4A - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com C lfidiian Daily Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com MEGAN MCDONALD PETER SHAHIN and DANIEL WANG KATIE BURKE EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR 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. Focus on the issues The trivial antics during CSG elections are detrimental to students L ast Thursday marked the closing of the Central Student Government elections, yet the results weren't announced until Tuesday night. On March 24, CSG parties FORUM and Make Michigan filed numerous complaints against a number of parties. Though the the University Elections Commission found defendants not guilty in the original complaints, four new complaints were filed by Make Michigan over the weekend against FORUM, the Party Party and the House of Cards Party. For the last two years, CSG has shown that it's unable to conduct itself in a mature manner that puts student voices above petty politics. Since CSG is obviously not capable of monitoring itself, the University must step in as a third party to monitor CSG elections. Each year, CSG parties track the actions students deserve to have their votes count. of their opponents, searching for possible However, 3-percent penalties can rescind a violations in the UEC election code. Individual significant number of votes, especially when a candidates who receive 10 or more demerits person rapidly accumulates demerits. Election and entire parties that receive 28 or more penalty policies are extreme, and in some cases demerits are automatically disqualified from candidates lose amajorityoftheir votes - or are the election. Alleged violations are reviewed by disqualified - forbreaking a policynthatcaffect a the Central Student Judiciary, which assigns relatively small portion of the electorate. any applicable demerits - in this case, one to With CSG allowing this broken system to two demerits per minor infraction and three occur for a third consecutive year, it's time for to four for major violations. Unfortunately, the University to intervene. CSG is supposed the demerit policy created a system in which to be a crucial organization that connects parties win based on violations, not political students to the University administration. platforms. Last year, LSA seniors Chris Osborn Since CSG has proven time after time that and Hayley Sakwa, executive candidates for it's not equipped to handle elections in a FORUM, received the majority of votes but professional manner, University officials were disqualified from the election because of must intervene in order to ensure elected several violations. The demerit policy doesn't CSG officials represent the voice of students. reflect a democratic system. CSG's failure to The University should create a third judiciary adequately remedythe situation after last year's party consisted of faculty members to monitor debacle indicates that the student government each election. With a judiciary system reigning doesn't take its electoral system seriously, outside political campaigns and the CSG These petty scandals and lawsuits perpetuate body of representatives, officials could fairly the often misplaced campus perception that monitor situations and handle violations CSG is a trivial and ineffective institution. appropriately. Filing insignificant charges Failing to enforce an appropriate election - such as asserting that a campaign failed to system doesn't just hurt CSG - it hurts report an $18 hotdog suit ora $7 wand - are the students that believe and participate makinga mockery of CSG. Change is necessary in student government. Dedicating time to in order to refocus the priorities of CSG onto learn about candidates requires effort, and the students. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Barry Belmont, Edvinas Berzanskis, Rachel John, Nivedita Karki, Jacob Karafa, Jordyn Kay, Aarica Marsh, Megan McDonald, Victoria Noble, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman, Paul Sherman, Allison Raeck, Linh Vu, Daniel Wang, Derek Wolfe DAVID HARRIS I Remembering Tigers stadium ILL HAVEN'T HAPPENED SINCE GAY MARRIAGE Building our future J ts 4 am. on Tuesday, April 1, 2014. I'm sitting in a tent just outside the Michigan Union, huddled in my North Face jacket and a sleeping bag. Any other Monday night - or Tuesday morning rather - I would be fast asleep in my bed. But tonight I wait for free tickets to see President Barack Obama for HARLEEN KAUR Of all the perks of working in downtown Detroit, the restaurants the city has to offer duringlunch breaks might be the best of them. So as I did every Friday, I left my office for a lunch break to enjoy some of Detroit's finest. I was in the mood for a good burger, so Mercury Burger Bar in Corktown was the destination. The drive along Michigan Avenue in Corktown may be the worst in the city. It's useless to try to avoid the potholes - you just drive through them hoping for thebest. The road is made of bricks, remnants from when trolley cars used to take patrons from Michigan Central Station to downtown with a single lane of patchy pavement in the middle to cover the old tracks, unused for more than 60 years now. Sometimes a bit of the metal tracks canbe seen peeking out of that poorly paved asphalt, fragments of a past far brighter than theblight that has faced the center of Corktown since the closing of Tiger Stadium. I'd driven past the blank field of the former stadium site on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull many times since the old ballpark had closed. Some of my first memories were formed in that stadium, a cathedral to the golden age of baseball. I would go with my dad, take a seat underneath the overhanging upper deck and take in as much of the field that wasn't blocked by the support beams scattered among the seats. The Tigers were never winners during those years. Not once did they even post a winning season during my lifetime of games at the stadium,but not once did it matter to me. Today, for whatever reason, I decided to pull up next to the iron gates - the sole rem- nant of the exterior of the stadium. Gone are the large white facades and the large, white- painted light structures. In right field, where that famous overhang of the upper deck once stood, is just patchy grass. Where I once sat as an eager kindergarten-aged child - baseball glove on my left hand waiting for the souvenir