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4A -Wednesday, February 27, 2013
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
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Ghosts of spring breaks past
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MELANIE KRUVELIS
and ADRIENNE ROBERTS MATT SLOVIN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR
ANDREW WEINER
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
Keep Ann Arbor weird
Restructuring of art program preserves the city's vibrant culture
As Congress battles over how to reduce the federal deficit, Ann
Arbor has its own concerns: public art. Ann Arbor's public
art task force was created this past December after Proposal
B failed to pass in the November elections. Proposal B called for the
elimination of the Percent for Art funding in the city, which requires
that one percent of the money from city capital projects be pooled for
city art. Under the Percent for Arts funding, art must be permanent
and somehow linked to the fund paying for the project. The task force
recently enumerated several proposals to improve art in the commu-
nity, including calls for an art supervisor, increased community dona-
tions, more community interaction and the elimination of Percent for
Art. The task force's recommendations are a reasonable restructure
and will be essential in helping Ann Arbor stay culturally relevant.
There's a tale by Charles
Dickens called "A Christ-
mas Carol." For those of
you who haven't
encountered it,
I'll summarize:
A crotchety old
man is visited by
his dead lend-
ing partner and
three other
ghosts who JOSEPH
teach him the
true meaning of HORTON
Christmas. With
springbreak
here, with my students itching for
far-off shores and the soft sheets of
home, and feeling myself sufficient-
ly old and crotchety, let me detail
my visitation by the four ghosts of
spring breaks past.
My freshman year, I went home.
Instead of staying in Los Angeles
and exploring my new city, instead
of taking up new friends on their
offers of Mexico or Arizona or
northern California, I went home
to Colorado. I judged a high-school
speech and debate tournament
I'd won the year before. I knew
everything and everyone - I was
the returning champion. I was the
guy who came home and expected
everyone to marvel at his collegiate
life. My high school had always been
small, and I expected it to be that
much smaller for all I'd grown. My
sister, two years behind me, was still
on the team, but she was busy with
her friends. My coaches had new
students to instruct. The tourna-
ment crowned a champion as I sat in
the back of the auditorium.
My freshman ghost reminds me of
all the chances I missed and teaches
me that comfort has its place, but it
needs to know its place too.
My sophomore year, I went on a
service trip to the Navajo Nation.
No more going home, but none of
that drunken beach debauchery
for me. I was above all that. I was
a pampered college student and I
needed to give back. I drove 11 hours
with two-dozen likeminded stu-
dents to Montezuma Creek, Utah
to paint houses and work with local
students. I slept on the floor of the
high school. I woke up at six every
morning and ate ham sandwich-
es for a week. I did a sweat lodge
beside a freezing river. I learned a
little Navajo. I dripped paint. Iwept
during a ceremonial dance.
My sophomore ghost says I got
plenty, but I don't think I gave much
back.
My junior year, studying abroad
in London, I used the break to trav-
el around Italy. We took a gondola
in venice, hiked to the top of the
Duomo in Florence and danced in
a street carnival in Milan. We saw
Oscar-winner Roberto Benigni at
an Ethiopian restaurant and art
that filled cities. I got a new girl-
friend, and we slept in the same
hostel bunk bed, and in the morn-
ing our backs did not hurt. We
threw coins in the Trevi Fountain
and knew, distantly, that we would
not live forever, but we promised
that we would come back and that
we wouldn't ever forget.
My junior year ghost wonders
when I will be back and how much
cannot be brought back.
My senior year, I finally made
it up to northern California. The
girlfriend was still with me, hav-
ing flown out from New York. We
toured San Francisco and stayed at a
bed and breakfast in Mendocino. We
were told that "Murder, She Wrote,"
was filmed there, and we laughed- a
perfect retirement town for ancient
Angela Lansbury to haunt. We slept
in. We ate breakfast in bed. We read
the complimentary USA Today. We
were adults. We wished we had jobs
after graduation. We talked about if
we would "make it" together, with-
out knowing what that meant. We
agreed that long distance was hard,
but that we couldn't imagine being
apart. We wished we had jobs. We
felt both old and immature. At the
end of the week, her flight to New
York was delayed a day and it felt
like a miracle - one more day that
was not the future.
