’t see someone genderfluid — they saw a woman. If I wanted to be perceived by others the same way I perceived myself, I clearly wasn’t doing enough.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
‘Come Along with Me’: How an ‘Adventure Time’ song helped me say goodbye
“Come along with me and the butterflies and bees…”
The truth is, I wasn’t ready. I avoided those butterflies and bees for two full years. No offense to them, of course — I enjoyed the quaint twee vocals and cozy acoustics. The tune is bathed in a nostalgic haze of wonder and sleepy sunbeams. It makes you feel little again. I think that’s part of the reason why I didn’t listen to it in full — just one minute and 48 seconds of it — until this past October. My childhood is dead, and I must grow up. But my bigger source of grief was knowing that I’d have to grow up without someone incredibly special.
“…where we can gaze upon the water as an everlasting dream…”
One of the photos cycling through my lock screen background is a photo from a beach trip circa 2011. It’s sunset, and I’m nothing more than a 6-year-old in pink shorts with a mindless grin; the boy to my left is my best friend. That boy’s name is Nick, and he is my cousin. I spent the bulk of my childhood alongside my extended family, so it would be more accurate to describe him as an unofficial brother. He is in blue, his favorite color, which fittingly matches the swirling ocean at our heels. I cannot speak for him, but I know, in that moment, I thought of us as an infinite concept. There
would never be a day when we would not be splashing in the sea, or playing Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, or staying up late eating off-brand Oreos and homemade pizza rolls. The everlasting dream was real, and it was on that beach, and it was in my eyes. I think of that beach often. I can’t help myself.
“All of my collections, I’ll share them all with you…” Funnily enough, collecting was one of Nick’s greatest joys. Whether it was a figurine of Luffy from “One Piece” accompanying us to the lake, a fleet of Goku Funko Pops guarding the shelf or Link hoisting his sword as you walked through the door, Nick loved nothing more than showing his arsenal of pop culture artifacts to the people he loved. He would reenact scenes in funny voices and various poses while excitedly explaining the lore behind all of his favorite shows. His room was a museum, a monolith of superheroes, anime and cartoons — earning a tour through his saved videos was a badge of honor. It meant you were a real one.
I was always happy to enter his world, a vibrant kingdom decorated with Jack Stauber and Bo Burnham and Shovel Knight and “Animaniacs” and Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared and “Spongebob.” As you probably guessed from the title of this piece, his world included “Adventure Time,” too. I’ve never seen the show, so all my knowledge of the Land of Ooo is
limited to everything Nick told me about: vampire princesses, screaming lemon creatures, a boy and his dog and, of course, this song. It plays at the end of every episode, and he loved it dearly. I exclusively associate the show with him as a result. I figured I’d get around to watching it one of these days, so I could talk with him about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time I thought I did.
“Maybe by next summer, we won’t have changed our tunes…” In May 2022, Nick passed away at the age of 19 after a medical emergency. I spent that whole summer in a horrific, numb shock. Zoning out of my bedroom window in dissociative grief, I desperately, selfishly avoided any shows, songs or characters that reminded me of him. In my deeply sewn anger and devastation, I felt like they were a grand taunt from the universe. I’d hear the song out of nowhere while scrolling through my phone and frantically shut it off. It felt like an in-your-face reminder of what — who — I had lost. Looking back, I know I was being childish. But in the wake of my childhood effectively ending right before my senior year of high school, I don’t think I knew of any other way to behave. I carried my bitterness as though it were a baby, but I didn’t feel any better.
“All of my collections, I’ll share them all with you, I’ll be here for you always, and always be with you…” CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Abigail Schad/DAILY
ISABELLA CASAGRANDA Daily Arts Writer
ARCHISHA PATHAK Daily Arts Writer
Every time I pass a secondhand bookshop, I have to walk in. The shelves feel like a museum of different moments that people have let go, disappearing into piles upon piles. When I scan each section of the store, I play a game with myself: try to find the oldestlooking novel. When I finally see that perfect, crackled spine and yellowed paper, I am satisfied.
This tradition is special to me, and although secondhand bookstores will always hold a special place in my heart, donating my own novels feels like a huge injustice. When I had to move four and a half painstaking hours away for college, I carried a large cardboard box labelled “books,” determined to take my first loves with me. I claimed each physical book held sentimental value (they didn’t) and that I had the space to keep all of them (not true). This dream was almost immediately squashed and I was told, with little sympathy, that I’d need to donate some books or leave them behind.
Sitting with the books I’d had for years, I remembered the memories tied with each of
Letting go of a literary nostalgia
them. One that I’d received as a gift from my father, another which I had discussed for hours with a friend. My copy of R.F. Kuang’s “The Poppy War” and Sally Rooney’s “Normal People” were riddled with annotations and tabs, marking each one of my favorite moments. Even the books I didn’t particularly enjoy, I felt the need to keep on my shelves. Every page my eyes had read was important to my development as a reader, and getting rid of them felt like a betrayal. Letting go seemed like the hardest thing I could possibly do.
That same week, I went to the secondhand bookstore in my hometown. Per my tradition, I searched the shelves for the oldest-looking novel, finding the perfect crackled cover on a copy of “Macbeth.” On the inside of the cover, written in loopy cursive was the message, “To my beloved, Happy Birthday.” When I flipped through the pages, it was filled with annotations and thoughts of the original reader. Yet now this novel was in a secondhand bookstore, and any sense of who “my beloved” might be was long forgotten.
At first, this loss of the original reader’s identity was devastating. I couldn’t stand the thought of donating a book
filled with my own writing. Then, I realized that whoever owned this book had let go of it, and it was only because of this that I was holding it in my hands. I bought the book that day, then went home and added it to the pile. It seemed that now, not only was I holding onto my own novels, I was also collecting books I deemed rich with the memories of others. “Hoarder” seemed like the wrong word: I felt plagued by a nostalgia for lives that weren’t even mine.
Maybe this was the reason I even read books in the first place. I couldn’t let go of fiction, nor could I let go of the vessels by which they entered my lives. After reading the annotated copy of “Macbeth,” however, I was grateful for the bits of commentary added to the margins, which somehow added even more personality to the novel. I thought of my own novels, filled with notes and little doodles, and knew that though I loved them now, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to let them grace someone else’s bookshelf in the future. Letting go might be an opportunity to introduce something I loved to someone else, while also letting something new into my own life. In the end, I did end up donating two stacks of books
to the same bookshop I had found “Macbeth” in. Before I let the books go, I wrote on one of the title pages: “To the next one, and the next.” Maybe it was cheesy, but to me, it was an acknowledgment that letting go of a book was just a way to let it into the life of a new reader. Was it really letting go if I still carried its words within me, and was also able to share them with someone else?
This was how I began to come to terms with donating my books. Since then, it has been far easier to let a book come into my life, appreciate it
A love that lingers
The final scene of “Call Me by Your Name” is hauntingly simple: Elio (Timothee Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown”) sits before a fireplace, his face lit up by flickering embers. As the credits roll, his expression — raw, vulnerable, yet eerily serene — reminds us of something painfully universal: the necessity of letting go. There is no dramatic confrontation, no grand reconciliation, no last-minute plea for love to defy circumstance. There is only a boy, his memories and the quiet understanding that something beautiful has slipped through his fingers.
At its core, “Call Me by Your Name” is a film about a first love, but more than that, it is a film about impermanence. It captures the way certain relationships (no matter how profound) are not meant to last forever. This is not a tale of the struggle for
love, but of teaching oneself the transience of love and learning to live with the echoes remaining. The romance that blossoms between Elio and Oliver (Armie Hammer, “Death on The Nile”), while intoxicatingly beautiful to the point of sweeping them both off their feet, is from the instant it begins set with an expiration date. Therein lies its astounding power.
Love that only remains in memory often feels stronger than love that exists in reality. The tragedy of Elio and Oliver is not a matter of betrayal or rejection but one of inevitability. Oliver’s leaving is not an act of cruelty; it is life in its quiet, merciless forward motion. Time does not stop for love, no matter how much Elio might wish otherwise. People move on. Seasons change. What remains is the impression of what was. We struggle to accept the notion of letting go because it suggests the possibility of erasure. If the experience mattered so
deeply, if someone became a part of us, how could one ever release without losing a piece of themselves? But “Call Me by Your Name” says something different: Letting go isn’t forgetting. It is carrying something with you in a way that does not hold you back. It is allowing something to shape you even when it is gone. Elio’s pain is an intrinsic compliment to what he shared with Oliver. It’s not the kind of sorrow with which to pity him, but rather it is something to honor.
