Wednesday, July 16, 2014
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
CSG president-elect talks student voice, future initiatives
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
FILM REVIEW ALBUM REVIEW
New 'Masters -of Sex''orldPeace'
x By ADAM DEPOLLO his compelling character stud-
Online Arts Editor ies of society's underclass. All
Upcoming plans
include Night Owl,
more focus on campus
mental health
By WILL GREENBERG
Daily News Editor
In case you didn't know, last
year was an incredibly busy pair of
semesters for the Central Student
Government.
Maybe it was something in
the air, maybe it was just a high
demand for involvement from
a restless student body, but the
activity was electric.'
Admittedly, not all of the action
was particularly cheery. Fall 2013
saw students voice their displea-
sure with the football student tick-
et policy, incidents like the Theta
Xi racist party and the University's
refusmal to allow students onnthe
presidential search committee.
From there, the winter brought
social movements like the #BBUM
Twitter campaign, which incited a
response from University admin-
istrators. CSG also conducted its
own investigation into sexual mis-
conduct, prompted by The Michi-
gan Daily's exclusive story on
Brendan Gibbons' permanent sep-
aration from the University. There
was also the #UMDivest campaign
to divest funds from companies
that hold contracts with Israeli
militia, led by the Students Allied
for Freedom and Equality.
Public Policy senior Bobby
Dishell, newly-elected CSG Presi-
dent and last year's vice presi-
dent alongside president Michael
Proppe, this coming school year
should be a chance to continue his
work from last year.
Dishell said he has been work-
ing primarily on two projects
over the summer. The first is con-
tinuina wor non at vear's Niaht
Owl bus route, which had success
in helping increase safe evening
transportation for students on the
weekends. The second, new men-
tal health program the Wolverine
Support Network, which looks to
supplement the University's Coun-
seling and Psychological Services
office, comes from Dishell's presi-
dential campaign,
He said he is in the midst of dis-
cussions with CAPS and several
student organizations, though he
declined to state who he's worked
with until plans are more final.
The plan is for the program to
be staffed by student volunteers
trained by CAPS. Dishell said the
current CAPS offices fail to cre-
ate an ideal space for discussion,
something that a student-run pro-
gram would better facilitate. He
added that the program would be
funded by CSG and be up-and-
running by the Winter Term at the
latest.
"Peer sunnnrt - it's hen dem-
onstrated at the high school level
and also on a few different college
campuses - is an effective way to
help foster mental health," he said.
As the incoming president,
Dishell also takes on the position
in the fall with both previous suc-
cesses and previous shortcomings
from lastyear's assembly.
The handling of the #UMDi-
vest campaign was the most con-
troversial issue from last year. It
started as a proposal from Stu-
dents Allied for Freedom and
Equality that encouraged the Uni-
versity to divest from companies
working with Israel. The resolu-
tion received neither approval nor
disapproval from the assembly;
the CSG assembly instead chose
to indefinitely postpone the reso-
lution, which then-CSG presi-
dent Michael Proppe said was an
unprecedented action at the time.
The result was a sit-in staged by
SAFE and their allies in the CSG
chambers.ceatinga ntenseca m-
pus conflict, where threats were
exchanged between students on
either side of the issue. The reso-
lution was eventually voted down
the following week at the most
highly-attended CSG meeting of
the year.
The incident was largely consid-
ered a failure of CSG to give a voice
to the student body by postponing
the vote instead of taking a stand
on either side. While Dishell was
not a voting member of the assem-
bly as vice president and will still
not be as president, he acknowl-
edged that he could have done a
better job of reaching out to both
sides and facilitating conversation.
He said he expects this year's
representatives are prepared to
properly represent the student.
body but that he would have to
work on a case-by-case basis to
decide if any other action would
be needed in the future from the
executives.
Sa CG Paze 1;
..ailin Fitzgerala an MicnaelS hneen
Season premiere is
light on spectacle and
heavy on pathos
By CHLOE GILKE
DailyArts Writer
All puns aside, the season pre-
miere of "Masters of Sex" does not
disappoint. After an impressive
freshman season, "Masters" seems
to have matured during its hiatus,
smoothing out
some plodding A
plotlines and
making better Maste
use of its emo- S
tional appeal.
The most Sewon 2
consistently Premiere
engaging part
of the first sea- Showtime
son was the Sundaysat10p.m.
relationship
between star-
crossed co-workers Bill Masters
(Michael Sheen, "Frost/Nixon")
and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy
Caplan, "Party Down"), and season
two wastes no time in answering
the question of their romantic fate.
The episode is creatively' struc-
tured like a parallax, with each
reminiscing about the aftermath
of Bill proclaiming his love for Vir-
ginia. First, Bill waits quietly in the
bed, lying nearly motionless as he
overhears half of Virginia's phone
call with Ethan. Later, when we
hear Virginia's conversation from
her point of view, we realize the
full extent of what Bill was fearing.
