Harper identified several promi-
nent University issues.
Last
February,
the
U.S.
Department of Education Office
for Civil Rights announced they
would investigate the University
for its handling of allegations
of sexual misconduct. In Jan.
2014, The Michigan Daily first
reported former kicker Brendan
Gibbons’ permanent separation
from the University for violating
the Student Sexual Misconduct
Policy, which drew wide criti-
cism of the University’s response
policy to sexual assault on cam-
pus.
Last year, the student-led
#BBUM
movement
attracted
widespread attention on Twit-
ter. Through tweets, students
discussed challenges faced by
Black students at the University.
As part of the campaign, mem-
bers of the Black Student Union
and the administration have dis-
cussed changes to the Trotter
Multicultural Center as one way
to improve minority experiences
on campus.
“What I think about a lot is
sexual assault on campuses,
diversity and inclusion,” Harper
wrote. “The steady but too low
numbers of students of color.
Also issues of high risk drink-
ing.”
Harper also wrote that her
undergraduate education at the
University and desire to share
her own experience led her to
her current position.
“I did my undergrad work
here,” Harper wrote. “It was
everything I needed, plus stuff
I didn’t know I needed. I have
a passion and love for young
people & want them to have that
kind of experience, so they can
change the world.”
However, Harper also wrote
that her job is not without chal-
lenges,
such
as
considering
the needs of multiple parties,
especially if they are in conflict
with one another. She noted
the necessity finding a balance
between transparency and rights
to privacy, as well as individual
freedoms and the interests of the
community at large.
According to Harper, the bal-
ancing act is why problems in
student life take a long time to
get fixed, even if the administra-
tion places a priority on finding a
solution for the problem.
“Big myth: If I care, a problem
would be fixed NOW,” Harper
wrote. “Many problems are more
complicated & involve many
people.”
Harper described a day at the
Student Life office as a consis-
tent exercise in prioritizing and
stressed the importance of keep-
ing the work moving.
“Every day is balancing the
important with the urgent,”
Harper wrote. “We have to be
proactive in keeping important
work moving. It doesn’t matter
what the schedule is.”
Finally, Harper also listed
several ways the students can get
involved and have a voice at the
University, such as volunteer-
ing at the Ginsberg Center and
attending events through the
Center for Campus Involvement.
In an e-mail to the Daily,
LSA senior Katie Szymanski, a
UMSocial Media intern, wrote
that the staff of UMSocial,
which handles the University’s
social media accounts, usually
does not participate through
their personal accounts to let the
community participate instead.
However, Szymanski said she
felt inclined to tweet a question
during Friday’s chat.
“I felt like this topic regarding
student life and campus com-
munity really spoke to what I’m
going through as a senior at the
University of Michigan,” Szy-
manski wrote. “At one point,
I joked about being indecisive
about graduate school and looked
at Royster for her response. She
responded with ‘Tweet it at me!’
It almost felt like I was talking
with one of my own friends.”
The next #UMichChat will
take place in February, with
Republican Gov. Rick Snyder
and Thomas Zurbuchen, pro-
fessor of space science and
aerospace engineering and the
associate dean for entrepre-
neurship. The topic will focus
on innovation, entrepreneur-
ship and the state of Michigan’s
future.
might not be realistic.
“This is not a reflection on
Snyder, but it takes a lot of money
to make a viable run for the
White House,” he said.
Hutchings also noted that
several
high-profile
Republi-
cans such as Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush,
Rand Paul and possibly Marco
Rubio have already established
themselves as candidates in the
race and locked up key donors.
The 2012 Republican candidate
Mitt Romney also stated his
intention to run to a group of
donors last week.
He said he felt it was already
too late for Snyder to launch a
successful campaign, and since
Snyder has not been actively
seeking donors, he most likely
will not run.
Nonetheless, as the country
gears up for the 2016 race, sev-
eral aspects of the governor’s
record have received prominent
attention. Snyder won reelection
in 2014, carrying 51 percent of
the vote in what was expected
to be a close race against his
Democratic counterpart Mark
Schauer.
As
governor,
Snyder
also
passed a right-to-work bill that
allows employees to retain their
jobs without needing to join a
union, a policy few other GOP
governors have been able to
accomplish.
However, since Republicans
in Congress have attempted to
dismantle portions of the health
care reform laws passed under
the Obama administration, Sny-
der’s policy record could also
become a source of scrutiny.
