Opinion JENNIFER CALFAS EDITOR IN CHIEF AARICA MARSH and DEREK WOLFE EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS LEV FACHER MANAGING EDITOR 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com 4A — Monday, January 26, 2015 Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Devin Eggert, David Harris, Jordyn Kay, Aarica Marsh, Victoria Noble, Michael Paul, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman, Linh Vu, Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Evaluating WSN H ave you ever heard a song that just clicked with you? Having some involuntary bodily response to the chords or lyrics, feel- ing like you may have ascended to some other musi- cal realm? I’m not talking about the gagging feel- ing you might get when you hear “CoCo” by O.T. Genasis, I’m talk- ing about some- thing real. For a moment, think back to a time when a song gave you goosebumps, brought tears to your eyes or brought forth the feel- ing of a rock in your stomach. Band songs, musical songs and even pop- ular songs on your iPod can trig- ger these responses. I talked with Chelsea Zabel, a senior psychology major, about some of the songs that gave her chills. Two of the songs were from musi- cals: “Till We Reach That Day” from “Ragtime” and “One Day More” from “Les Miserables.” “Ragtime” is about three families from different eth- nic and socioeconomic backgrounds in New York City at the turn of the 20th century, while “Les Miserable” is a story following an ex-convict as he tries to do good despite tensions between the French government and people in 19th-century France. For both, the end of Act I is closed by its respective song, one imme- diately after a war uprising and the other after *SPOILER* the death of a main character. Tensions have risen in both plots, and both songs are calls to justice in response to recent events. Zabel describes the point in the show when you are “pre-invested in the storyline,” forming connec- tions with the plot and the charac- ters. Each song starts with pain from a single voice. But strength begins to grow when it starts building with other singers. “It starts when you’re already on edge, then it just fills out to where you can’t think about anything else because there is just so much going on,” Zabel said. “You’re just inside of the music.” The point of a good musical is to envelop you and transport you to that time and that scene. Music is there to bridge the connection between the audience member and the actors, portraying not just the plot, but the emotions as well. Now think about a time when you created something amazing. Whether you built it at MHacks, in a wood shop with your hands, in the kitchen or with an instrument, you were proud, right? You put in the time, effort and elements that you knew needed to be a part of the final product. I immediately think to “Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral” by Richard Wagner. A percussionist in high school, I played timpani for this song. After months of practice, I had not thought much about “Elsa” and let it go (pun intended) with the other songs to the back of my mind. But come concert time, performance ready and played with perfection, the song immediately caused me tears and chills. It was beautiful; we had worked so hard to create such a beau- tiful piece. Building slowly, the pro- cessional becomes more robust with emotion and volume. Even listening to it as I write this, I am taken back to that exact concert. How about popular songs? You may have heard it a thousand times on the radio when it was nauseatingly repeat- ed, or some oldie but goodie when iTunes was on shuffle. But was there a time when it meant something differ- ent? Zabel remembers a time in sixth grade when the song “The Middle” came on by Jimmy Eat World. As she had heard it before, this song spoke to the (then) insecure, middle-school Chelsea. Making her cry, she said she felt relieved because “the song was telling me ‘… everything was going to be alright, alright. Doin’ better on your own, so don’t buy in.’ Oh my gosh, it’s speaking to me!” Those days when certain songs don’t just go from one earbud to the other, but actually sit in your brain and make you think and react; those are the days when you actually hear the lyrics. So here’s what you do now. Go to YouTube and listen to these songs, think about how you’re feeling while listening to it. Listen to the songs a couple times if you have to, see how your body and mind respond. If you remember a song that caused some involuntary response in you, I want to know! Whether it is a T-Swift song or some piece you played in middle- school jazz band, one day it might arise and spark some reaction inside of you. — Sara Shamaskin can be reached at scsham@umich.edu. Visceral reactions SARA SHAMASKIN I have an interest in mental health care, in both definitions of the word “inter- est.” I find the topic interesting to read about and discuss, and as a person suffering from men- tal illness, it is in my best interest for these services to be available, affordable and transparent. As news began to trickle out about Wolverine Support Net- work, a system of stu- dent-run mental health support groups, my curiosity was peaked. WSN is an initiative of Central Student Government (something in which I certainly do not have an interest) and was one of the major