8C - Fall 2014T
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
CAMPUS LIFE
Music Matters hosts festival
SpringFest
features 2Chainz
and student
organizations
By MICHAEL SUGERMAN
Daily Staff Reporter
In the third installment of its
annual SpringFest celebration,
MUSIC Matters pulled out all
the stops Thursday.
Rain served as an enforced
recess between the afternoon's
activities and the night's cap-
stone concert - which climaxed
as rapper 2 Chainz strolled onto
the Hill Auditorium stage, bel-
lowing his moniker to the heav-
ens.
During the day, food trucks
and live entertainment stretched
along North University Avenue
from Hatcher Graduate Library
to North University Avenue,
while 40 student organizations,
organized by themed tents, pre-
sented their year's work. Lasting
from 11 a.m. to 6p.m., the festivi-
ties built up to 2 Chainz: the day's
headlining act.
After his performance, 2
Chainz explained in an interview
how he connects to a diverse set
of audiences.
"I just think I'm very trans-
parent," he said. "What you see
is what you get. I'm like this
on and off camera - at home,
chillin' out. I've got a good spirit.
I'm very blessed and I think that
kind of projects to the crowd.
It's organic. People like it and I
appreciate it."
LSA senior Phil Schermer,
MUSIC Matters president, said
SpringFest as a whole - which
was revamped to resemble Aus-
tin music and technology festival
South By Southwest - exceeded
his expectations.
"My phone was dead for 45
minutes," he said. "I turned
it back on - had 46 texts from
people who were excited about
SpringFest. It's unbelievable."
Schermer said the festival's
new layout, which aimed to both
inspire and showcase student
accomplishment, set a strong
precedent for future improve-
ment. He said he hopes that
MUSIC Matters will recruit
more student organizations to
present next year, in addition to
bringing in more food options
and more live outdoor concerts.
One of Thursday's live per-
formers was LSA sophomore
Sylvia Yacoub, who was formerly
a top 10 contestant on thehird
season of NBC's "The Voice?' She
said the venue gave her a chance
to cater to a local audience, which
she appreciated.
"I thought it was a lot of fun,"
she said. "The crowd was awe-
some. I loved the energy ... It was
really cool to just perform with
students. It's the demographic,
essentially, that I want to jump to
when I release my album some-
time this year."
Yacoub performed a roughly
10-song set that included covers
of Jessie J., Christina Aguilera
and Rihanna. She also sang a
slow, acoustic version of Taylor
Swift's "I Knew You Were Trou-
ble."
Musical acts like Yacoub's
were intertwined with entrepre-
neurial-themed talks through-
out the day. University alum
Mike Muse, one of the nation's
top political fundraisers and the
co-founder of record label Muse
Recordings, delivered one of
these presentations.
In his speech to students,
Muse emphasized the close ties
between music and politics -
both mechanisms of enacting
change.
"We're here about SpringFest
and we're here about 2 Chainz
are we're here for MUSIC Mat-
ters, but really, what is the pur-
pose for us being here?" he asked
during his talk. "The purpose
is engagement. The purpose is
activism. The purpose is to build
community. The purpose is to
bust down the segregated walls
that we have here on this cam-
pus."
Muse has also been named the
first director of MUSIC Matters'
future board, which he said will
ultimately consist of profession-
als who "have ties to both the
intersection of pop culture and
change agents." This group will
work with outside sources to
help fund and build MUSIC Mat-
ters in the coming years.
Muse said he became involved
with MUSIC Matters after
Schermer reached out to him
earlier in the year, as he was
impressed with the similarities
between his work and that of the
student organization.
"I was using music to make
fundraising fun, and to make it
cool, and to make it inviting, and
to break the ice and say, 'This is
what politics looks like now,"' he
said, adding that his career and
MUSIC Matters "share a very
unique symbiotic relationship
that runs parallel."
On a similar tangent of devel-
opment, MPowered hosted an
event called MTank - modeled
after ABC's "Shark Tank," where
start-up entrepreneurs pitch
their potential productsato world-
renowned business moguls.
Five groups pitched their
products to a board of local ven-
ture capitalists, and ultimately a
product called "S-Pack" won the
contest.
According to a handout dis-
tributed by MPowered prior to
the MTank, S-Pack works to
"solve the problem every woman
faces by combining several essen-
tial toiletries into one product
small enough to fit in any wom-
an's purse."
Business sophomore Mariel
Reiss presented the product,
which she said targeted college-
aged women who might need
to freshen up following a night
on the town or even a drunken
hookup.
Engineering junior Chris
O'Neil, MPowered president,
credited SpringFest for provid-
ing entrepreneurship with a
wider audience.
"I'm kind of stuck in the entre-
preneurship end of this univer-
sity, and I think that SpringFest
was a really unique opportunity
to have an event that had a little
higher entertainment value - so
you have these people who maybe
aren't as familiar with entrepre-
neurship get to see what is going
on and see all the cool startups
and ideas that are actually hap-
pening on campus," he said.
Tom Frank executive direc-
tor of the University's Center for
Entrepreneurship, said there is
no longer a "normal" entrepre-
neurship crowd.