After the will-they-or-won't-they
of their sex study in the first sea-
son, something about this round is
different. It isn't just the absence
of wires and non-clinical setting.
Bill and Virginia are bringing their
affair into the real world, where
it has real consequences. Virginia
finally calls it off with lovesick
puppy Ethan, and stoic Bill can't
escape the guilt of betraying his
lovely wife and new baby. With the
formulaic sex study out of the way,
"Masters of Sex" can explore the
real consequences of intimacy.
These are the same characters
we met last season, but each seems
to be injected with an unapologetic
new vigor. The writers are practi-
cally daring viewers to continue
liking Bill. When Libby (Caitlin
FitzGerald, "Newlyweds") leaves
baby Johnny home with daddy
as the babysitter, Bill blasts The
Everly Brothers instead of attend-
ing to his wailing child. When his
own mother comes to rescue the
kid, he berates her. He lies to Libby
about his whereabouts, driving all
the way to Illinois for an anony-
mous night with Virginia. Now,
he doesn't have the cushion of his
.sex study to act as an excuse for
his behavior. He's even anxious
to terminate his professional rela-
tionship with Virginia, refusing
her help as a secretary and leav-
ing her to supplement her income
by selling diet pills. But, somehow,
it's impossible to hate him. Despite
antics that would make Don Drap-
er shake his head in disapproval,
Michael Sheen plays Bill as a deplor-
able (but sympathetic) asshole.
This is hardly half of the amaz-
ing pathos that "Masters of Sex"
squeezes from just two episodes.
Scene-stealer Margaret Scully
(Allison Janney, "The West Wing")
continues to deal with husband
Barton's homosexuality. Barton
(Beau Bridges, "The Descendants")
undergoes electric shock therapy
for his "condition," and in a heart-
breaking scene, tries to prove he's
cured by seducing his wife. When
he asks her to turn over, Margaret
delivers the ultimate gut-punch
and says, "There is only a shred of
me left that still feels like a woman.
You can't take that from me. I won't
let you." After a close call with Bar-
ton, Janney brings her already-fan-
tastic performance to another level.
The season's second episode,
"Kyrie Eleison," is a return to
normalcy, but the relationship
dynamics have shifted so much
that it hardly feels familiar. Bill
is back to seeing patients (a sex-
crazed teen this time), Virginia
deals with a creepy research part-
ner and Libby once again tries
to bridge racial boundaries with
little success. While certainly qui-
eter, this episode is another pow-
erhouse.
"Masters of Sex" is easily the
best drama of the summer, perhaps
up there with the greats airing dur-
ing the rest of the year. Though the
title might be a turn-off for some,
the show actually focuses com-
paratively little of its energy on
sex and spectacle. It's compelling,
pathos-driven drama at its finest.
Whatever might be said about
Steven Patrick Morrissey, there is
no doubt that modern pop culture
would not exist
as it does with- C
out him. The
antipodean cul- World Peace
tural politics suf-
fusing his music is None
- both with the of Your
Smiths and in his
later solo work BUsineSS
- paved the way Morrissey
for countless
anti-establish- Harvest
ment musicians
to achieve suc-
cess, while his ability to craft an
enigmatic, yet profoundly relatable
identity both on and off the stage
made the very idea of larger-than-
life pop stars like Bono, Madonna
and even Kanye West a possibility.
While traces of that looming
presence are visible on Morrissey's
latest album World Peace Is None
Of Your Business, close inspection
reveals the cracks in the fagade of
the singer's sphinxlike persona.
Fans of the British rocker -
of which there are many of the
die-hard variety - praise him
for his melancholy lyrics tinged
with shades of dark humor, his
subversive political songs and for
three of those elements are pres-
ent on World Peace, and a few of
the album's tracks are as troubling
and beautiful as any of the singer's
work. The soaring choruses of
"Istanbul" explore the tortured
psyche of a failed father over bit-
terly resonant guitars while, on
"Smiler With Knife," Morrissey
wallows in suicidal longing over
dissonant melodies, meditating on
the realization that "Time has frit-
tered long and slow /All (he is) and
was will go."
Unfortunately, those momentsof
brilliance are few and far between.
More often than not, Morrissey
crafts songs that incorporate all of
the elements that his fans adore,
but in a watered-down, incoher-
ent form that stands in stark con-
trast with the singer's finest work.
The title track, a '60s protest song-
inspired ballad, is the mostblatant-
ly political song on the album and
also one of the most clunky and dis-
jointed, with Morrissey cobbling
together a smattering of vaguely
99-percenter sentiments without
taking any particular stance on
the subject. A number of his lyr-
ics are simply indecipherable, like
the jumbled rhymes ("Babies full
of rabies / Rabies full of scabies" or
See MORRISSEY, Page 12
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