proposals outlined dur- ing last spring’s student elections. The idea of student-led support groups came from CSG President Bobby Dishell, who had seen simi- lar initiatives played out at high schools and smaller colleges. WSN launched on Jan. 22, and soon groups of 10 to 12 students will begin weekly meetings. As the program slowly unveiled itself, I was deeply skeptical. Some students I spoke with expressed a lack of confidence in these groups, fearing that the issues faced by marginalized students would be misunderstood or dis- missed by their peers. My chief concern was, and still is, the concept of loosely trained stu- dents acting as group leaders, especially if this could result in attention and resources moving away from professional clinicians. To further complicate the matter, WSN has been strongly endorsed by Counseling and Psychological Services, a University service with a mixed track record. CAPS has served thousands of students this year alone, but it’s also the place that — for me and many others — told us an initial appointment would be two weeks away and a follow-up would take anoth- er two weeks. I’ve had good and bad experi- ences at CAPS, and have heard the same from numerous peers. As the vital campus center for mental health, “half good, half bad” appeared to me as closer to failure than success. A discussion with Dr. Todd Sevig, director of CAPS, helped me begin to see WSN (and CAPS) in a different light. Sevig, who has spent 25 years at the University, called the idea of a peer support network “the best thing since sliced bread.” Explaining his feelings, Sevig framed WSN as a point of entry, perhaps for a student who will use clinical therapy down the road, or as the first and only interaction another student will need to build better coping skills. “We try to approach ‘mental health, mental illness’ as really resting on a continuum, where, really, in some sense of the word or definition, all 43,000 students could use help and support around mental health,” Sevig explained. “For some students, it will be easier to talk to a peer than one of us as a good first step.” Sevig made a good point, and I was remind- ed that my condition and personal preferences lay on a very different part of this continuum than most students. As for those awful wait times, during the Fall 2013 semester, students waited 10 days on average between coming in and seeing someone at CAPS. During the Fall 2014 semester, under a new initial appoint- ment system, student wait times fell to an aver- age of 3.7 days — and this is with an 18 percent increase in the number of students coming in and asking for help. CSG President Bobby Dishell and WSN student leader Nick Raja both echoed many of Sevig’s points, describing peer support groups as having a lower barrier for students to get help. This is a lower barrier than going to CAPS, but also a lower barrier to something that may be even more difficult for some stu- dents, like telling their parents. “It’s an entry point for someone who didn’t grow up with a therapist in their home town, and its an entry point for someone who took a semester off to do inpatient,” Dishell explained. “For some people, it’ll be a supple- ment. For other people, it’ll be all they need.” Dishell also assured me, “We’re not training therapists.” Raja, who will be leading a student group with at least one other leader, spoke similar- ly, saying, “It’s not therapy, it’s for everyone.” He further explained that the leader’s role is to facilitate, not to be a counselor, and that a large part of WSN leader training was under- standing how to recommend students for more comprehensive treatment. Dishell, though humble about the net- work’s goals in helping individual students, has made it no secret that WSN has ambi- tious aims, saying, “In five years, hopefully less, it’ll just be something that you do. It’ll be engrained in the culture.” Raja, who wrote an op-ed earlier this fall promoting WSN, mentioned the idea of “changing campus culture,” a promise that seems to be made by countless student groups every semester. I discussed with Sevig how lately, cam- pus culture has been changing in the wrong direction. “Every year, it seems, that the pressure to be the Leaders and the Best has gotten higher and higher and higher — and that has some conse- quences,” Sevig said. One of the biggest consequences, Sevig explained, is “a sense of ‘I can’t fail; I can’t even do average work.’ ” On a campus built with the purpose of educa- tion, students are instead faced with a perfec- tionist mentality that stifles learning and fuels anxiety. This is a culture that all of us are famil- iar with, and one that doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. For now, I’ll cling to some of my skepticism about WSN, at least in the big picture. However, student leaders backing WSN are going in the right direction, as is CAPS under Sevig’s lead- ership. Hopefully some of this work really will “change campus culture” — in that, I would certainly find quite a high level of interest. — James Brennan can be reached at jmbthree@umich.edu. The cycle JAMES BRENNAN A t the request of those interviewed, all identities in this piece have been writ- ten with pseudonyms. Emit — a white man in his middle 30s — has been living on the streets in Ann Arbor since his release from a county prison, where