The film’s brilliance lies in its understanding of this delicate balance. It does not vilify Oliver for leaving, nor does it demean Elio’s pain. Instead, it provides us with love and loss as two sides of the same coin. It is the very same depth of feeling that allows us to love that makes its absence so devastatingly painful. But, would we exchange one to avoid the other? If given the choice to never love so that we would never have to let go, would we take that option?
Letting
Having fake arguments inside your head has to be one of those human constants — one of the very few things that unite our species across culture and time. The satisfactory feeling of winning a heated debate within your own psyche is probably only secondary to witnessing the birth of your firstborn.
I’m sure there’s a plethora of ways I could be wasting my time more efficiently: writing, doom scrolling, calling my aunt like I always say I’m going to. Just about anything would be preferable to passively daydreaming about the fallout of someone telling me to “name three songs.”
I can’t help it: There’s not much that makes me angrier than gatekeeping, nothing that wriggles its way into the
This question lingers throughout the film. It lingers in the longing gazes of Elio: the manner in which he clings onto Oliver’s memory. It lingers in how he sits by the fire, letting every ounce of that pain sink in. “Call Me by Your Name” doesn’t have the comfort of closure, and it is there, in that empty space, where it finds honesty. In life, we often do not have neat conclusions. Sometimes, all we get is a moment, a summer, a love that will never be again. And we must find a way to be okay with that.
The conversation Elio has with his father marks one of the most poignant moments in the film. Instead of comforting his son from heartbreak or assuring him of the damage being healed in time, Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg, “The Instigators”) acknowledges the depth of the wound. “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should,” he tells Elio. “that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less
in the moment and eventually allow it to leave my hands and go on to the next reader. Now, I try to primarily buy books secondhand simply because I like to think about the people who read them before me. I wonder if they also thought specific characters were annoying or if a line was poorly written. I wonder if it hurt them to donate it or if they didn’t choose to donate it at all. By letting go of my old books, I’ve allowed myself to adopt an entirely new philosophy about book-buying that connects me to them in a way that exists
outside of myself. Letting go of a book is not the same as letting go of the story. I’ve made room to fill my shelves with the memories worth keeping. And more than ever, my shelves are filled with more than one kind of story: The stories written and put into print, and the stories of how these books ended up on my shelf. When I donate these novels, years later, I will be a part of each story for the next reader. While I may be letting go of something in this process, I will be gaining something far more valuable.
to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste.” These words hold a truth that most of us try to ignore. In a world that constantly implores you to move on, to act as if you were never hurt, “Call Me by Your Name” dares to suggest something radical: Feel it. Grieve. Remember, in those feelings lie life.
Letting go isn’t a gesture, but a process. It’s waking up in the morning and noticing that someone who was always on your mind is now a silent background noise. It’s hearing their name and having a pang of nostalgia rather than some sharp pain in your side. It’s the realization that they may no longer be a part of your life, yet will always be part of you. Oliver may be gone, but Elio is no longer the same person he was before. His soul has been stirred, shaped and opened up to a kind of love that he hadn’t known previously existed. And that, in itself, is a gift.
go of gatekeeping
forefront of my mind more than the knowledge that somewhere some shitty guy is writing a hate post about a girl who just wanted to wear a Nirvana hoodie. There’s a part of me that’s become calloused from being an AFAB person interested in metal; something in me that hesitates every time I consider wearing a band shirt in public; something that’s been changed all because of the insistence of men within the
genre telling me I wasn’t a real fan. So I don’t blame my brain for feeling the need to obsessively practice an argument that will never manifest.
Anyone interested in the world of metal, even just floating in its periphery, will eventually encounter the gatekeeping of the community and subsequently be faced with a choice: They can choose to persevere through the muddy self-righteousness of the subculture or abandon their interest entirely. It shouldn’t be this way — the only thing keeping people from getting into metal should be how difficult it is to read Sanguisugabogg’s logo or listen to 3TEETH’s covers, not the judgments of strangers online. Gatekeeping serves no true purpose on this scale. It’s not an attempt to protect the community from problematic infiltrators — it’s just exclusion for the sake of feeling selfimportant and deflating the ego of potential fans.
Maybe all this anger is because I know just a few years ago I wasn’t much better than these enforcers of gatekeeping. I’m not so full of myself to pretend that I’ve never been
a perpetrator of the exact mentality I’m criticizing, but I know for the most part I’ve grown out of this exact breed of douchery. Being young is hard: You’re scrambling for an identity that makes you feel equipped to deal with the reality you’ve been shoved into, and everyone is telling you to just be yourself, but no one seems to know entirely what that means. I don’t judge someone for latching onto whatever genre they could find and carving it into their entire personhood, but I don’t necessarily think that the fact you found it when you were 13 means you’re entitled to deciding who else gets to enjoy it now. Still, I think it’s natural to be apprehensive when someone begins to casually enjoy something that you wholeheartedly adore, because you know there’s no way they could ever have the exact same experience as you. It will never mean to them the same thing it means to you, but that doesn’t guarantee it won’t carry the same weight. It’s natural to want to protect a subculture that shaped your
Perhaps the ultimate lesson of “Call Me by Your Name” is that love, even when it ends, is never wasted. The agony in letting go is not proof that something was meaningless, but rather proof that it mattered. And sometimes, the most radical act of love is not to hold on, but to allow ourselves to let go.
The beauty of “Call Me by Your Name” is that there is no insistence upon closure. It doesn’t say Elio will forget Oliver, nor does it say this ache shall fade with time. It tells us that the people we’ve loved stay with us, in the music we’ve shared, in the places we’ve stood and in the quiet we’ve treasured. To let go of something is not to leave it behind. It is to learn how to live with it in a new way. It means being at peace with the fact that, although something is no longer here physically, it will always be present in the space it once occupied. In this way, love never truly leaves us. It evolves, just like we do.
identity. Anyone would be wary of allowing newcomers entry without knowing if they’ll appreciate this art the same way you do, but you’re not really part of a community if you’re not willing to watch it expand. The point of art is to evoke an experience, a personal one that’s unique to everyone who encounters it. Without that, it wouldn’t really be art. Of course, it’s disappointing for anyone to witness their favorite song become the theme of a fleeting viral trend. It’s not fun to see something you loved reduced to a shallow catchy sound bite that will forever be inextricably tied to some short-lived media challenge. But does that justify trying to keep people from ever getting to experience it? Is it ethical to keep art at bay just because someone isn’t going to love it in the same way you have? All gatekeeping really amounts to is holding communities back from evolving, keeping new perspectives from engaging with the art and making the mainstream wary of a genre for being persistently rude. CONTINUED
Abigail Schad/DAILY
TIFFANY MCKALKO Daily Arts Writer
MIVICK SMITH Senior Arts Editor
AMARA M. SMALL MiC Columnist
In the summer of 2021, one of the major streets in my city was reduced by a lane to add bike lanes and expand the sidewalks for pedestrians. The goal was to transform the area into a more walkable space, encouraging patrons to stroll through the area and visit the gamut of stores, cafes and boutiques.
This decision was met with frustration, since this street is essential for traversing my neighborhood. If you want to go to the grocery store, go out to eat or go to other parts of the city, you have to take this street. Reducing car lanes creates massive traffic backups, especially during rush hour. Every time I’m on that street, the person driving laments about the traffic jams caused by these bike lanes.
However, there’s one specific phrase I hear tossed around in addition to this complaint: “That bike lane is for white people. They’re the only ones that bike around this area.”
Despite what you might assume, biking around my neighborhood is not difficult. In fact, I find it to be safer and easier than biking in Ann Arbor, even before these new additions. So why the disdain, and why the racialization?