that never came - was nothing. It was a perfect summer day for the baseball game this field would never see again. I walked inside the gates to the infield dirt, which remains from the original playing field and is kept up by volunteers alone. The Navin Field Grounds Crew, as they call themselves, pays homage to the original name of the field that opened the same day as Fenway Park in Boston. How different have the two historic icons been treated. In the middle of the barren block, 200 feet in the air stands the flagpole that once rested inside the left-center field fence as an obstacle in the outfield. The same flag that 53,000 fans stood to face with their hats off before each game now stands alone. Comerica Park once had its own flagpole placed in the field of play as an homage from the new to the old. I turned to resume my lunch plans but real- ized I wasn't alone. Another college-aged man - perhaps another intern working downtown - and his dad walked through the gates tak- ing in the same empty field. The dad wore an orange-billed Tigers cap, the old logo with the rough tiger face emblazoned on the front. The Tigers haven't used that logo in 20 years. The original Mercury Bar in Corktown closed in the 1980s. What once was the popular spot for train travelers at Michigan Central Station since before World War II became abandoned just like the station itself. A few years ago, two new owners found the bar's original sign, flipped on the neon sign and proceeded to open the best burger joint downtown. The restaurant still stands in the shadow of the decrepit station, as the splendid decay appears synonymous with the city. Even as time passes, the past remains in plain sight. It's been almost five years since the demolition of the sacred stadium, The Corner. It too once loomed for 10 years and was decrepit and decayinglike thetrain station. Thebases Ty Cobb stole, the dugout where manager Sparky Anderson yelled, "You don't want to walk him!" to Padres pitcher Goose Gossage before Kirk Gibson homered in the 1984 World Series, the field Charlie "The Mechanical Man" Gehringer patrolled and the fences that Hammerin' Hank Greenberg slugged baseballs over, the football grass where Lions player Chuck Hughes suffered a heart attack during a football game and passed away. None of it remains. But even though the stadium is gone, reduced to ablank slate of infield dirt and grass, something is still there. Something far grander than the grandiosity of the stadium ever was. It can be covered up like the pavement covers the trolley tracks. It can be pushed aside. But it can neverbe taken away. As I exited through the gates, the dad and his son broke out their baseball gloves and started to play catch. They say baseball is America's pastime. And the pastime never dies. David Harris is an Engineering junior. the second time in my three years on campus. I was fairly uncertain about whether I wanted to wait in line tonight, as I saw Obama last time he came to campus and I wasn't sure if I was mentally prepared to wait in line for 10-12 hours. It would be warmer this time versus the last, but a big commitment nonetheless. Obviously, I decided to come out, mostly because I knew that I would have the company of many friends who had decided to camp out. As I sit here in line, I am thankful for the fact that I attend a school that provides me with such wonderful opportunities, like the ability to see the current President not once, but twice during my college career. However, I consider many other things as I wait here in line. One is that, a few hours ago, a friend came around asking for signatures for a petition to raise the minimum wage here in Michigan. Interestingly enough, people were fairly hesitant to sign, even though technically that is the reason we are all here. Also, the fact that when the topic of Obama's speech was announced, many were surprised due to the CORINE ROSENBERG "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." -Aert Camus I spent all of last year on campus practicing something I called 'silent love.' Walking around from class to class, through the Diag or around the Union, I would yell, in my head, my love for the people around me. "I love you, beautiful girl in the red coat and red pants, you are as big as your heart will let you be, you are lovely. I love you too, sweet hipster boy with pants rolled up and head hung down, lift your head up for you arebrilliant. I love you, boy with your head in a book of comics, and you, lovely professor or staff, fearless in brightly colored clothing. I love you too, man who sits every day to share your music with the UGLi and its sad neighbors." I would speak in my head to every person I passed, give them compliments, tell them I loved them, would yell it atnthem so fierce. Sometimes I fear we have lost our ability to love, to say thank you, "you'rebeautiful,"orholdastranger's hand on abus ride fromBursley-Baits to C.C. Little. We put up walls, judge on appearances and decide we don't like people without knowing them, simply because of how they look or act. We do not know everyone's story, everyone's reality. We do not know why someone may be sad or glowing or angry. We no longer know how to ask the big questions or say the big things. Instead, we fill our days with small talk. I have often been judged, sometimes accurately and sometimes completely inaccurately. I am a person who has been disliked as much as I have been loved, who has found herselfbullied all through elementary and middle and high school, who stuffed her bra to try to fit in and cut her wrists to try to cry out. I am not here to prove myself as a person to you. I am just here to ask you to listen. Several months ago a blog/web- site/Facebook page called Humans of New York blew up - a man, Bran- don Stanton, would walk the streets of New York City and take photos of people. What made him differ- ent though was that he would talk sentiment that" isn't a relevant to; of Michigan stude I would like to cha Tomorrow, we talk about why h the national mi $10.10, nearly a $ Michigan's curren wage. Though the portion of the st doesn't feel affect still a considerable even within the c who would bene $7.40 an hour, $2 week, or $1,184 barely cover food; University student Looking at population, Ann P impacted by wage. According Arbor News, " chronically home in Washtenaw Co over the past two several thriving programs