riences with mental health.
In an e-mail interview with
The Michigan Daily, Fayhee
said prior to the pilot program,
33 percent of University stu-
dents would seek help for men-
tal illness, compared to only
10 percent of student-athletes.
She decided to get involved and
share her experiences after
meeting Heininger.
“We found that we faced
similar pressures, but those
pressures
just
manifested
themselves in different ways,”
Fayhee wrote. “Knowing I
was not alone in what I went
through and that I should not
be ashamed of my struggles
was what motivated me. I came
to realize that helping break
down the stigmas surrounding
mental health trumped hiding
my struggles.”
Additionally, Heininger said
there is a “tough it out” stig-
ma among athletes, and this
program aims to break that
down. He said mental health
issues are not all together dif-
ferent from physical injuries,
and emphasized that the mind
affects everything we do.
Barbara
Hansen,
athletic
medical staff counselor, said
the athletes had a significant
impact on the students who
participated.
“I think one of the more
powerful, common reactions
we’ve had is that students felt
like they could really relate
to the videos and stories from
Will and Kally,” Hansen said.
The pilot program is part
of a wider effort that began
in October. At that time, the
collaborators began holding
drop-in meetings facilitated by
a clinical social worker. At the
meetings, Hansen said athletes
completed surveys focused on
mental wellness.
Hansen
said
they
have
resumed the groups for the
winter semester, and are in the
planning stages for the next
academic year. As a result of
the pilot, 40 students met with
counselors.
“Feedback about the videos
was overwhelmingly positive,”
Hansen said. “It definitely
opened up the door for some of
our current student-athletes to
decide to reach out for help.”
ATHLETES
From Page 1A
3-News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News & Opinion
Thursday, January 22, 2015 — 3A
Q&A EDITORS | QUEER IN ACTION
Coming out: Q&A’s first Q&A
ent issues,” Chang said. “A lot of
those skills will serve me in the
legislature as well.”
After being asked to run for
state representative in the 6th
District by her predecessor, for-
mer State Rep Rashida Tlaib,
Chang had to determine if her
race was going to impede her
ability to win in a predominantly
Black city.
“What really became clear
on the campaign trail was that
people want someone who shares
their values and someone they
can trust and someone they know
can work really hard for them,”
she said.
Chang’s district had tradition-
ally elected a diverse array of peo-
ple to leadership positions. Past
representatives include a Pales-
tinian woman, a Jewish man, a
Mexican American woman and a
Hungarian woman.
In her position, Chang rep-
resents a significant portion of
Downtown, Corktown and South-
west Detroit and a small section
of the near east side stretching
from Interstate-375 to Belle Isle.
She is aware that there are a num-
ber of tough issues in her district.
Chang highlighted quality of edu-
cation, safety in Detroit, criminal
justice and environmental issues
as persistent challenges.
“There are a number of areas
in Southwest Detroit that have
high amounts of corporate pollu-
tion that are very concerning, and
could have a huge public health
impact,” she said.
Chang stressed the impor-
tance of developing the district’s
relationship with the Detroit
City Council to help ease these
problems. Additionally, Chang
has established a neighborhood
service center where residents
can easily seek assistance in their
district.
“One of the things I have is a
neighborhood service center in
the district, so that people don’t
necessarily just have to call my
Lansing office,” Chang said. “They
can actually come in to our Detroit
office right in the district.”
Chang’s
parents
emigrated
from Taiwan to pursue edu-
cational opportunities in the
United States. In part due to her
background, Chang’s campaign
advocated for increased quality of
education in Detroit. Chang and a
group of state legislators toured
Detroit Public Schools Friday to
meet principals, students and
parents to get a sense of the most
pressing issues facing the public
school system.
That morning, the Detroit
Free Press reported that every
senior at Cristo Rey High School,
a Catholic school in Southwest
Detroit in District 6, was accept-
ed into college.
“We want to celebrate the suc-
cess that that school has had,”
she said. “We have some really
amazing schools to be proud of in
Detroit.”