The grievance is, in part, a frustration at the changes to our city occurring due to an increasing white population. I’m from Detroit, an area that’s been called one of the Blackest cities in America. This started to change a few years ago, a bit before the bike lanes popped up. The primary
‘That’s some
difference between the Detroit of today and the Detroit of five years ago that was allegedly a wasteland is that now there are more white people, expensive restaurants and corporate offices. Why do we consider these things to be upgrades from Black and brown establishments with our senior apartments and community owned stores?
When phrased like this, I fully agree. I don’t think we should roll out the red carpet in welcome of the wealthy white people gentrifying our city and shaping it in their image. I totally understand — and experience — the simmering anger this evokes. But there’s a hidden part of this sentiment that I fully reject: the idea that bike lanes are for white people. Whether it’s witnessing white people walking in the middle of the sidewalk or making EDM remixes of rap songs, the chuckled phrase, “That’s some white people shit,” is a cultural mainstay. Most Black people hear or say it regularly.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a funny, and often appropriate, saying. There are some things that just feel so … white. Further, there are some (arguably white) things I would never do as a Black person for cultural, respect or safety reasons, like cursing at my parents or catching an attitude with the police. Disrespecting your Black parent is a quick way to get read for filth and disrespecting the police is a quick way to put yourself in serious danger. Many of these precautions just aren’t the norm in many white communities. I’ve definitely said, “That’s some white people shit,” myself, whether it’s while watching students go out to parties and bars every Thursday
white people shit’
or raising my eyebrows at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend ski trip advertised on campus (which seriously feels like “Get Out”).
The phrase is often funny and relevant, a sociopolitical analysis of race wrapped in a joke to soften the blow.
But under the surface, another idea lurks. After, “That’s some white people shit,” there’s an unspoken, “therefore, Black people can’t or shouldn’t do this.”
Sometimes, this implication is inconsequential, like when referring to people walking in shorts when it’s 20 degrees outside. That’s something I don’t mind white people keeping. Sometimes it’s accurate, like when speaking about weightier actions that have serious systemic implications and consequences; unfortunately, it is white people behavior to be careless with police or not learn about a new place before visiting. Sometimes, however, it’s more insidious. Why is walking your dog white people behavior? Riding your bike? Going to therapy or using gentle parenting on your kids rather than hitting them? Why has our community in so many ways ascribed these instances of being happy and carefree to white people while assuming our role as stoic and sad? The ideas of what we should and shouldn’t do are initially pushed onto us by white people, yes, but many of these ideas are kept around by other Black people. Why have we allowed our community to decide we shouldn’t engage with harmless things that bring joy?
Of course, there’s an answer to this question, and I’m sure it’s one people are tired of hearing because every woke Black person
Lovers of the in-between
I’ve always been a lover of the in-between — those fleeting, transitional moments. They exist in the intermissions between departure and arrival, in the whirr of waiting, where nothing is fully settled. Transitional states are often overlooked due to tendencies to prioritize clear destinations. I was once someone who dreaded the limbo between point A and B, just wanting to get there as soon as possible. It felt like purgatory. However, I’ve adopted a sort of romanticization that comes with movement itself — finding an appreciation in forms of transportation, airport transits and the uncertainty that comes with constant motion. These moments have become a home in and of themselves, a security that reliably brings comfort.
Two years ago, I traveled to Dubai by myself to visit my cousin. After virtually spending our childhood as conjoined twins, we took the separation quite hard. Although we spent our developmental years in completely different societies, we grew to have the same niche interests and beliefs. I was elated to finally meet her again, pretending to not notice how much we had both grown. While traveling, it was just me and the little voices overanalyzing every conversation I’ve had since birth for 23 hours. I made a multifaceted playlist of 18 hours that I could’ve played 1.28 times throughout my journey, which still acts as a soundtrack that transports me back to that exact moment every time I play it. I had at least 10 songs for each feeling I could have possibly experienced throughout this journey — from anxiety to self-actualization. Transitional states allow room for sensory delicacies to be noticed without the noise of arrival. You become more aware of the sounds and smells around you — shadows you never knew before.
This experience was so salient because it was one of the first
times I chose to be alone. It felt like I was Rapunzel leaving her tower. My past travel experiences had always been characterized by the weight of 15 suitcases and the cries of three children under strict supervision from my parents. I was never able to hear my own thoughts in transit, let alone fully indulge in the process of travel, so I’d only ever had the destination in mind. Although I was utterly alone in that journey, I felt an unexpected level of comfort: that I was exactly where I needed to be at that moment in time. To this day, that brief intermission in my life was one of my greatest memories even though the only notable events that occurred were the four brain cells bouncing around in my head.
The in-betweenness of travel is an experience that I did not expect to hold such importance until I experienced it directly. It is a shared human occurrence that is left neglected, when it can be thought of as a gift of solace.
Airports represent the most literal representation of the in-between. They act as checkpoints between destinations for many visitors. The air feels like a blend of excitement and anxiety for a place you haven’t seen in a while (or ever) or perhaps a sense of relief in returning. Airport transit feels like floating through an endless uncanny valley that allows me to truly be by myself. There is a strange intimacy sharing a liminal space with so many strangers who were also suspended between destinations — a jumble of different languages, chairs akin to medieval torture devices, invalid currency and ambiguous stares.
The car ride back with my cousin was equally, if not more, memorable, personified by a bittersweet sorrow of leaving behind a twin flame and an unspoken, mutual reflection of how we were both changed forever. A trip like this one had been on our itinerary since the days of us hiding in toy-filled closets as children, whispering about our exercise of free will as
says it at least three times a day. We are just as tired of saying them, but unfortunately it’s true. The answer is almost always slavery and racism.
Even if we don’t want it to be, it’s always about race. The United States is built on the exploitation and subjugation of Black people from slavery to prison labor.
In the past as well as in the present, Black people have been blocked from feeling or expressing happiness. We’ve had barriers put up to keep us from acquiring things like health care or stable housing that allow us to do the same carefree things as white people.
What Black person has the time for ski resorts or country clubs when we’re so busy trying to survive and get the world to see
us as human? If we have the time, when do we have the money since we’re constantly economically disenfranchised? If we have the time and money, who’s going to let us into these elite locations?
For example, successful, wealthy Black Detroiters were routinely denied membership to the Detroit Golf Club in the ’80s. This only changed when Detroit’s former mayor Coleman A. Young brought attention to the issue, and even then it was a difficult fight. Worming our way into these spaces and activities feels unachievable when we live in a country so invested in systems that are, at their core, about segregating and subjugating Black people. Even our contributions are twisted to box us in. Black people are often stereotyped as
having good rhythm and being good dancers. So why is dancing like nobody’s watching white people shit? Because when we dance, people are watching, and then using it to decide our value to society. In a society constantly pushing Black people to contribute more to culture and be less “threatening,” our actions are eternally scrutinized. For example, Malia Obama acted like a normal 19 year old, dancing and partying at Lollapalooza, but she was criticized for “reflecting poorly” on her family, her country and her racial community. Black people aren’t allowed to just enjoy themselves in public. At all times, we must be respectful, nonthreatening and classy.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
I am not ambitious
adults. Since I moved away years ago, we have shared an insatiable yearning to reconnect in the same spaces.
The majority of the trip was personified through a playlist of (currently) 19 hours and 42 minutes. However, I can only recall a few sounds that I deeply associate with that brief car ride.
Mainly, the words of “Nowhere Near” by Yo La Tengo. “Everyone is here / But you’re nowhere near.”
Even though we were sitting right next to each other, I felt a fading out even before it happened. Throughout a 10-day journey, we bridged together the thousands of miles that separated us for years with train rides, sunsets and film. Yet in this moment sitting next to my cousin, I felt the familiar absence creeping back in. The kind that we carried since I moved away. The kind we had learned to fill with old photos, uncertain memories and timestamps in songs. I recalled depending on Spotify Jam sessions across continents a few weeks before, texting each other lyrics and pretending we were in sync. It was one of those moments that you try so hard to be present in that you become engulfed in thoughts of disappearing. AirPods hiding under our hijabs, transmitting songs that felt like anchoring us amid constant change. Certain songs became timestamps of shared looks and moments. Sometimes you don’t truly know a person until you have spent a long car ride with them. The ride back felt like a fulfillment of an oath, but also an unraveling of something neither of us wanted to name. Although we were continents apart, we were each going back to a routine diaspora that has always connected us. Even something as short as a car ride to run an errand for my mom at the local Arab supermarket can be crystallized into the most comfortable part of my day. These fleeting moments allow me to appreciate the little things when I briefly forget where I’m going. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Ambition: a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.