We are who we
decide to be when
we are told we
can do anything.
My senior year ghost knows that
this was only a temporary reprieve.
The ghost of the future points silent-
ly ahead, knowing that time is the
hardest distance.
I won't wake up on any of these
cold early March mornings with
my life changed. My time for that
has passed. But every year I remem-
ber those four entirely different
escapes, alike only in their enduring
ability to define me. There's plenty
of mythic pressure put on spring
break, on "making memories," on
letting loose and walking as close
to the edge of reason as possible.
Much of it is unwarranted, absurd
and, not infrequently, dangerous.
But spring breaks matter because
we are the choices we've made. We
are adventures we've had and the
chances we've missed. We are the
people we've wanted to help and the
lovers we've left behind. We are who
we decide to be when we are told we
can do anything.
- Joseph Horton can be reached
at jbhorton@umich.edu.
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The art task force is absolutely correct
in changing the city's funding. Forty-four
percent of voters supported proposal B in
November, which is a high percentage con-
sidering people's instinctive response to vote
no on ballot proposals. Ann Arbor citizens
are clearly interested in changing the way art
is funded. The task force is emblematic of a
city council that is searching for new ways to
include art in the city and make it an integral
part of the community. These new recom-
mendations ensure that art will better serve
the city's unique needs.
The plan to end the Percent for Art pro-
gram is a responsible decision. Percent for
Art allowed the city to use money on art even
if it didn't have a plan. Now, the city must
design an art project before funding is allo-
cated. This ensures that the city's art projects
are well organized and better funded. The
new ideas for donations from the community
through "crowdfunding" websites like Kick-
starter will help fund the art program, as well
as engage the community.
Finally, the program keeps Ann Arbor
weird. Ann Arbor hosts one of the best sum-
mer art fairs, is home to a prestigious, diverse
university and is a cultural hub in the state
of Michigan. Art deserves to be a focal point
of this city. A new and organized art program
will ensure that Ann Arbor will continue to
thrive culturally, and continue to attract
tourists from around the city and state.
The city's task force has done a superb job
of handling its artistic situation. It has orga-
nized a template that assumes a nuanced and
responsible paradigm for art in Ann Arbor.
The improvement of the art program is a way
of maintaining Ann Arbor's distinct charac-
ter and culture.
BARRY BELMONT I
The stories of science
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
Kaan Avdan, Sharik Bashir, Barry Belmont, James Brennan, Eli Cahan, Jesse Klein,
Melanie Kruvelis, Maura Levine, Patrick Maillet, Aarica Marsh, Megan McDonald,
Jasmine McNenny, Harsha Nahata, Adrienne Roberts, Paul Sherman,
Sarah Skaluba, Michael Spaeth, Luchen Wang, Derek Wolfe
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION
Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and viewpoints.
Letters should be fewer than 300 words while viewpoints should be 550-850 words.
Send the writer's full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
SHARIK BASHIR A
Putting Karachi in context
Henrietta Lacks was a woman. She had a
life. She had loves and joys, hardships and
heartaches. She had a family. She had friends,
hobbies, grudges. She held down a job and
polished her toenails.
Rebecca Skloot is also a woman. She lives
the life of an author and journalist, writ-
ing about science and medicine. She, too,
has a family, friends, hobbies, grudges. And
she holds down a job and has polished her
toenails. On Tuesday, she visited the Uni-
versity to discuss her New York Times Best
Seller, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta
Lacks." Framed as a biography of cells and
a story of people, her talk covered aspects of
privacy, tissue ownership and informed con-
sent in medical sciences during the 1950s. But
mostly she talked about Henrietta Lacks.
Henrietta Lacks was born Aug. 1, 1920.
Early in 1951, Lacks began to feel abdominal
and cervical pains. She was diagnosed with
a malignant cervical cancer. She was treat-
ed with radiation, which failed to stop the
spread of the cancer. It eventually metasta-
sized throughout her body. On Oct. 4, 1951,
she died.