Though
Chang
plans
to
advocate for improvements to
education, she opposes the emer-
gency financial manager law,
which allowed Republican Gov.
Rick Snyder to appoint a new
emergency manager for Detroit’s
public school system last week.
“Emergency
management
hasn’t necessarily provided the
solutions that we need,” Chang
said. “No one knows better what
needs to happen than those that
are directly impacted by DPS.”
CHANG
From Page 1A
of 3 will subjected to intensive pri-
mary therapy.”
The Ann Arbor scoring system
will help ensure patients at lower
risk are subjected to less aggres-
sive treatments than patients at
higher risk. Patients will then
gain individualized treatments
based on their needs.
More than half of the patients
undergoing bone marrow trans-
plantation
develop
GVHD.
Though the degree of severity
differs in patients, the disease is
highly lethal if not treated imme-
diately.
The research began in the late
1990s when investigators ana-
lyzed blood samples from 500
GVHD patients. The results were
verified when another 300 patient
blood samples from across the
United States were analyzed.
The next step, according to
Levine, is the launch of a clini-
cal trial. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration has approved this
step.
“It is still research,” Levine
said. “Although the paper has
been published, we are still at the
investigational phase. No market-
ing is being done yet.”
TRANSPLANT
From Page 1A
speech. “I hope to leave people
talking.”
Coates, whose background is
primarily rooted in historical
studies and journalism, not activ-
ism, focused his lecture on facts
and data to make a case for repa-
rations.
According to Coates, the his-
tory of African Americans is
rooted in exploitation. He said
slavery was responsible for fos-
tering institutionalized racism in
America because it legalized the
use of Black labor for economic
profit, criminalized Blacks who
tried to learn to write and barred
them from voting, effectively pre-
venting them from participating
in society.
“The fundamental feature of
slavery, of enslavement, of all the
great physical violence it took to
maintain the system is the fact
that attribution is plundering,”
he said. “It’s important to under-
stand the plunder wasn’t a side
product; it wasn’t incidental.”
For example, Coates said dur-
ing the 18th and 19th centuries,
slave-picked cotton accounted for
the majority of American exports
and the country’s richest region
was in the South, where cotton
plantations thrived.
Even after slavery was abol-
ished with the 1863 Emancipation
Proclamation, Coates said African
Americans were still oppressed by
a sharecropping system designed
to reduplicate slavery within the
confines of the 13th Amendment,
which outlawed the institution.
Sharecropping refers to the sys-
tem in which newly freed slaves
worked someone else’s land in
exchange for some of the crops
produced. Because former slaves
lacked resources and land to
begin their life post-slavery, the
system exploited Black citizens in
a form similar to slavery.
“We live in a country that, for
at least 350 years, the policy was
to ensure black failure,” Coates
said in a seminar for students
before the speech. “And it was
largely successful.”
Transitioning to the present
day, Coates described the ways
in which housing discrimina-
tion barred Black families from
living in certain areas, thus
inhibiting their access to good
schools. Though paying taxes
to the government, Coates said
Black people contributed money
to a government that barred them
from many public institutions like
quality schools.
“Ultimately, the case for rep-
arations boils down to a very
simple concept,” he said. “If we
know that the African American
community in this country for the
lion’s share of its history has been
subject to plunder at every level of
our society … then perhaps some
small amount, some significant
amount of what was taken from
you should be given back.”
Following his lecture, Coates
held a question-and-answer ses-
sion with the crowd, responding
to a host of questions primarily
examining modern day racism.
Coates also hosted a smaller sem-
inar for around 30 undergraduate
and graduate students before the
speech.
During the Q&A session, asked
Coates about his thoughts on
multiple issues, including gentri-
fication in Detroit, and the fight to
reduce drug-related incidents in
the United States.
Coates said gentrification is an
after-effect of the years of hous-
ing discrimination, when spe-
cific states and private companies
made it legal for certain neighbor-
hoods to receive unequal public
benefits based on the demograph-
ics of their residents.