I am not ambitious. I think I’ve always held this to be a universal truth. The sky is blue. Michigan winters are cold. Amy Xiu does not want to do anything with her life.
Ambition was woven into every aspect of my childhood. My parents put me in piano lessons, ballet classes, math groups — really, anything your average hyper-ambitious Asian immigrant parent could think of. I was the kid who spent the weekends studying instead of playing with friends, the one who lugged around a huge backpack full of workbooks everywhere they went.
But despite all the pressure, I was never interested in becoming the best — I was satisfied with just getting by. I was also the kid who skipped as much class as possible by hiding in the bathroom, the kid who nodded earnestly while lying to my piano teacher (yes, of course I practiced this piece 10 times a day), the kid who “borrowed” homework answer keys from my tutor when he wasn’t looking.
While I wasn’t ambitious, I learned how to pretend to be. In a Chinese-American community where bragging about kids is an Olympic sport, I knew exactly how to win gold. An auntie would ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and I knew exactly what to say: “A doctor so I can make lots of money!” The auntie would laugh, then applaud my parents for raising such a pragmatic daughter.
Being ambitious was also about survival.
In school, I was considered “gifted,” or at least that’s what the test scores said. My teachers marveled at my long
division skills and high NWEA percentiles (do people even take that test anymore?). While others were turning in extra problems for extra credit, the only math I was doing was what I needed on an exam to avoid a tongue-lashing from my parents. If I wasn’t “gifted” anymore, the look of shame on my parents’ faces would be too much to bear.
As I grew older, the illusion of ambition became a noose, slowly tightening around my neck. People my age were starting to go off to college. Good colleges, too — every weekend, my parents would tell me about some family friend who got into Harvard or a cousin three times removed who went to Yale. Getting into the University of Michigan was considered the bare minimum, and the bare minimum was no longer enough. Thus began the era of late nights spent cramming from textbooks, afternoons spent juggling extracurriculars and weekends collecting volunteer hours. Rest? That could be scheduled after I got into college. For now, I needed to stack my calendar with AP classes and carefully curate my activities to what colleges loved. At one point, I was sleeping less than four hours a night, the only thing keeping me awake during the day being sheer determination (or maybe it was all the naps I took in class). Failure was not an option, though. Who was I if not someone who was bound for great things?
To make matters worse, my older brother had ascended to the pinnacle of the Asian American success story — the one other aunties would point out to their kids in envy. While he was getting a dual degree in math and computer science at MIT and a flashy internship at a quantitative finance firm, I was barely passing AP chemistry. Of course, no one had the audacity to say outright how much of
a failure I was. But I felt it in the little glances. The pointed remarks, the “What’s your brother up to these days?” I couldn’t breathe. Getting into the University felt more like a relief than a celebration. I had no idea why I was here. When applying, I remember staring at the Common App for hours, trying to find one defining life passion I could write about. After brainstorming for days, I gave up and said I wanted to go to medical school and save lives. That summer, I couldn’t fight the ever present dread looming in the back of my mind. Everyone told me that college was a place to finally fulfill my ambitions. So where did that leave me?
My freshman year, I ended up doing what any Chinese kid without a strong inclination toward a certain topic did — taking computer science classes. Eventually, when I just couldn’t stomach coding anymore (I was indeed weeded out by the infamous EECS euchre project), I switched from one STEM major to another.
In high school, I encountered my fair share of ambitious people, but in college, it became a microcosm. Everywhere I turned, I was surrounded by people who dreamed of being scientists, doctors, business owners — the “leaders and best.” I blended in perfectly, picking up their patterns, learning how to imitate them to perfection. It became a fun little secret. Hah! Little do they know, I want to move to the middle of nowhere and do nothing. But of course, that was never an option. After all, I had trained for years to perfect this performance.
By sophomore year, it was time to take the next logical step: find a summer internship and pad my resume. I knew the drill — I had seen my peers do it a hundred times. So why couldn’t I? CONTINUED AT
HANAN HUSEIN MiC Columnist
AMY XIU MiC Columnist
Aamina Hussain/MiC
NOLAN
“Yeah, it’s 4 a.m., and she’s out there / With the razor-sharp tongue stuck to skinny cigarettes” — “Mean girls” by Charli XCX
For the past few weeks I’ve felt a little insane. I have been chasing a phantom phenomenon, something I knew was happening but that I couldn’t find any data to support. Unless I really am going crazy, I think you’ve probably seen it too: In the past year or two, cigarettes have made a strange comeback among Generation Z.
I noticed it first during the summer before my freshman year of college when a pack of cigarettes suddenly became an essential nightly staple for my friend group. When I got to the University of Michigan, the situation was the same. Someone would casually break out a cigarette at a house party and lure half the group into a line of supplicants eager for a hit, joking that drunk cigarettes didn’t count or pointing out that they’d die whether they smoked or not while holding the lighter’s flame to the tip.
After I noticed this, I began to mention it in conversations and many of my peers agreed — cigarettes are a thing again. Our favorite celebrities smoke them, we seem to make more memes about them than we used to, and some major media outlets have already picked up on their newfound trendiness.
With all that smoke, it made perfect sense to write an article explaining how the fire started. My research, however, uncovered no fire at all. As far as the available data show, cigarette smoking is at an all-time low for all age brackets, including Gen Z. The FDA says so, Monitoring the Future says so and Ken Warner, Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Health and founding director of the University’s Tobacco Research Network, says so too. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Warner explained how the data clearly contradicts the very premise of the interview, sounding patient but quite perplexed.
“If you look at the data, it’s exactly the opposite,” Warner said. “Kids no longer smoke, and that’s basically true. If you look at the data and follow where it has been
STATEMENT
Have cigarettes risen from the ashes?
and where it’s going, the drop has been dramatic. … Basically, it’s just gone. If you look at young adults … people who are over 18, under 30, let’s say, and you look at the data there, their rates of smoking have been plummeting as well.”
If this resurgence of cigarettes isn’t something you’ve noticed, you’re probably inclined to believe at this point that I’m just as crazy as I’ve been feeling. After all, the data and the experts — those who even felt my inquiry to be worthy of a response — have both told me not to believe my lying eyes. As several of those experts counseled me, I may have simply jumped to conclusions based on the anecdotal evidence of my friends and my social media algorithms. The trouble with that explanation is that it isn’t just my own eyes that are lying, or those of my friends. I have already mentioned that other media outlets such as The New York Times and The Guardian have picked up on the same thing, and it’s not just my own social circle that have reinforced my suspicions. I’ve talked to acquaintances, strangers and even meme page administrators who all claim to have noticed the same situation.
One such stranger is Ethan Douglass, a young adult from Indiana. Douglass said he has definitely noticed an increase in smoking among our generation, particularly on social media.
“I’ll get on TikTok and a lot of videos are people like ‘ciggy break!’ and it’s them outside of a bar,” Douglass said. “And I also think people think it makes them look cooler, so I think a lot of people focus on that. … I feel like a lot of people do it because it makes them feel good and it also is kind of like a sexy thing. A lot of people do it because it’s like an accessory.”
This is far from the first time I’ve had this conversation. Either this is some strange case of parallel psychosis, each of us independently conjuring up this falsehood in our heads, or something is going on. But if the data don’t show an increase in smoking, what could that something be?
There are a few possible explanations. Reporting bias, which is when study respondents withhold relevant information, could be impacting the statistics. In researching this article, I was turned down for interviews by just about every smoker I asked, which
(Un)marred Heaven
pray, repent, repent, repent and then maybe — just maybe — you will be normal like all the other devout human beings.