Before her death, cell samples from her
cervix were removed by her physician and
given to George Gey without her or her fam-
ily's permission. At the time, permission
for cell and tissue harvesting was neither
required nor typically sought, especially for
such small samples taken during routine pro-
cedures. Gey was requesting every cell and
tissue sample he could because of his interest
in creating an immortalized human cell line
- that is, cells that could be indefinitely cul-
tured. Such a creation would have an incred-
ible impact on biomedical research, as it
would allow for more standardized and rigor-
ous experiments. After many failed attempts,
Gey succeeded in creating this cell line with
Lacks's cancer tissue, still in use today.
The cells Gey created were called "HeLa"
cells, after Henrietta Lacks. For many years,
several textbooks, journal articles and press
reports mistakenly claimed the cells were
named for Helen Lane, Helen Larson and Hen-
rietta Lakes. This error was promulgated partly
because of initial concerns for privacy and part-
ly through a continuation of earlier inaccura-
cies. Indifference to the person they came from
also played a role.
Skloot first learned about HeLa cells in her
community college biology class. She was told
the cells were immortal, came from a woman
who died of cancer and that she was black. She
and many others before her were told these
details as if they were all there was to it. After
all, what was supposed to matter was that these
cells had helped millions, and potentially bil-
lions, of people as a result of biological and
medical breakthroughs.
That was what was supposed to matter - not
the person they were from. That was the story
we knew until Skloot came along.
In the half century between the death of
Lacks and the beginning of Skloot's inves-
tigation, trillions and trillions of HeLa cells
had been grown. For all the good the cells
had done for the world (used to test the polio
vaccine, develop genetic mapping techniques
and understand cancer), very little was
known of the woman who brought them into
it. After a decade of research, Skloot deliv-
ered a book that would tell Lacks's story and
reignite debates in scientific ethics that rage
across the nation.
Debate in scientific ethics is rarely simple.
Typically the scales of moral justification in
science are nuanced with attempts made to
carefully calibrate them to balance the sever-
ity of pain with the potential for progress.
It's not easy and has been constantly refined
as more evidence comes in. But for science
to be self-correcting, it must periodically be
wrong. And sometimes it is.
One such instance that Skloot elaborates
upon throughout her book is the infamous
"Tuskegee syphilis experiment" that spanned
from 1932 to 1972 in which nearly 600 black
men in Alabama were monitored to track the
progression of syphilis in natural environ-
ments. Those that had syphilis (399 of the origi-
nal participants) were never told they had the
disease and were actively prevented from get-
ting treatment. As a result men, women and
children needlessly suffered and died as sacri-
fices at the altar of ethically disgraced science.
Too often we forget that science is just
another thing people do. We forget that scien-
tists are people, no different than others, with
families, friends, hobbies and grudges. Their
job puts them in a unique position of trust, and
this must not be abused. After all, scientists are
people and so are their patients. We must all
communicate with one another honestly and
openly as we go through this life - it's the only
way we'll make it.
The stories of science are the stories of
humanity's place in the universe. But this
only matters insofar as we remember that it
is human beings for which and about whom
these stories are told. So the next time you see
"HeLa lives!" scrawled on the bathroom walls
of a medical research facility, take a moment
to remember that once Henrietta lived.
Barry Belmont is an
Engineering graduate student.
I was reading the viewpoint by
Omar Mahmood on Monday and
noticed he was quite disappointed
by his visit to Karachi, Pakistan
last summer. He complained that
Karachi, the largest metropolis in
the nation, had lost its indigenous
culture because the people allowed
globalization to corrupt the city. I've
lived in Karachi all my life and my
entire family is from Pakistan. I can
say with certainty that Pakistani
culture is most definitely not "sim-
ply a shameless attempt to be Amer-
ican," as described by Mahmood.
Karachi, and Pakistan as a whole,
may be facing a plethora of crises,
but losing their cultural identity is
not among them.
Firstly, it would be wrong to
judge Pakistani culture based on
the experiences of one summer in
Karachi. If one is to be critical, it's
important to first know about the
history of the city.