“Detroit’s population has been
declining for a long time,” he said.
“The question to ask is, ‘Why is
this happening to begin with?’ ”
During the smaller seminar,
Coates spoke more personally,
discussing his journey to become
a journalist and writer, as well as
the confluences between writing
and activism.
Rackham
students
Austin
McCoy, Hakeem Jefferson and
Courtney McCluney moderated
the discussion. The students said
they hoped to learn how Coates
uses
scholarship
on
African
American history and American
society as a journalist.
“I’m just really excited to know
that there’s someone who cares
about the work that we’re doing,
and wants to spread it broadly
and make arguments using our
work,” McCluney said.
Coates told the group he had
an unorthodox upbringing and
childhood compared to other
journalists
and
authors.
His
father, a Black Panther during the
1970s and 1980s, taught Coates
to revere Malcolm X as the lead-
ing African American civil rights
hero, not Martin Luther King Jr.,
as the majority of Americans did.
Though he read and wrote
throughout his childhood, Coates
said his performance in school
was “abysmal.” After studying
history at Howard University for
a few years, where he wrote for
the school paper, he dropped out
to pursue a career in journalism.
In both the seminar and in an
interview with the Daily, Coates
said the future for equality for
African Americans will not be
attained until the agenda of
those in power or a critical mass
of people aligns with the agenda
of social activists. However, he
added that individuals actively
opposing racism also have a role
to play.
“What they’re doing is not
insignificant,” he said. “What
they’re doing is exactly what they
should be doing. You make the
argument, you make the argu-
ment, you make the argument,
and when the sky opens up you
take your chance. But it’s just not
open right now.”
RACE
From Page 1A
2-News
Let’s get this Q&A started!
Q: What is Q&A?
A: Q&A, shorthand for Queer
in Action, is The Michigan
Daily’s first section devoted
exclusively to members of the
LGBTQ community. This inde-
pendent section is a space for
those at the University associ-
ating with a queer identity to
share their stories and experi-
ences.
Q: Why is this section being
created?
A: We believe that the narra-
tives, experiences and oppres-
sions faced in the LGBTQ
community
are
frequently
minimized and overshadowed
by the heteronormative and cis-
normative standards. We want
those with a queer identity to
speak up and share their stories
related to whatever shapes and
exists from sexuality and gen-
der.
We
want
to
emphasize
that this space is intention-
ally designed to be safe for all
contributors because we want
you to feel comfortable shar-
ing your stories. Topics sur-
rounding sexuality, gender and
homophobia
can
sometimes
be uncomfortable to discuss in
daily life, but we encourage you
to overcome those fears in this
space. We want you to be hon-
est, confident and candid about
the thoughts in your mind and
experiences on your heart.
Q: Why is this section called
Q&A?
A: Q&A serves as a relevant
acronym for this space because
a queer person’s sexuality can
require a variety of answers to
multiple questions. Our culture
structures sexuality by creat-
ing strict categories like gay,
lesbian and bisexual. For some,
sexuality (and gender) is much
more complicated than check-
ing off one of these boxes. So
in these articles, besides shar-
ing personal stories, we hope
that this space serves to spot-
light and answer questions sur-
rounding the nuances of each
person’s sexuality (or gender).
Possible questions include but
are not limited to:
- What sexual category do I
closest identify with?
- What similarities and dif-
ferences exist between myself
and the stigmas associated with
my sexual or non-cisgender
identity?
- How do my gender and sex-
uality interact in forming who I
am as a person?
- What specific experiences
or oppressions come from my
queer identity?
We hope that, in addition to
recanting stories and reveal-
ing oppression, this space will
serve as a vessel to spark con-
versations
and
discussions
regarding sexuality and gender.
Q: You’ve used the words
“queer,”
“heteronormative”
and “cisgender,” and I don’t
understand at least one of those
terms. Am I going to be able to
understand content from this
section?