I am 11 years old, laying in bed on a school night, staring at my ceiling, and swirling, swirling, swirling in the deep crevices of my mind as I try to fall asleep is the question: “Will God accept me into His heaven?” I had always been an uptight child. Some may call it neuroticism or emotional instability, but the telltale signs of anxiety were evident within me from the very beginning. Questioning mortality and my own holy trials and tribulations was not something novel to me at my ripe age of 11. Many cultural communities are formed around a shared religion. Within the culture of Abrahamic religions — not the religions themselves, but within the shared society that has been formed from the commonality in practice — there is the idea that sadness or depression is largely conquerable.
It’s thought that such negative feelings can simply be traced to some sort of inherent deficiency, one that must be overcome through prayer and drowned out with pleas for forgiveness and mercy. Sadness and depression are thought to be a test of strength and one must pull through to prove that they have come out on top, to prove that they are, in fact, deserving of eternal salvation. Or, very simply put, if you are depressed, then your faith in God is just not strong enough. You must pray, pray,
Heaven is perfection. Heaven is goodness. Heaven is purity. To be acceptable for heaven you must be perfect, you must have goodness, you must have endless love. But if you are sad, if you are stuck in the limbo that is depression, if you feel that you are none of these things, then what?
Which comes first: sadness or doubt? How do you make sense of either?
When depression renders you so incomplete, so fractured and cracked, right down the middle, can you still possibly be worthy of the faith that you hold? Worthy to be accepted to heaven? Can you still even possibly be human?
I felt that, for a long time, people would look right through me. I wasn’t completely there in the way that most normally functioning people are able to be in a present moment — even I myself know this. Among the many symptoms of depression is the oh-sonotorious fog that seemingly overtakes everything: it slows your thoughts, movements and social capacity and does away with each, one by one. It puts you in a sleepwalk-like stupor — eyes closed, senses numb, with everything outside the mind almost imperceptible and unintelligible. It is, or it feels like, an inhuman state.
But what is human, anyway?
What is the mind, the soul, the body — spoken of so highly, revered so violently — that must
be kept intact, must be kept whole, must be, must be, must be? If humans and humanity have slowly ebbed away, slowly been crushed out, slowly been lost, what is one to do now? If I am no longer whole, then what?
To be human is to be whole, to be full — full of life, of love, of energy, of the ability to speak without being afraid, of an overflow of sheer love for life.
To not be whole is to be tired — to be too tired to muster up the energy, the courage, to walk through life. It is to feel like you are not human.
My childhood self wonders if she was still worthy too. She wonders, what is human?
The holy test tells us to endure our suffering, to push through, for by the end of it, we will be made better. We will come out stronger.
But what if, when it comes time for my test to end, I cannot be fixed?
I used to think that “test” was the cruelest word I could think of.
We all have our battles and the word “test” is plastered over them, as if that word makes it better, as if they all have a purpose and justification.
We test, we are tested, we are made to endure the test, but by the end of it, is who — or what — we are acceptable? Acceptable enough for the beauty, the lushness, the purity of heaven? The test injures, the test mars, the test disfigures. The test is meant to test, and we, in turn, are broken by the end of it.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
shows that many are reluctant to identify themselves as smokers. However, there’s a significant difference between being quoted by name as a smoker in the pages of The Daily and privately admitting to smoking to a pollster, so my experience is not necessarily reflective of the data-gathering process behind these statistics.
This introduces another interesting issue, however. If smoking is supposedly cool again, why are so many students hesitant to be publicly labeled as smokers?
I believe it is a matter of audience, with personal social media accounts typically being oriented towards peers and the information published by The Daily liable to be discovered by anyone from older relatives to potential employers. Young people want to appear cool to their friends, but responsible to older adults.
It is also possible that this comeback is still in its early stages, with the actual act of smoking yet to trickle down from the trendsetters to the trend followers. Maybe in the coming years the trend will become fully realized. After all, even an expert as skeptical as Warner acknowledged that it could be too
early for the data to reflect such a recent increase.
My favorite explanation, however, is what I will call the “poser theory.” This theory posits that the uptick in cultural relevance has not come with an actual increase in smoking because posting and talking about cigarettes is not about nicotine consumption, but rather has more to do with appearing edgy or with breaking a taboo for a laugh. In other words, we’re all a bunch of posers. People post about cigarettes to look cool, but if they actually want a hit of nicotine they’ll reach for the convenience of vapes or Zyns. A generation gaslighting itself into believing it’s edgier and more vintage than it really is — what could be more Gen Z than that? I should also point out that, although poser typically has a negative connotation, it is better than the alternative of actually smoking more cigarettes.
Lyra Hunt runs an Instagram page with more than half a million followers under the username the_political_compass. The profile describes itself as “A curation of today’s online” and posts largely memes, X screenshots and news headlines. Having run her digital
gallery of internet culture for years, Hunt has become an expert on online trends. In messages to The Daily, she said she has both noticed and participated in the cultural comeback of cigarettes.
“I can’t pinpoint exactly when it began but I think the sentiment for cigarettes within social media got big about two years ago as vape culture peaked,” Hunt wrote. “I know I contribute to the problem posting about it a lot but like the drunk cig memes are funny and I like making them! I’m certain people have started smoking because of the memes, maybe not by my account but deff from the overall aggregation of it.”
Hunt also provides evidence for my “poser theory,” as she frequently posts memes and other content about cigarettes without being much of a smoker herself.
“I have had the rare drunk cig but I’m a professional ballerina and I need to be healthy so it’s quite rare!” Hunt wrote. “I mostly post about it as a curation of the current culture but I do find it all fun.”
Of course, if this situation has really developed under the circumstances described by the “poser theory,” that doesn’t mean it will stay that way. The available data show that greater media exposure to tobacco products is associated with greater consumption, meaning it would be unlikely to see a sustained media trend that did not bring real-world consequences along with it — at least eventually. We can only hope that the trend will dissipate before it can do real damage to our generation and those even younger than us.
Okay, now that we have a slightly better understanding of what is going on, let’s consider why. Just like before, there are many possible reasons Gen Z might be embracing cigarettes, whether exclusively online or in real life as well. Many, for example, blame vaping for acting as a gateway to cigarettes for young people who otherwise would never have considered smoking. Several of the smokers I talked to said this was the case for them. Some even said they began smoking cigarettes because they thought it would be healthier as the prohibition on smoking inside naturally limits how much a person can smoke.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Dinner at the museum: An evening at Azalea
NATALIE MARK Statement Correspondent
Restaurant Week was a few weeks ago and it inspired me to learn more about the stories of restaurateurs. One of my favorite pastimes is trying out new restaurants — I love getting a little bit dressed up, maybe putting on a new pair of earrings and a sweater, grabbing my nice purse and sampling a new meal. Tasting novel flavors opens my mind to the possibilities in this medium of expression and tasting old, familiar ones bring back nostalgic memories. I treat my nights out almost like a trip to the museum — in the museum
I’ve envisioned in my mind, with a sweeping exterior and white marble interior, the chefs are the artists, the food is the art and the restaurant provides the ambience. At a restaurant, we often think of the taste of our food, maybe our service; but what about the lighting, paintings and ambience?
One restaurant that stood out to me was Azalea, for its Asian fusion menu. When I think of Asian fusion, I associate it with progressivism, where new ideas and multiculturalism are widely accepted. In my mind, Ann Arbor is a town holding onto more traditional food cuisines, so I was surprised to learn that there was a restaurant like Azalea in the area and I began to wonder
who took the risk to start a restaurant that introduces a lot of new flavor concepts to this city’s food scene.
Azalea, 312 S. Main St., is a modern Asian dining establishment that focuses on delivering a classy experience. As soon as I walked into the restaurant, I was greeted by a black set of stairs, dim lights and a beautiful interior full of flowers. The restaurant was pristine — not a single crumb on the floor, no greasy smell, not even a fork was slightly skewed from its napkin.
Min Kyu Kim, a Michigan local, is the restaurant entrepreneur who started this restaurant, along with Kimchi Box and Ondo Bakery and Cafe.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Kim said that his mission for Azalea was to “make a beautiful table.”
Each meal at Azalea has a balance of bright colors and diverse types of dishes to ensure that the presentation is immaculate. Kim’s standard meal consists of three appetizers with an array of color, a rice dish and a meat dish. Each dish reflects some traditional Asian flavors mixed with a Western palate.
