I
n Sydney, Australia on
Dec. 15, a man dressed as a
Muslim cleric took a num-
ber of people
hostage
in
a
busy café. Aus-
tralian
police
were
able
to
kill the gun-
man and there-
after freed the
hostages. Two
hostages
died
in the incident.
In the after-
math
of
this
crisis, Muslims
in
Australia
feared they would be subject to
hate crimes, as is common in
the aftermath of such events.
Australian Rachel Jacobs was
sitting on a public train when
she noticed a Muslim woman
begin to remove her hijab, the
Muslim headscarf, as a result of
this fear. Jacobs ran up to this
Muslim woman at the train sta-
tion and told her to put the hijab
back on, and reassured her by
saying “I’ll walk with you.” The
Muslim woman began to cry and
hugged Rachel in appreciation.
Jacobs wrote about the incident
on Twitter, which resulted in
the
hashtag
#illridewithyou.
Australians tweeted the hashtag
with offers to ride the train with
Muslims to offer them a sense
of safety. The tweet trended
worldwide,
because
people
were touched by these acts
of kindness and responses by
the Australians.
Although this is not the only
form of activism necessary to
create change, the first battle is
always awareness. Social media
is bridging the gap between
what major news sources write
and the general public opinion.
Some people may think that
activism through social media
is not true activism, but positive
responses to Twitter activism
prompted
major
mainstream
news sources to cover it as a
legitimate form of activism. In
this way, news sources turned
away from arguments from peo-
ple that view the Islamic doc-
trine as inherently violent and
turned toward talking about the
problems of anti-Muslim back-
lash, recognizing Islamophobia
as a problem. They encouraged
peace and solidarity with these
Muslims, and went a step fur-
ther by encouraging people to
take action by offering help to
Australian Muslims.
As a Muslim woman who
wears hijab, I am grateful for
people like Rachel Jacobs. My
hijab is a symbol of a choice that
I made and a reflection of my
beliefs. In all honesty, it is my
favorite part of my religion and
it pains me to see that someone
could fear so much for their own
life that they feel forced to take
it off. Some may assume that
every person who wears hijab is
forced to by someone else, mak-
ing it difficult for me to explain
that, as an American-born Mus-
lim, I freely choose to wear my
hijab. While I fear the possibility
of hate crimes during times such
as these, I also feel that people
are becoming more and more
aware of the difference between
Muslims and extremists.
Social media activism played
a role in spreading both aware-
ness and support for the protests
in Ferguson and against police
brutality. Protesters live-tweeted
with hashtags like #PrayforFer-
guson and #BlackLivesMatter.
Again, the prevalence of social
media made it so major news
sources could not ignore Fergu-
son and its ties to racism. Instead
of treating Ferguson as an isolated
case in which only one town was
affected, it became recognized as
part of a greater national problem.
Whether or not this would have
happened without social media
can only be speculated, but it did
make the news travel much faster
through average people witness-
ing the protests.
In addition to this, it attracted
awareness and support from
celebrities
and
athletes
like
Detroit
Lions
running
back
Reggie Bush and many others
from the NFL, as well NBA players
such as LeBron James and Kobe
Bryant, who all wrote “I Can’t
Breathe” on their shirts during
pregame warm-ups. This was
originally a hashtag on Twitter as
a tribute to Eric Garner’s words as
he was tackled by police officers.
These athletes’ actions brought
a new group of people into
the conversation.
As a Muslim, the hashtag
#illridewithyou
warmed
my
heart. It gave me hope that maybe
more people see Islam the way I
see it, or maybe the world is slowly
starting to realize the difference
between Islam and people who
use the name of Islam for their
own agendas. I cannot speak on
behalf of African Americans who
have been subjected to racism,
but my hope is that the awareness
spread via social media about
police brutality made them feel
that someone is speaking out
for them.
Social media activism can be a
catalyst for change and the begin-
nings of much larger movements,
as anyone with Internet access
can write their opinion and share
it with a large audience. This
gives people who may have been
previously overlooked the power
to speak their mind, particularly
young people. This can cause an
overwhelming sense of commu-
nity and solidarity, giving people
a sense that there are others that
agree with their viewpoint as
well. Social media allows a post to
travel from one end of the world
to another, in a matter of seconds,
connecting the globe and allow-
ing solidarity to be spread.
— Rabab Jafri can be reached
at rfjafri@umich.edu.
Edvinas Berzanskis, Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler,
Devin Eggert, David Harris, Rachel John, Jordyn Kay,
Aarica Marsh, Victoria Noble, Michael Paul, Allison Raeck,
Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman,
Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
It goes without saying that
Leelah Alcorn’s suicide is about
more than just Leelah Alcorn.