he served a sev- en-year stint for an armed rob- bery conviction. He received parole and was expected upon his release to rejoin a society of which he had never truly been a member. “They told me I could go to therapy,” Emit said of the options made available to him by the county. “They did give me a place. But (the transition) wasn’t easy.” Emit was set up in an apartment and was eligi- ble to become employed through a prisoner reen- try program. For Emit, however, it didn’t feel like a new start, but rather a mere change of scenery. Emit was outfitted with an electronic tether, confined to travel only between his apartment and his workplace. Traveling outside of these bounds would have been a violation of his parole and would have landed him back in pris- on. After a period of time — alone day after day without friends or family in the state — Emit felt as if he had never left his prison cell. “You know what they say: if you put a rat in a cage, he drives himself insane,” he said. The emotional stress and the depression that festered with each passing day of his release started to get to Emit, especially once he began to realize that the wages he had been earning at his entry-level job weren’t even enough to cover rent for the apartment he had been given. When Emit tried appealing to his land- lord, he was told that he would be evicted if he couldn’t make the rent payments on time. And as a felon with “a real jacked-up criminal record,” even prior to his most recent felony incarceration, the prospect of an additional job was bleak; Emit found himself in a downward cycle that he didn’t know how to break. Accord- ing to research done by the Population Studies Center, this is a struggle typical for parolees. “I quit the job, acting irrational. All of a sud- den, I had no job, no place. So what am I gonna do?” Emit recalled asking himself. His solution: a return to the transient life on the streets he had lived since leaving his home- town in Maine as a teen. Not able to leave the state as a condition of his parole, Emit chose to settle in amongst the homeless population in Ann Arbor. According to a 2013 census, 3,000 to 4,000 individuals are living without homes in Washtenaw County, a number which doubled in the years between 2011 and 2013. Emit — shortly after quitting his job — joined their ranks. After doing so, he noticed a huge difference between his reality on the streets in Ann Arbor and his experiences with homeless- ness in other cities across the nation; the com- munity in Ann Arbor — both those with and without homes — was something unique. In comparison to neighboring Ypsilanti — a city with a median household income almost $20,000 lower than that of Ann Arbor, accord- ing to statistics from 2012 — Emit said he’s able to get more sympathy from both passersby and AUSTIN DAVIS police in Ann Arbor. Relative to other cities, he’s treated with some norma- tive level of respect here. “It’s peaceful … although there’s a ton of competition, you can still get by,” he said. He also noticed solidarity amongst other members of the homeless popu- lation in Ann Arbor, a community that congregates in designated, clandestine spots around the city center. They help each other out with places to find food and shelter. “Anything you need,” Emit said, “someone will tell you where it’s at usually.” I didn’t want to seem patronizing, like I was just a curious kid coming up and asking his life story at no per- sonal benefit to him. So I bought him a cup of coffee and kicked it with him for a bit longer. He joked with me at times, describing his preference for the bizarre — his preference for unrestrained freedom. “ ‘Bizarre’ is one of the excitements of life; it’s like a way to experience life. It keeps things interesting. It’s the randomness. It’s the new experiences. You can find everything these days, but still random bullshit happens. It’s an adventure.” I considered that, and had to admit that I agreed; spontaneity, random- ness and serendipity are nouns I’d like to use to describe my life as well. But as my hands began to grow numb from dictating our conversation, I realized that perhaps this was a jus- tification for Emit, a way to lighten his mental burden by assuring himself that there are some redeeming aspects to his situation. The bags underneath his eyes, and his hands, calloused and dirty from exposure, contradicted this sentiment. So too did his future goals. “It’s time to do something and get going,” Emit told me. “Get a job, a place, community college, a better job and civilization.” The concept of ‘civilization’ came up frequently during our conversa- tion. After a while it dawned on me: despite the humor, intelligence and civility with which I’d come to know Emit over the course of our conver- sation, he classified himself as one outside of society. And really, he is. But not for want of reentry. Emit had to leave to catch a bus to meet his parole officer. I left our con- versation wondering if employers in this city — whose community Emit felt treated him with respect — would respect a parolee enough to give him another shot. — Austin Davis can be reached at austchan@umich.edu. TRAVON JEFFERSON| MICHIGAN IN COLOR What’s up? Ya’ll good? Yes my dear reader, this is an educational article despite the few sentences you will catch of a different dialect: Black English