“I felt like a restaurant like this was necessary in Ann Arbor,” Kim said. “Ann Arbor is a good community, it’s got a good student base, good hospital base (and is) diverse.”
Azalea’s dedication to balancing and emphasizing the highlights of two types of cultures makes me feel seen. As a fourth-generation Chinese American, I do not feel as connected to my Chinese heritage as many other people seem to be, particularly due to the food I grew up eating. During my childhood, I ate mac and cheese one day and nian gao the next. These dishes come from two very different backgrounds, but are equally delicious. As reflected in my food, I feel as if I do not identify with one culture more than the other, and personally, I don’t want to. I feel seen through fusion food — it makes me feel as if other people relate to how I feel and are also trying to cultivate a culture that blends cultures together rather than separating them. As a proclaimed fusion-food connoisseur, I wanted to seek out who was behind Azalea’s menu — who was behind the introduction of a synthesis of biculturalism? Who created this museum that reflected the foods of my childhood? A museum sets its ambience through its decor, staff and color scheme. A restaurant is the same way, setting the mood with its lighting, decorations and service. Azalea’s dark theme felt very chic: I felt classy walking in, which contrasts the way I feel scrambling into a cafe for my morning coffee. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
STATEMENT
The sanctity of the State Theatre and independent cinemas
RIYA KOMMINENI Statement Columnist
were empty and slushed over, and most of the storefronts were beginning to shutter as the evening came to a resolute end. Yet there I was, standing under the facade, reading the names of films that were then playing: “Nickel Boys,” “The Brutalist,” “A Complete Unknown,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” The titles spoke to me in methodically spaced black font, asking me to select which one would entertain me for the night. While I had already decided much in advance that I would watch Brady Corbet’s post-war epic “The Brutalist,” I allowed myself to be enamored with the spectacle of the State Theatre’s exterior for a moment longer. While there isn’t an exact figure for the number of independent theaters in southeastern Michigan, the State Theatre along with the Michigan Theater, both operated by the nonprofit Marquee Arts, are the only independent theaters in Ann Arbor and two of the only few in the region. The State Theatre is solely dedicated to the classic display of movies,
while the Michigan Theater also hosts live performances such as concerts, plays and talks in its auditorium.
Before my screening of “The Brutalist,” I attempted to explore the space. I must say, it feels a bit cramped — the building is also occupied by the Target next
door and the entrance leads to a staircase that escorts cinemagoers up to the ticket desk. Instead of immediately walking up the stairs, I sat for a few moments, taking in the tiny lower level. Behind my bench were illuminated posters of recently screened titles. Above the staircase was an inscription that read “Thank you to all the generous donors in the Ann Arbor area whose contributions made it possible to preserve this building for its original intended use: the exhibition of cinema.” Throughout the building, it is markedly evident that donor support is what sustains the State Theatre. Almost every object, from the elevator to the frames encasing the movie posters, is accompanied by the names of patrons who have graciously donated funds. The upper level is
home to the ticket desk and the concession stand, neither of which are particularly glamorous, giving the theater an ironic charm. While waiting for my tickets, I happened to meet several members of the Marquee Arts team, including Alicia Pani, chief operations officer and managing director, and Head Projectionist Erica Gleichman. They, along with Nick Alderink, cinema program director and U-M alum, gave me a detailed history of the State Theatre.
The State Theatre was originally erected in 1942 by W.S. Butterfield Theatres and was designed by C. Howard Crane, a Detroit area architect known for designing the Fox Theatre. The theater was sold to different companies throughout the years and was almost converted into a retail space in 1989. In 1999, the Michigan Theatre Foundation, now known as Marquee Arts, began operating it. In 2014, the foundation bought it and both theaters have been managed by the nonprofit ever since. The State Theatre today occupies the balcony of the original theater and has four auditoriums.
During our conversation, Pani mentioned that Marquee Arts had only recently started screening mainstream films, after the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the hallmarks of independent film theaters is that they tend to show more arthouse and foreign films rather than blockbusters like superhero movies and highlyanticipated motion pictures.
I had taken notice of this at the State Theatre in early January
How to buy the sunset
when I wanted to see “The Last Showgirl,” directed by Gia Coppola. I had hoped to see it there, but was disappointed to see that it was not playing. I was admittedly a little annoyed to find out that two versions of “Wicked” would be screened instead — the normal version and the sing-along version.
To clarify, I have no issue with movie musicals such as “Wicked” and those who enjoy it — I think it’s a perfectly fine film and I understand many people have a strong connection to it. I just thought a film like “Wicked” (which grossed more than $700 million globally) would be screened at a bigbox chain like AMC Theatres or Cinemark Theatres, not at my local independent theater.
To me, a place like the State Theatre is a place where I can discover films I’d never be able to see anywhere else, at least on the big screen. While I could wait for “The Last Showgirl” to come on a screening service or pirate it on my laptop, it would certainly not be the same experience as walking to the movie theater, buying the tickets and concessions and finding a seat in the dimmed theater alongside other moviegoers as a communal act. My expectations were not met, however, because, from my understanding, “Wicked” sold more tickets than “The Last Showgirl” and that provided more money to keep the theater afloat.
I am dissatisfied by this because it means there are many great films I can’t see on the big screen. However, I am happy to see that this means more people in Ann Arbor get to experience the magic of the State Theatre. While I may not necessarily
have the same taste as them, I am happy that this provides more funds so everyone can continue seeing wonderful films in our own independent theaters.
When I asked how Marquee Arts decided what films were screened at the State Theatre and Michigan Theater, Alderink told me that, while considering the financial livelihood of the theaters is important, it was not the only factor that went into choosing what films are selected to be screened.
“Ann Arbor is such a great cultural center and I want to boost those conversations within the community. I want us to be (at) the forefront of what’s happening at this moment.
Whether that’s a smash hit like ‘Wicked’ or the latest Marvel movie, if there’s a conversation about a movie, I want people to say that they saw it at the Michigan or State Theatre,” Alderink said.
During my screening of “The Brutalist,” I glanced around the theater during the 15-minute intermission and noticed the theater was not completely empty. Instead, it had about a dozen of the 60 or 70 seats filled with moviegoers. This was surprising to me because it was the last showing on a Monday night, “The Brutalist” was more than three and a half hours long and it had been released almost two months prior. Yet, this has always been true of the State Theatre — it is never empty.
When I went to see “Babygirl” and “Anora,” both on Friday nights, the theater was filled to the brim with excited patrons across various demographics. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Haven’t reached your audience through Instagram ads or YouTube sponsorships? Are consumers missing out on your product because they can’t see it on posters in the Diag or on TikTok Shop? Fret no longer and look to the one place no one can avoid: the sky.
What’s a sunset worth, you ask? We know now: almost $5 million, less than a Super Bowl ad.
***
If someone were to look out over Saginaw Bay in the winters of the late 2000s, they’d see me and my sister zipped head to toe in snowsuits, one hot pink and one purple. We’d bounce between ice shanties looking to find my dad and let him know dinner was ready, then run, slip and skate our way back inside. My mom would have hot chocolate ready on the stove and my siblings and I would line up like ducks in a row with coldreddened hands open for mugs. My aunts and uncles would shovel off the snow from the ice and we’d play hockey and spin each other till we were dizzy and fell backwards into the snow. In the summer, my parents would kick my siblings and I out until dinner, making us entertain ourselves in the great outdoors. My hair used to be bleached by the sun and I would spend hours swimming in the water until I got too tired and made my oldest sister carry me to the shore. My brother would throw seaweed at us and we’d run from sandbar to sandbar between boats to hide. In the winter, by far the most beautiful times on the bay are dawn and dusk. You can see every color reflected in the ice — they swirl together and create new colors that aren’t comprehensible to the human mind. And of the colors that are comprehensible, none are repeated twice. The sun floats below the skyline, pointing out the previously invisible line between the sky and the bay. The ice turns purple and it feels
like we’re walking on God’s gift to us — something that might not exist anywhere else or at any other time. What my nostalgia wants me to forget is the thick slabs of muck that my cousins and I trudged through to get to the water. The seaweed that my brother used to throw at me grew because of the massive amounts of fertilizer and manure that drained into the water. My dog would follow us up and down the beach with dead fish in her mouth, picking up a few of the many that washed up dead on the shore.