"I think that it's more about
people who have innovative
ideas; that they're becoming
less and less shy about sharing
with an audience, as opposed to
something thinking of an entre-
preneur as somebody locked in
a room who's going to build and
invent something that suddenly
gets released on the world," he
said. "They make it more collab-
orative, more open and a safer
environment to let those ideas
cross-pollinate."
This "cross-pollination"
of thought Thursday was not
restricted to entrepreneur-
ship. Schermer said the Identity
tent, located directly outside of
Hatcher Graduate Library, was
also a large factor in the trading
new ideas.
The Black Student Union pre-
sented a photography exhibit in
the tent as a culmination of the
#BBUM movement. LSA senior
Tyrell Collier, outgoing BSU
speaker, said the pictures were
meant to explore the experience
of Black students at the Uni-
versity in a new medium. The
photo-shoot largely took place
primarily in an alleyway off of E.
Liberty Street.
"We just wanted to show -
because the environment that we
shot in was a rough environment;
there was trash, dumpsters, some
bricks - we really just wanted to
get across the beauty in black-
ness, even in the roughest envi-
ronments," Collier said.
Despite 20 mph winds, Collier
said the extreme weather did not
impede the project's success.
"We were placed right on the
Diag proper," he said. "So there
was a lot of traffic. Even just stu-
dents going to class - there was
a lot of traffic flowing through
our tent. I don't think it's every
day that you see a tent with about
24 different pictures of Black
people."
University alum Jeff Sorensen,
a co-founder of social innovation
group optiMize, also commented
on the event's success in show-
casing student accomplishment.
Though optiMize had been
planning to host a dunk tank fea-
turing "well-known" students on
campus - including CSG repre-
sentatives and student athletes -
these efforts were halted early in
the day by the University's Risk
Management Services, Sorensen
said.
However, he added, opti-
Mize was most successful with
its whiteboards, on which buzz
words like "diversity," "health"
and "education" were written
and students were asked to write
down what those terms meant to
them. Sorensen said
optiMize received several
hundred responses, all of which
are now displayed in the Center
for Entrepreneurship.
Sorensen also lauded the work
of optiMize finalists, who pre-
sented their innovative projects
throughout the day.
As for the future of Spring-
Fest, Schermer said the best is
yet to come.
"I think it's going to be so
much bigger and better than it
was this year," he said.
Read more coverage of Spring-
Fest at MichanDalycom
Fashion show
promotes art
and ingenuity
EnspiRED event
features student
models, designs
By BRIE WINNEGA
Daily StaffReporter
Student models donning
undergrad-produced designs
stomped down the runway Sat-
urday night.
EnspiRED, a student orga-
nization that aims to promote
artistic expression at the Uni-
versity, hosted the fashion show.
Taking place in the Biomedical
Science Research Building, it
also featured pieces from artists
nationwide.
The event is traditionally
EnspiRED's biggest of the
year, LSA senior Tyrell Collier,
EnspiRED production manager
and president, said.
"We wanted to show that you
can be innovative, you can be
creative, and you can do things
that are outside of the norm,"
Collier said. "I feel like when
people leave this show this will
be something they've never seen
before on campus."
In its eighth year on campus,
EnspiRED donated 15 percent of
the show's proceeds to Art Road
Nonprofit, an organization dedi-
cated to funding art classes in
southeast Michigan schools that
have lost support for their pro-
grams. EnspiRED is also plan-
ning a trip to Detroit to assist
the nonprofit through volunteer
work. The majority of the gener-
ated money will fund this year's
and next year's show.
The show featured five waves
of clothing designs: Liberation,
Creation, Innovation, Domina-
tion and Live Red Nation.
"To 'live red' means to be
happy, be creative and just be
you and do what makes you
happy," LSA senior Danetta
Jameson, an EnspiRED model,
said.
Collier said he hopes to dem-
onstrate the positive influence
African American students
have on campus through orga-
nizations like EnspiRED and its
fashion show.
"We are a majority Black
organization, meaning that
our executive board is a major-
ity African Americans," Col-
lier said. "This is being Black at
Michigan to me."
For the first time, Music,
Theatre and Dance sophomore
Stephon Dorsey had the oppor-
tunity to showcase his own
clothing designs from his line
called Vision by Goodsteph.
"I wanted to showcase some-
thingthat exemplifiedthe whole
idea of using what you have to
get what you want," said Dorsey.
"At first, it was definitely a little
hectic, and I was a little anxious
and worried, but once I was able
to see everybody on the screen
- that was the most glorifying
moment of my life."
LSA junior Taylor Clayborne
said she enjoyed the outfits,
models and venue that the show
had to offer.
"I think that it's awesome
that they're using local and stu-
dent clothing lines," Clayborne
said. "I'm really impressed that
this was all student-run."
4
REBECCA KEPHART/Daily
UPPER: LSA and School of Music, Theatre, and Dance freshman Aliyah Smith
models in EnspiRED's annual charity fashion show. LOWER: LSA freshman
Ariel Rogan poses on the runway. RIGHT: The fashion show, which was sold
out this year, captivated students from all over campus.
CHI1NA
MUSIC 4 CALLIGRAPHY
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ARCHITECTURE
PAINTING - FILM
FASHION * CERAMICS
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