Vernacular (BEV) to be exact. I apologize for any headaches or bottomless confusion I may cause in advance to any “Standard English” or “Strict Grammar” readers that may stumble across this article. Don’t let the confusion of this dialect deter you, let it motivate you to learn it and become “articulate.” You may come across words that looked misspelled but certainly, in BEV, these words are spelled phonetically correct. For instance the word “mouth,” phoneti- cally speaking, BEV speakers replace the Θ sound, which pronounces the “th” sound in “mouth” and instead use “f” so the word will actually be spelled “mouf” that’s basic BEV phonology 101 for ya’. All the con- tractions, the twangish vocabulary words that I type up, or any other complex Black English grammar that I may lose the reader in, my bad. So, if you can tolerate my unbearable black syntax, stick around and you just may learn something! Growing up in a heavily African American/Black American populated area, I got the dialect I’m so proud to call my own. My BEV is so deeply rooted inside my heart that it’s clear where I come from the moment I speak. Detroit, Michigan, raised on the east side to be exact. All my life, I was corrected for the way I talked. I had to be extremely careful, to make sure I pronounce every word with clarity and don’t I dare incorporate those BEV grammar rules or gov- erning syntax. Of course, I only had to monitor my speaking in school, because I wanna sound intelligent and I want the teacher to see that I am intelligent. My whole thing is, do I not sound intelligent? Just because I speak with this minority dialect, does that really make me stupid? Nah I ain’t stupid, clearly the President Barack Obama has the same vernacular I do. If anything, my BEV is what’s up because it shows that I’m multi-dialectical. Yep, I can switch between speaking Black, and then switch to speaking what people call “Standard English.” So my next question, my dear audience, do you know anybody that speaks with a BEV dialect? Were they speaking clear English but you just couldn’t grasp why, for some reason, they decided to put that habitual “be” in the place of an adverb such as usu- ally? Did I lose you? Don’t worry, I have examples for days: Have you ever heard someone say, “She be eating a lot?” Or, for more of a direct college experience, “He be studying?” Do you be confused? I hope so. ‘Cause, now that you’re confused, I can pull you out of that confusion pit and teach you a thing or two. I can teach you some- thing that linguists have been trying to educate people on for years. Black English Vernacular is not stupid, it’s not a dysfunctional piece of English, and it’s a dialect that has developed a complex system of rules and syntax. Seriously, can you really say something is dumb or not right when it has a full-blown system, which if not followed carefully will make the speaker sound outright wrong and garner the confused looks of every natural BEV speaker? For instance, if a non-BEV speaker tries to use the habitual “be,” they would probably say something such as, “He is studying,” which makes no sense BEV syntax-wise. In Standard English and non-BEV, speakers will use the verb “to be” correctly, but BEV natives have a different way of saying it. For quick and easy BEV speakers, we use that good ol’ BEV syntax and drop that “to be” verb “is” and turn that into a habit- ual “be” and you have “he be study- ing.” The beauty that comes with the habitual “be” is that it does not have no specific time frame. Standard Eng- lish speakers would hear “Travon be studying,” and think that I’m off some- where studying at that very moment. According to BEV natives I could be studying now, later, or sometime last week, just know I be studying. My dear readers, BEV is a great dia- lect where you must possess the cor- rect rules to speak it, but you need to have that slur/paused way of speaking, the nice little twang that compliments it. Ms. Jamila Lyiscott explained a per- fect rule in her TED Talk “3 ways to speak English” (haven’t heard of her? Please educate yourself now) when she said her mother mocked BEV saying, “Y’all be madd going to the store” and Ms. Lyiscot instantly corrected her in response saying, “never does madd go before a present participle.” This is in fact true. Now, you’re thinking that mad is an emotion, actually mad turned into an adverb that modifies adjectives or verbs, for example “that was mad cool yo.” Don’t worry my dear readers, I won’t delve deep into the various vocabulary terms and the way how their definitions switch in accordance to the syntax of BEV. My point is, however, next time you see that friend/classmate/person speaking with a twang and mixing up that “Standard English” syntax and turning it into another perfect English dialect known as BEV, don’t downplay their intelligence. PLEASE don’t ask them to steady repeat them- selves, and whatever you do, don’t try and imitate the way they mouf’s form and shape them words because trust and believe, if you don’t sound right you will get the straightest, coldest and blankest stare of your life. Cause guess what, BEV gotta complex sys- tem of syntax, that to speak it prop- erly and be able to code-switch into “Standard English” makes you what me and Jamila like to call articulate. Travon Jefferson is an LSA junior. Speakin’ Black ain’t easy