In school, half the field trips were to the Bay City State Park and they featured combing through the marsh and learning about the ecosystem of the Saginaw Bay Watershed. Distantly, behind the memories of the gift shop and the metal swing set, there’s the lesson on runoff and invasive species. Hidden between units on geology and the atmosphere, there was the one on carbon dioxide and rising global temperatures.
When I go home, my friend and I drive by the massive chemical plant in the next town over and joke about the weird-looking deer and what the workers could be doing there. But through all this, there’s always the underlying knowledge that they had already done the worst decades before, dumping pollution from the plant directly into the rivers and washing the chemicals into the bay. Every few years there’s an effort to stitch the environment back together, though the ecosystem is still reeling from the exploitation of natural space and resources. My dad tells stories about being able to swim from the marsh into the bay, which is now much more difficult given the road that runs through the water.
Once a competitor to Chicago, my town has a rich history that existed before the lumber mills ran out of trees to transport down the river. When I look along the shore, I see the power plant and, even further behind it, windmills.
I worry that we have stripped
the Earth’s natural resources bare. It’s not just me — lots of people are worried. I can’t think of a space that’s not being used to make our lives unnecessarily efficient, except maybe the sky. But not for lack of effort though.
I used to lay on the ice with my back in the snow looking at the stars. No light pollution, no noise but the subtle cracking of the ice beneath me like the shifting of the tectonic plates and nothing between me and the stars. Now, companies are trying to find a way to put something between us: They want to put ads up in the sky.
In some cases, it’s drones. Lego, Netflix, F1 and several other companies have taken liberties with drone shows to advertise at big events. In some ways, drones are praised as an alternative to fireworks. They release less pollutants during light shows, they’re quieter and they allow for a bit more creativity. There are now several companies to hire for drone shows, so there is a chance that this industry will
continue to grow. However, I wonder what the environmental cost of producing those drones is and if drone shows will stand the test of time to become an actual environmentally friendly option.
What really concerns me are satellite ads. These are giant billboards in the sky that are completely unavoidable. I can always turn off my phone or go on a walk with a friend, but if ads are in the sky, how is one expected to escape them?
If the sky can be bought and sold, I feel like we are forced to consider what might be projected into the sky like the bat signal. During an election cycle, I’d like to think that a candidate won’t be considered more seriously if they can project an ad into the sky, but how in the world would they be ignored? If somebody’s name is in the sky every night, played over a sunset or written in the stars, how will they not be discussed?
The sky’s the last frontier, the last place we can reach that isn’t covered in consumerism
and that is still free to everyone. We all look up at the same stars, the same sun, the same moon and the same bright blue sky. Throughout time, all humans have looked up and seen the same thing. It’s part of what connects us to history, as well as to one another. It’s the same sky Cleopatra and Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great saw, and now we want to change it. With so many other avenues of advertising, why must we turn to the sky? Isn’t every other method of advertising enough? Who is the sky going to reach that billboards, social media, sponsorships, commercials, news articles, Google search, Quizlet or even Canvas can’t reach? A product used to stick out if it was in a YouTuber’s sponsorship; now, that’s old news. This is a new big way to connect with people. It’s bigger and flashier than any other option — that’s undeniable. At the cost of the sky, though? The best time for the advertisements to run would be sunset or sunrise. One day, I could step outside to watch the sunset and find a Temu ad floating down with the sun. I’ve seen the sunset at grocery stores and after class, on beaches and through window. It’s
MEGHAN DWAN Statement Columnist
Michigan overtime confidence carries it to win over Minnesota
or belief, it’s just crazy how that works, so good for them.”
The No. 12 Michigan hockey team has grown accustomed to overtime periods.
Before Friday’s game against No. 4 Minnesota, the Wolverines had played seven overtime games across their 2024-25 season, winning five and sending the other two to shootouts.
So as the clock wound closer to zero with the score tied at two, both Michigan and the Golden Gophers felt an overtime period brewing under the ice. While this could be cause for panic, it wasn’t for the Wolverines, who have an abundance of experience in the 3-on-3 environment. So in true Michigan fashion, on a play between junior forward T.J. Hughes and senior defenseman Ethan Edwards, the Wolverines put away Minnesota in the fiveminute frame, tallying a win over a team that shut it out just two months ago.
“Credit to the players,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato said. “… It’s funny, when you have confidence in a certain area of your game
Off the draw, Minnesota forward Oliver Moore stickhandled around the Wolverines and took a dangerous shot on graduate goaltender Logan Stein, who saved the puck with his chest. That drive ended up containing the only shot on goal that the Gophers had, as Michigan took over the frame in offensive-zone time and shots.
In 3-on-3 play, there is much more room for the Wolverines to make wide-range plays and take advantage of breakaway opportunities. After a face-off in the defensive zone, Michigan drove up the right wing instead of just clearing the puck, and junior forward Josh Eernisse took a net-front shot that hit his stick awkwardly allowing Minnesota goaltender Liam Souliere to make an easy save.
The Wolverines and the Gophers traded possession of the puck for the middle minute, with neither team holding sustained offensive-zone time or taking shots on goal. But the moment the energy changed on the ice was when Minnesota forward Ryan Chesley hooked Hughes, sending Chesley to
the penalty box and Michigan into a 4-on-3 for the final two minutes. Instead of jumping right into the power play, Naurato called a timeout. With trust in his team and experience on their side, he drew up a play for his starting four — Hughes, Edwards, junior forward Jackson Hallum and freshman forward Michael Hage — to carry out. All four of them have tallied at least one point in an overtime this season, with Hallum and Hage combining for three of five gamewinning goals.
So as soon as the 4-on-3 began with the quad ready to go, the ice shifted in the Wolverines’ favor. And it only took 25 seconds to score the game-winning goal.
After Hughes won the faceoff, the quad passed around the perimeter of the offensive zone until they found a good look on net. Hage and Hughes took turns taking shots, but continued to miss the goal due to their shots being blocked or the puck going wide.
With Hage quarterbacking the man advantage, he took a shot down the slot that skewed left. Hughes won the puck battle behind the net and skated to the left faceoff dot. Seeing a passing lane open
Kim Barnes Arico becomes winningest coach in Michigan basketball history
Thirteen years ago, Kim Barnes Arico left everything she knew behind.
The then-St. John’s women’s basketball head coach left New York after a decade with the Red Storm for Michigan, leaving one basketball-crazed region of the country for another. At the time, Barnes Arico and her husband knew no one in the state — they’d never even been. And when she took the job, Barnes Arico never imagined becoming Michigan’s winningest basketball coach.
In fact — until several days ago — Barnes Arico didn’t even know she was on the cusp of history.
“No, no, actually honestly — and I promise this is true — I didn’t even know there was such a thing,” Barnes Arico said Wednesday. “The other night, I was watching the Super Bowl … and then I saw this thing on social media. I’m like, ‘What does this mean?’ Like, I had no idea.”
The Wolverines’ win against Michigan State on Sunday tied Barnes Arico with former Michigan men’s basketball
coach John Beilein at 278 wins apiece. And on Wednesday, the Wolverines’ thrilling fourthquarter comeback over Indiana cemented Barnes Arico as the winningest coach in Michigan basketball history. That accolade is the most recent addition to a long list of achievements. Since she was hired in 2012, Barnes Arico has managed a 20-win season 11 times, reached seven NCAA tournaments and won Big Ten Coach of the Year twice. In the 2021-22 season, her Wolverines appeared in their first Elite Eight in program history, beating Villanova and South Dakota before falling to Louisville. Barnes Arico coached Naz Hillmon, Michigan’s first All-American and Big Ten Player of the Year, and Katelyn Flaherty, the Wolverines’ alltime leading scorer for both men’s and women’s basketball. Wednesday’s win versus the Hoosiers pushed Barnes Arico to 279 wins and a .688 winning percentage at Michigan. And the record-setting win couldn’t have come with a more fitting group.
Following a tumultuous offseason, this year’s Wolverines team was surrounded by questions and
unknowns — much like those that Barnes Arico had when she moved from Queens to Ann Arbor. Now, 18 wins later — 279 for Barnes Arico — Michigan has not only cleared up any preseason questions but set a new standard for the season, just as Barnes Arico has done for the program over her 13-year tenure. Two journeys that, after some initial doubt, are apexing simultaneously.