It’s about the thousands of
LGBTQ young people in the
United States and abroad whose
collective torment led about a
third of them to attempt suicide
by the age of 18. Of the hun-
dreds or thousands of LGBTQ
youth who committed suicide in
2014, why is it that Leelah has
become the focus of the debate?
Because of her note. Her note,
controlled and alive in the face
of unimaginable pain, shows us
an inescapably real human being
in an inescapably real tragedy.
Her voice, more than any photo-
graph, breaks through the noise
and forces us to recognize her.
Anger has been a large part
of the reaction to her suicide
and note: anger at her par-
ents, now grieving the loss of
a child as they receive harass-
ing phone calls, messages and
death threats daily; anger on
behalf of a generation of LGBTQ
youth at the society that did this,
with her suicide note ending in
a simple request: “Fix society.
Please.”; anger that her society
didn’t listen to her.
This anger, among many reac-
tions, is justified, but the focus
of the reporting and the discus-
sion must be on LGBTQ youth
across the United States, not
on Leelah’s parents or the indi-
viduals around her. (Although
she has no notes to be read,
Leelah’s mother is a real person
too, a person who has just lost a
child.) Focusing on only Leelah
risks doing a terrible thing:
contributing to the danger that
affects a whole generation of
LGBTQ youth.
Four times as many LGBTQ
youth attempt suicide as hetero-
sexual youth. It’s a fact that the
risk that an LGBTQ teenager
will attempt suicide is high. At
a time when an LGBTQ suicide
has entered into the sympa-
thies and minds of hundreds of
thousands or millions across
the country, that risk becomes
highest. Leelah’s note, originally
posted on Tumblr and subse-
quently shared by many media
outlets, has likely been read by
hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of people. In it, she says
it doesn’t get better, that it gets
worse, that all that awaits her is
a life of loneliness. There is no
way out.
We need to be careful about
sharing
this
message
in
a
country with millions of LGBTQ
youths at risk. We spread these
messages of despair as messages
that must be read and taken
in, that must not be ignored. It
puts a nation of LGBTQ youth
in danger to share these urgent
messages of despair without also
spreading messages of hope. It
can get better. Life is long, and
loneliness,
misunderstanding
and pain are not all that awaits
you. Do not do as Leelah
has done.
Leelah’s note ends with a
glimmer of hope. After saying
that all of her possessions should
be given to trans civil rights
movements, she ends her note
by writing, “The only way I will
rest in peace is if one day trans-
gender people aren’t treated the
way I was. … My death needs
to mean something. My death
needs to be counted in the num-
ber of transgender people who
commit suicide this year. I want
someone to look at that number
and say ‘that’s fucked up’ and fix
it. Fix society. Please.”
We can’t let her down by
focusing only on her and not the
generation of LGBTQ youth who
are still alive and still in danger
in America. By sharing Leelah’s
note with no context other than
statements of agreement with
her and the urgency of her mes-
sage, we risk encouraging hope-
lessness, anger and suicide in the
minds of many young people. We
need to talk about Leelah as well
as about a generation of teenag-
ers who can be saved. Together
with the story of this tragedy,
there is one thing that also needs
to be heard: that it can get better.
Jeffrey Sun is an LSA junior.
JEFFREY SUN | VIEWPOINT
Hope and Leelah Alcorn
E
very break, as I try to
escape
the
Univer-
sity’s
enclosed
sphere
of
academia,
I’m
remind-
ed
—
after
approximately
a
seven-hour
drive
and
a
family
dis-
cussion — of
the extent to
which
educa-
tion is firmly
entwined with
my life. Memo-
ries of chalk-
boards, glossy
motivational posters and the
smells of acrylic paint and glue
wafting through the air perme-
ate the mind of every former pub-
lic school student. In more ways
than one, I’ve literally grown up
in a classroom.
My family’s livelihood and my
financial ability to attend college
depend upon Michigan’s public
education system. My mother
works as an elementary school
teacher, while my dad is the head
custodian at a high school in my
hometown. As a little girl, my
afternoons were spent bouncing
between my parents’ respective
workplaces. If I wasn’t coloring
or placing graded assignments
back on empty student desks in
my mom’s classroom, I was with
my father who briefly acquired a
tiny shadow with a messy blonde
mop-top as he traversed the
halls
emptying
wastebaskets.
However,
my
parents
are
certainly not the only members
of this surrounding community
of educators. My family’s circle of
friends includes a sizeable portion
of
custodians,
teachers
and
administrators; even some of my
closest friends are the children
of teachers.