Richard Hirth, professor of
health management and policy at
the University, said Snyder might
face opposition in a Republican
primary based on his admin-
istration’s
Healthy
Michigan
Plan. The plan, which expanded
Michigan’s Medicaid program,
has been touted as an early suc-
cess, enrolling over 400,000
low-income Michiganders since
April, but also places Snyder in
contrast to the prevailing GOP
standpoint on highly contested
federal healthcare legislation
such as the Affordable Care Act.
“Since he was so instrumental
in the Healthy Michigan plan, it
will be hard for him to run com-
pletely away from it,” Hirth said.
“He can still oppose the (federal)
health care law broadly as a mat-
ter of principle to appeal to vot-
ers who oppose the law.”
After Romney lost the 2012
presidential election, Hirth said
the GOP would be less likely
to support a candidate such as
Snyder, who has arguably taken
a more moderate approach to
health care reform. As governor
of Massachusetts, Romney pio-
neered a plan with similar facets
as the ACA.
However, if Snyder made it to
a general election, Hirth said he
may be able to win some level of
bipartisan support.
When the Healthy Michigan
Plan passed in December 2013,
Snyder requested federal waivers
that allowed the state to receive
federal funding for the plan while
avoiding
adoption
of
certain
requirements under the ACA.
However, Hirth was skeptical
Republicans would accept a candi-
date who took the middle-ground
approach to health reform.
“I don’t think I’d want to be
him making that argument in
most Republican primaries,” he
said. “If he somehow got through
the primaries, I think he could
play that as a responsible, mid-
dle-ground approach.”
Statement Editor Ian Dilling-
ham contributed to this report.
SNYDER
From Page 1A
TWITTER
From Page 1A
3-News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Monday, January 12, 2015 — 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich.
Parked pick-up
truck explodes
Authorities say they are inves-
tigating an explosion in a pickup
truck parked in the driveway of a
home near Detroit.
Oakland County sheriff’s depu-
ties say nobody was in the vehicle
at the time of the Saturday morn-
ing explosion. The blast signifi-
cantly damaged the truck and
sent debris across the Springfield
Township home’s yard and drive-
way.
The explosion also shattered a
window on the home but nobody
inside was hurt.
Deputies are working with
state and federal law enforcement
officials to determine the cause or
motive of the blast.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Court case could
foil government
suits over job bias
The Supreme Court could put
the brakes on the Obama admin-
istration’s
growing
crackdown
against companies facing claims
of discrimination against women,
minorities and other protected
groups.
Justices will hear arguments
Tuesday in a case that considers
whether employers can defend dis-
crimination lawsuits by asserting
that government lawyers did not
try hard enough to settle claims
before going to court.
Companies
are
complain-
ing increasingly about the Equal
Employment Opportunity Com-
mission’s
“systemic
litigation”
program, which turns individual
complaints of bias into high-stakes
class-action cases on behalf of doz-
ens or even hundreds of workers.
The enforcement strategy has
netted over $100 million in legal
judgments and settlements from
more than 50 companies since
2011, including $20 million from
Verizon Inc. to settle allegations
that the company unfairly fired or
disciplined hundreds of disabled
workers for missing work.
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia
AirAsia black boxes
may be recovered
While Indonesia’s navy said
divers had not yet found the black
boxes from the AirAsia plane that
crashed into the Java Sea two
weeks ago, searchers on Sunday
honed in on intense pings detect-
ed amid a growing belief that the
devices will soon be recovered.
“The two are close to each other,
just about 20 meters (yards),”
Soesilo told reporters. “Hopefully,
they are the cockpit voice recorder
and flight data recorder.”
Officials said earlier Sunday
that two separate pings had been
detected.
Tonny Budiono, team coor-
dinator at the Directorate of
Sea Transportation, said in a
statement that the signals were
intense in one area, and that the
recorders were believed to be
lodged there beneath wreckage.
If divers are unable to free it, all
of the debris will be lifted, the
statement said.
—Compiled from
Daily wire reports
for the disease.
Though 14 percent of U.S.
adults suffer from chronic kidney
disease, which can eventually lead
to end-stage renal failure, Saran
said awareness of the condition
is low in comparison to illnesses
such as diabetes or heart disease.
“We need more awareness; we
need people to practice primary
and secondary prevention,” he
said. “Less than 20 percent of
those diagnosed with the dis-
ease are aware of their low kid-
ney functions.”