Immediately after the win over Indiana, Barnes Arico headed for senior guard Jordan Hobbs. It was partially thanks to Hobbs, who fueled the Wolverines’ fourth-quarter comeback with a career-high 24 points, that Wednesday’s game was a historic one.
“It’s really cool,” Hobbs said. “I’m the only one on the team who’s been here for four years, so I’ve seen quite a few of those wins. She just means a lot to this program. … It doesn’t matter what’s going on in her life, she’s bringing the same energy and intensity and expects us to work hard every single day, and that’s why she’s so successful. It’s just really cool to see the trajectory that Michigan has since she’s become a coach here.”
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
to Edwards if he kept the puck under the Gophers’ sticks, Hughes jumped on the opportunity, sending a powerful shot across the slot to Edwards. With a swinging one-timer, Edwards netted the puck, and put the game to rest.
“It’s definitely one of the hardest situations to defend. I knew our power play had a lot of confidence going into that, and we talked about just getting open for each other, and it was just such a nice play by T.J.. All I had to do is just hit the net.”
“4-on-3 is huge,” Edwards said.
SOFTBALL
Minnesota attempted to challenge the goal due to goaltender interference, and once the challenge was denied, Yost Ice Arena erupted in cheers louder than they had been the entire game. While all Edwards had to do was ‘hit the net,’ hitting the net kept Michigan’s overtime winning streak intact and notched the Wolverines’ first win over the Gophers this season.
Michigan offense explodes in Red and Black Showcase after slow opening weekend
With a clear mind, freshman first baseman Lauren Putz stepped up to the plate at the top of the fourth inning in the Michigan softball team’s game against Georgia State on Sunday. Putz was looking for a simple swing early in the count — just trying to “see the ball, hit the ball,” in her own words.
And it didn’t take long for her to find that swing, as Putz blasted a three-run shot over the right-center field wall.
It was a play that encapsulated the Wolverines’ resurgent offense all weekend, coming after an underwhelming showing in last weekend’s USF-Rawlings Invitational. Michigan (5-4) went 3-1 in the Red and Black Showcase, dropping their opener 3-2 to No. 10 Georgia (9-0) but run-ruling Longwood (2-6) 8-0 and shutting down Western Carolina (1-7) 6-0, before turning in their best offensive showing of the weekend against the Panthers (1-9), run-ruling Georgia State 11-1.
“When you have high hopes and expectations, when you get into a season, sometimes those expectations can overtake the
process,” Michigan coach Bonnie Tholl said. “And so we really focused on the process, and so we were less results oriented, and we saw players going up with a really good approach at the plate, trying to make good, solid contact.”
The Wolverines opened this weekend’s series on Thursday the same way they did last weekend’s: in defeat. However, unlike last week’s error-ridden drubbing against Delaware, it was a competitive defeat.
Michigan managed to temper a potent Bulldogs offense, as senior right-hander Lauren Derkowski surrendered just three runs. And offensively, the Wolverines showed signs that last weekend’s woes were behind them. Michigan managed to table seven hits and place nine runners to base, scoring two of them for a late-inning comeback attempt.
The seven runners left on base reflects the further strides the Wolverines need to take in terms of offensive efficiency, but overall, the game against Georgia was a performance in which Michigan showcased its potential to score against and compete with a top-10 team. And in their next three games, the Wolverines built on that potential.
Against the Lancers on Friday, Michigan recorded 13 hits. Junior third baseman Maddie Erickson led the way with three, and junior second baseman Indiana Langford and redshirt sophomore catcher Lilly Vallimont tallied two hits a piece. The pick of the bunch, however, was sophomore outfielder Ella Stephenson’s home run over the left field wall in the bottom of the first inning.
“We did a much better job hitting and making really good offensive adjustments with runners in scoring position,” Tholl said. “And with two outs, the fact that we were able to make those adjustments was key.” It was more of the same against the Catamounts — another shutout victory, propelled by continued stellar pitching, this time from sophomore right-hander Erin Hoehn. The Wolverines tallied seven hits and six runs, with Putz and senior shortstop Ella McVey each registering two. Michigan left seven more runners on base — in what has become something of an early season trend — but capped off a fruitful Friday outing with two wins, 14 runs scored and zero surrendered.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
As the final period began the score was stuck in irons at 8-8. Less than 30 seconds into the
fourth frame, senior midfielder
Aidan Mulholland ripped a shot past the Statesmen goalie, sparking a dominant 7-1 run to take control of the game and propel the Wolverines to a win.
The No. 17 Michigan men’s
lacrosse team (2-1) outscored Hobart (1-1) 7-1 in the final period of the game on Saturday, turning an 8-8 deadlock into a 15-9 victory.
Mulholland’s opening score just 28 seconds into the fourth frame ignited a dominant offensive stretch, as the Wolverines scored five unanswered goals in the span of eight minutes. Mulholland and sophomore attacker Jack Jenkins each netted their fourth goals of the day during the surge, while graduate attacker Will Byrne completed his first hat trick in a Michigan uniform.
The Wolverines capitalized on their fourth-quarter shots on goal, while the defense held the Statesmen to just two total shot attempts in the final 10 minutes.
But the beginning of the game looked different from the end. For the first half, it was a hard fought
battle in which Hobart stayed neck-and-neck with Michigan.
The Wolverines struggled to create separation early but found their rhythm as the game progressed. Mulholland and Jenkins led the way with four goals each, while Mulholland added two assists for a six-point outing. At halftime, Michigan trailed by two after the Statesmen built a small lead off a strong second quarter.
“We settled down and started to play with higher energy,” Wolverines coach Kevin Conry said. “The best part about today is that we found an awakening here, and were ready to charge into the rest of the season.
That awakening was fueled by Mulholland becoming the driving force behind Michigan’s comeback, igniting a fire within his team and spearheading them to a hard-
fought victory. His leadership was evident in the game’s most crucial moments, setting the tone for a resilient push. Despite trailing by as many as three goals in the second half, the Wolverines rallied behind Mulholland’s presence and executed when it mattered most to secure the win. He dominated physically on the field while also uplifting his teammates and support them to bring home the win.
“Mulholland was the one who really carried us,” Conry said.
“He gave an inspiring speech at halftime, then came out firing in the third, with passion and energy.”
That energy spread throughout the team. After Michigan struggled to find momentum early, the Wolverines flipped a switch, tightening up on defense and
attacking with urgency on offense. By the time the fourth quarter ended, Michigan had turned a tense back-and-forth contest into a statement win. The Wolverines’ defensive effort played just as big a role as the offensive explosion, with junior defenseman Mason Whitney causing three turnovers and scooping up four ground balls. Graduate defenseman Pace Billings added seven ground balls, while junior goalie Hunter Taylor made key saves to keep Hobart from mounting a response. In an all-around dominant frame Mulholland’s leadership led the way in addition to his scoring. His confidence, composure and ability to rally his teammates allowed for the late surge, turning what had been a close game into a dominant finish.
Meleck
ANNA MILLER Daily Sports Editor
Maintaining top spot in Big Ten, Michigan beats Ohio State
NOVOTNY
C18
free throws. The Wolverines held a fivepoint lead at halftime — and were again in the type of twopossession game they have become familiar with over the course of the season. The indications were there that they could blow it open, but history tends to repeat itself.
The Wolverines came out strong in the second half, with junior guard Tre Donaldson and junior forward Danny Wolf now getting into the mix. The trio of Goldin, Donaldson and Wolf scored 20 of Michigan’s first 23 points to start the half, carrying the offense for the first 10 minutes.
“Tre didn’t have one of his better games, but he’s the one that got the one’s when we were weathering a storm in the second half,” Wolverines coach Dusty May said. “He was the one that was getting downhill, putting pressure on the rim.”
lead changed hands four more times in the next four minutes, and Michigan had to look back to Wolf’s veteran presence. Scoring seven points in the final six minutes, he kept the Wolverines
THAT UP TOP
regained the lead with about 13 minutes remaining, the game fell back into its first-half trends. The