Karachi, until the partition of
India in 1947, has historically been
inconsequential and mostly irrel-
evant. It never epitomized Indian
or Pakistani culture. Before the
British colonized India, Kara-
chi was barely even a city. It was
a small fishing village with no
recognizable historic culture or
architecture to put it on the map.
In fact, it wasn't even called Kara-
chi. Burns Road, Frere Hall, Napi-
er Road and Empress Market are
among the city's oldest landmarks.
Doesn't sound very Pakistani, does
it? That's because the British con-
structed these landmarks.
Today, Karachi has grown into
one of the most populous cities in
the world. It's the New York City of
Pakistan - a mixture of many eth-
nicities in a single place. Karachi
never had a cultural identity of its
own. But since so many people from
different backgrounds moved to
Karachi, the many cultures became
somewhat subdued in order to
facilitate communication between
groups of people. What I'm trying
to say is that if you come to Karachi
expecting to be bombarded with
Pakistani culture, you will surely
be disappointed. You will only find
traces of various cultures within the
homes of individuals who choose to
preserve their native heritage.
Mahmood's article showed that
he's aware of Sufi music, poetry and
Qawwalis - all unique to Pakistan
and India. Pakistan has not lost its
culture - you just have to look for it
beyond Karachi. It's like learning all
about the American South and then
going to New York and expecting to
hear Southern accents. It's not going
to happen.
If you visit cities like Lahore or
Multan, you will experience Sufi
culture; you can see the old shrines
and Mughal era architecture. There
are more than 60 languages spoken
in Pakistan, and each region has a
distinct culture. I've visited parts of
the country where even I can't seem
to relate to the culture because I
haven't been exposed to it in Kara-
chi. Pakistan has such vibrant cul-
ture that it would be naive to say
the country has become completely
westernized. The entire culture of
Pakistan is not expressed on the
streets of Karachi.
Yes, in Karachi we have a Texas-
themed restaurant where it's OK
to throw peanuts on the ground. I
will even confess to watching Hol-
lywood movies and listening to Eng-
lish music- that's just a result of
globalization and cultural exchange.
I don't think Mahmood visited the
restaurants I often frequented with
my friends. I can assure you that
you'd find no such places in America.
As for the mall where "the national
language of Urdu was effectively
banned," I've yet to see this. It's also
important to understand that it's not
abnormal for Pakistanis tobe speak-
ing English. After all, English is a
legacy of British rule and has been
absorbed into Pakistani culture.
For Mahmood, I don't think it was
Karachi that was the problem, but
the tour guide.
As technology and communica-
tion develop, we will be exposed to
different cultures around the world
and need to learn to embrace them.
The moment the first flight that
could get you from Karachi to New
York departed was the moment it
became inevitable that Karachi
would open up a Texas-themed res-
taurant. Take a look at Ann Arbor.
I doubt that Ann Arbor had Indian,
Korean and Chinese restaurants in
1905. But the fact that we have them
today doesn't mean that Ann Arbor
has lost its culture.
Despite not being a historically
vibrant city, Karachi does have a
unique culture that isn't necessar-
ily a microcosm of Pakistan or a
shameless imitation of America. If
you want to find the culture of Kara-
chi, you have to look beyond the
shopping malls and Texas-themed
restaurants. Culture isn't defined
by restaurant chains - it's defined
by how you live. It's defined by your
background, the language you speak
and the values and traditions with
which you grow.
Only when I came to America for
college did I realize how different
Pakistani culture is, and I realized
this despite living in Karachi all
my life. I notice it every day when
I don't get authentic Pakistani food
to eat, when I don't hear my aunts
chatting with my grandmother in
Punjabi, when the entire city is dis-
cussing football instead of cricket
and when I can't crack Urdu jokes
with my American friends. The list
of cultural differences is endless.
The effects of globalization should
not be confused with erosion of cul-
ture. Karachi may be suffering a lot
these days, but it's definitely not suf-
fering a loss of culture and hopefully
it never will.
Sharik Bashir is an LSA sophomore.
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