A: Good question! First, not
all articles will use this complex
language, but we’ve prepared
materials to help you if you’re
confused. We’ve created an
online catalogue of important
terms, the “LGBT A-Z Diction-
ary,” found on The Michigan
Daily website. We hope this
helps everyone feel competent
in understanding our content,
regardless of your prior knowl-
edge on these topics. Besides
straightforward definitions, we
provide as much relevant infor-
mation about each term, and
we’ll continue updating the dic-
tionary as necessary. We hope
you refer back to this catalogue
as much as you need.
Q: Can I write for Q&A?
A: That depends. If you iden-
tify as gay, bisexual, lesbian,
transgender, asexual, pansex-
ual or demisexual, then you
definitely can. If you claim your
identity as queer, most likely
you can and you should e-mail
us if you’re concerned.
If you identify as hetero-
sexual and cisgender, then you
cannot contribute. While we
love ally support, this space is
designed for only queer-identi-
fying people to contribute con-
tent. The best way for allies to
contribute is to read articles,
share ones you love and spread
awareness for this space. That
alone serves as a contribution
to this section.
Q: What can I write for Q&A?
A: Whatever is related to
your personal story. We at
Q&A don’t want to constrict
what your contributions can
be, much like we don’t want to
place strict categories on what
your sexuality might be. All we
ask is that you include your per-
sonal experiences, be as candid
as possible and develop some
overarching theme or idea in
your piece. Please e-mail us
with your ideas for a story, and
we’ll work with you from there.
Q: Can I contribute on a more
frequent basis?
A: Yes! Absolutely! We’re
looking to hire consistent con-
tributors, and it will come
with some perks. If interested,
e-mail us and we’ll send you
an application and answer any
questions that you might have.
Now, without further ado, I’d
like you all to meet the found-
ing editors for Queer in Action:
I’m Michael Schramm, a col-
umnist for The Michigan Daily.
I’ll be leading this section as the
first Q&A editor. As a gay man,
I believe this space is so crucial
for queer members, as there
aren’t many available spaces for
us to share our stories and nar-
ratives. I’m looking forward to
the dialogues, empowerment
and catharsis that this space
will provide.
I’m Ryan Freeland, a junior
studying in International Stud-
ies, focusing on global health. I
identify as pansexual. I’m inter-
ested in being an editor for this
blog because the queer com-
munity is still marginalized
on campus. I feel this blog will
allow for stories to be heard and
create a new kind of movement
on campus.
I’m Lita Brillman, a sopho-
more studying women’s studies,
a feminist and longtime bisexu-
al. I’m stoked to do my part in
elevating marginalized voices
on campus, and look forward
to reading and connecting with
stories of other queer Wolver-
ines. I hope that we can all work
to make this an inclusive space
to all identities that may inter-
sect with queerness, and repre-
sent a broad perspective of the
Michigan queer community.
I’m Kastriot Osmani, an
international
freshman.
I’m
from Kosova (a country in
Europe), and I am interested
in making this a space where
people feel comfortable shar-
ing their experiences and sto-
ries, without a fear of judgment
or negativity. As someone who
has lived in various countries,
mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, I
have seen various forms of anti-
queer discrimination, and while
the University has a much more
accepting and liberal climate, I
still feel that there’s a long way
to go, and that this blog can be a
catalyst for change. I’m looking
forward to hearing all of your
wonderful stories!
That’s all for our first Q&A.
But before we go, we’d like
to give a special shout-out to
another Michigan Daily sec-
tion: Michigan in Color. MiC,
thanks for being the first sec-
tion to create a place for a mar-
ginalized group. Your space’s
success has undoubtedly aided
our space’s creation, and for
that, we are sincerely thankful.
We look forward to seeing your
section continue this semester,
and we hope that you’ll take a
peek at some of our content as
well.
Now, it’s time for your Q&A
(but don’t feel the need to fol-
low this question and answer
format). It’s time for the world
to hear your stories and experi-
ences with sexuality and gen-
der.
Those interested in contrib-
uting content to Queer in Action
can contact the editors at queer-
inaction@michigandaily.com.
MICHIGANDAILY.COM