To prevent the chronic con-
dition, Saran also noted the
importance of monitoring kid-
ney function patients coming
in and out of the University of
Michigan Health System. Pri-
mary prevention, which involves
screening for risk factors, is the
first step toward overcoming
this challenge and accelerating
the decline in the incidence of
the disease.
“Non-communicable diseases
such as these need early atten-
tion,” Saran said. “We need to
take action sooner.”
Saran said transplants and
dialysis have helped keep peo-
ple with chronic kidney disease
alive longer, which is why fewer
people are reaching end-stage
renal disease. Even so, the pool
of patients diagnosed with the
chronic disease is not declining.
In Ann Arbor, dialysis units have
been cropping up increasingly in
the last three years.
“The pool of sick people still
continues to increase,” Saran said.
“A chronic disease does not go
away.”
KIDNEY
From Page 1A
Abbott, an adjunct professor of
chemistry and biology at the Uni-
versity of Lethbridge in Canada
and research scientist at Agri-
culture and Agri-Food Canada;
and Harry Gilbert, biochemistry
professor at Newcastle Univer-
sity in the United Kingdom, col-
laborated on the study.
With studies currently under-
way, the researchers hope the
Bacteroides
thetaiotaomicron
bacterium can be developed into
a therapeutic for people with
diseases such as Crohn’s.
Abbott said distinguishing the
bacteria’s relationship with sugar
compared to yeast was an impor-
tant step in moving forward.
“On the surface of the human
intestines, there are sugars that
are very similar in structure to
what you find on yeast, but there
are dedicated pathways in this
bacteria for digesting human
sugars and for digesting yeast
sugars,” he said. “(This) suggests
that the relationship that bacte-
ria has with the human host is
very different from the relation-
ship it has with yeast.”
In their study, the research-
ers tested their findings on
mice, whose digestive tracts are
similar to those of humans. To
do so, they fed the mice Zinger-
man’s bread; the company pro-
vided 50-percent yeast-leavened
breadcrumbs as food samples for
the mice.
“Mice don’t have any androg-
ynous bacteria already in their
gut so we can put what we want
and … the quantity and genetic
composition that we want,”
Martens said. “So instead of put-
ting one human bacteria on top
of hundreds of species of mouse
bacteria already there, there’s
nothing there. We know exactly
what the physiology of the sys-
tem is.”
Gilbert and Martens teamed
up after attending a conference
together in 2009, where Gil-
bert became interested in one of
Martens’s previously published
papers on fungal cell molecules
and intestinal cell walls.
“It really kind of started as a
light discussion over a beer or
two at conference and a few sim-
ple experiments and those few
simple experiments turned out
to be really interesting,” Mar-
tens said. “A lot more detailed
studies came after that.”
Martens and Abbott said they
were pleased with the study’s
results.
“Everyone
who
becomes
a researcher, you know, your
whole career or your mission
is to do something that actu-
ally makes a difference so if, in
some small way, this study can
lead to a therapy for people suf-
fering from intestinal diseases,
that would be very rewarding,”
Abbott said.
ZINGERMANS
From Page 1A
enthusiasm
about
the
new
appointment.
“Somebody of this caliber, we
could’ve only wished for. It’s like
Christmas – we got it!” Brow
said.
Both Collins and his col-
leagues said they look forward
to changes and improvements in
store for the department.
“For years we’ve needed this
type of leadership to make suc-
cession plans, and I think that
he’s going to be able to get us
going in the right direction,”
Brow said.
In an interview with The
Michigan Daily, Collins said he
wants to involve members of the
community in the process.
“I’ve got to get in and get my
feet on the ground,” he said.
“I’ve got to get a better under-
standing of the community, the
department and its needs.”
“I think at that point in time
what we do is we sit down and
(compose) a strategic and a
master plan to guide us into
the future based upon changes
in demand, based upon fiscal
resources, based upon training
needs and those kinds of things
… We want that to be an open
process.”
At the ceremony and recep-
tion, Collins said he considers
Ann Arbor to be a world-class
city, adding that the AAFD could
become a world-class depart-
ment to match it. He said he feels
privileged to lead the organiza-
tion, though he still maintains
ties to Ohio, where he served at
the Dayton Fire Department for
thirty years.
“And remember: go Bucks,” he
said.
FIRE CHIEF
From Page 1A
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