For a while, friends outside of
the education circle held onto the
peculiar notion that my mother’s
occupation bolstered my academ-
ic performance somehow — as if
she wrote a separate lesson plan
for home and quizzed me during
dinnertime. They were surpris-
ingly right in one respect. While
I thankfully never received any
extra assignments at home, I
quickly learned education is
both an extremely important
and tremendously costly venture.
Likewise, a strong work ethic is
indispensable. As the daughter
of a teacher and a custodian, I
saw firsthand the vast amount of
effort necessary to manage and
maintain a classroom. I watched
and waited in the background as
my mother spent hours prepar-
ing for the next day’s lesson, or as
my father arrived home late after
a long evening of cleaning.
As
I
grew,
I
came
to
understand
that
although
education is absolutely crucial for
the development of our society,
it’s also severely underfunded
and inaccessible to far too many
people. The sight of my mother
buying supplies demonstrated
how
money
from
teacher
paychecks often contributes to
keeping a classroom stocked.
Education, no matter the grade
level, is expensive. As students
matriculate
in
the
public
school system, the price of
education evolves from teachers
supplementing the classroom’s
supply of construction paper and
crayons to students assuming
massive sums of student loan
debt — as well as time-consuming
part-time jobs — in order to
afford tuition, books, rent and
everyday essentials.
According to an analysis con-
ducted by a youth advocacy group
known as Young Invincibles, the
state of Michigan’s attempts to
offer funding for higher educa-
tion deserve a failing grade. The
group ranked states’ investments
in higher education by measuring
five criteria: tuition, state appro-
priations average, average bur-
den on families, financial aid for
students and higher education as
a priority. Young Invincibles then
issued each state in the country a
report card. Tom Allison, policy
and research manager at Young
Invincibles, speculated in an
interview that cuts to the educa-
tion budget were one of many fac-
tors contributing to Michigan’s
poor performance. For example,
during the beginning of Gov.
Rick Snyder’s first term in 2011,
the amount of money allocated
for funding higher education was
reduced by 15 percent.
In another interview respond-
ing to the ranking, Donald Heller,
dean of the College of Education
at Michigan State University,
stated: “The cut in state funding
which has caused the universi-
ties to raise tuition very rapidly …
The relatively high rate of tuition
in the first place and the rela-
tively low grade of spending by
the state on scholarships means
Michigan is a fairly unaffordable
state for higher education for
most students.”
Increasing tuition and deplet-
ing state assistance for high-
er education further hinders
students of lower socioeconomic
backgrounds from attaining a
degree or attending any academic
institution of higher education
in the first place. An alternative
method to improve the acces-
sibility of higher education was
recently proposed by President
Barack Obama last week. Follow-
ing a plan that is already in place
in Tennessee, Obama’s proposed
tuition initiative guarantees that
“two years of community col-
lege will become as free and uni-
versal as high school is today.”
The tuition plan, if enacted,
would offer free community col-
lege tuition to qualifying stu-
dents for three years as long as
they attend school at least half-
time and maintain a 2.5 grade
point average.
Unfortunately, the plan as it
currently stands doesn’t nec-
essarily offer a definitive plan
of action. The program would
greatly benefit Pell Grant recipi-
ents who attend community col-
lege by financing their tuition and
allowing them to use grant funds
toward cost-of-living expenses.
However, the program would
also offer assistance to students
of the upper and middle classes,
who may not often be in desperate
need for these funds. Likewise,
other flaws in the initiative could
include the states’ reluctance to
partially fund the program and
the need to reform community
college courses so they provide
a bridge between institutions by
offering credit that’s transfer-
able to other universities. Also, if
enacted, the program should be
amended to offer aid to students
attending four-year institutions
as well.
Considering
countries
like
Germany and Finland offer free
tuition to their college students
— and even to English-speaking
international students — Obama’s
proposal hopefully demonstrates
an impending reform in the
realm of U.S. education. The plan
is not perfect, but it’s a spark to
reignite a broken system. Edu-
cation is crucial but costly.
Whether Obama’s plan is passed
or not, the fate of the initiative’s
main goal in future legislation
will illustrate to the public how
much our elected officials actu-
ally value providing access to
quality education.
— Melissa Scholke can be
reached at melikaye@umich.edu.
Alleviating the underfunded
MELISSA
SCHOLKE
E-mail RachEl at Rdawson@umich.Edu
RACHEL DAWSON
#Hashtagsforhope
RABAB
JAFRI
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Opinion
Wednesday, January 14, 2015 — 3A