in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County to assist these individuals in finding their way back into the work force and with temporary housing, but it's still a problem th some time until changes occur. A: minimum wage is One concern wi in the minimum v would simply adju has certainly occur wage is that costs :st - a trend that rred in Ann Arbor Silent love to the people whose photos he took - would ask them powerful ques- tions and receive even more power- ful responses. He paired these quotes with the photos and gave a heautiful and raw humanity to these strangers. I started following his blog, and as it took off, so did many similar to his: Humans of Boston, Humans of Detroit and Humans of Los Angeles. I began to think of a few things as I saw this evolution. First, how little or much we show through our face, carry in our body language and tell in our voice. How many stories those around us carry but do not share. Second, how much small talk we have, speaking about weather or current events but so rarely ourselves or our feelings. How reserved we are with those we love but how open we can be with strangers. Lastly, the girl with her feet hanging off the bridge might need you to smile at her, pull her away or maybe even simply join her for a bit. Sit in silence. Appreciate the new view. As my campus has turned into a place of conflict, anger, frustration, fear - a place where people do not feel safe, listened to, or supported - I have wondered what the answer may be. Is taking away the humanity from those we do not know a new phenomenon? Or rather have we spent too much time learning how to build walls to know how to break them down? I hear everyone saying they want peace, but the ways in which they want it are not the same. We have shut our ears to the other side. We have tuned out. Let me share something personal in the hopes that you will listen. I am angry. I am just as angry as you, or perhaps less, or even more. I am frustrated. I am privileged. I am oppressed. These are not mutually exclusive. I am white; I am female; I am pansexual; I am young; I am mid- dle class. I have decided to live every day as an act of rebellion against the oppressive institutions, systems and cultural norms that perpetrate these inequalities. I will not marry until everyone, regardless of gender, can marry in the eyes of the law. I will not support a system that is oppressive. I am angry. I want to wear the clothes that I want to. I want to dance if I want to, sing if I want to, not explain myself because you say that I have to. I have been sexually assaulted. I have notshared this with anyone other than family, closest of friends, therapists or hospital doctors. This is a story I wear every day in my voice and my body, on my face, but hide. I am not alone. We are all carrying our baggage, some tucked into breast pockets, some spilling over onto that 2 a.m. busback to North Campus. I am not asking you to pity me, to say you are sorry. In fact, I am still not ready to talk about these things. I am just asking that you respect the stories that surround you every day. I am pretending you are Brandon Stanton on a train in New York City, and you are asking me about the time I was the most scared. I am telling him, "I am scared every day. I am scared that someone will hurt me. That someone is hurting someone else. I am scared that we are not lis- tening to each other. Iam scared that there is nothing Ican do tofix it." As my campus has turned into a volatile and emotional place, a place where some feel scared to share their beliefs, and others feel like there is nothing they can do to fix it, I see something else. I see passion. I see walls being broken down. I see people coming together in ways they did not think that they could. I am just asking that we do one more thing. That we start being more mindful, stop judging others, start asking strangers questions, stop all the small talk, start saying the big things even if they hurt. I am asking that we realize that those who are privileged did not ask for that privilege, that they must recognize it and fight against it in the very act of their existence to the best of their abilities. I am asking that we remember that each person on that bus or sitting in the Diag enjoying 45-degree weather has a story, unspoken but real. I am asking that we all start practicing love. Not only self-love and friend love, but silent love. Let us give our peers back their humanity. Let us try to listen. Corine Rosenberg is an LSA sophomore. "minimum wage as housing rates have continued pic for University to rise over the years. This is why nts," is anarrative changing the environment in Ann allenge. Arbor to be more accepting toward will hear Obama students and residents of lower e wants to raise socioeconomic statuses requires a nimum wage to larger institutional change within 3 difference from University Housing, local realtors it $7.40 minimum and high-rises. Making these re may be a large changes will certainly take time, but udent body that with a raise in the minimum wage ed by this, there is and an adjustment of housing prices, e group of people, Ann Arbor can become a diverse city ity of Ann Arbor, that is welcoming and accessible fit. Living off of toward students and residents from a 96 for a 40-hour variety of social classes. a month, would when Obama speaks on and rent for most Wednesday, I hope to not only hear ts. him make his argument for raising the broader the minimum wage, but also why Arbor is certainly and how it's relevant to students the minimum at Michigan. These policy issues to The Ann that may not seem relevant to each The number of and every student are important to eless individuals discuss because it ties us to larger unty has doubled issues that influence our community years." There are and the nation as a whole. Understanding and engaging in conversations Our voices and a about topics actions like the national will shape the next minimum wage will allow us generation of policies to realize the . significance and institutions, of educating ourselves on policy issues, strengthening sat will exist for our voices and allowing ourselves to larger structural be heard. Our voices and actions will n increase in the build the next generation of policies one of them. and institutions, so the earlier we th a national raise start our involvement, the better. - Harleen Kaur can be reached at harleen@urich.edu.