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Friday, February 6, 2015 — 3
chemical makeup of vaccines and
potential contribution to the recent
increase in autism.
“We have to consider that vac-
cination is a toxin,” Waltman said.
“You are injecting yourself with
a virus, mercury, aluminum and
formaldehyde.”
Waltman added that she believes
the best way to fight diseases is by
maintaining a healthy immune sys-
tem through natural methods such
as proper nutrition and exercise.
Gary Freed, professor of pediat-
rics and community health, holds
a different viewpoint. He said vac-
cines are beneficial because they
prevent life-threatening illnesses.
He also said research shows vac-
cines are safe, and that studies
emphasizing the danger of vacci-
nation are incorrect and have been
discredited. Freed denied the link
between vaccinations and autism.
“There have been many scares
about the side effects of vaccines,”
Freed said. “From research that
has been proven incorrect, has
been fraudulent, has been discred-
ited, yet still lives on the Internet
and is still spoken about by people.”
Michigan is one of 20 states that
exempt people from vaccination
for non-medical reasons, includ-
ing religious and personal beliefs.
Forty-eight states allow exemp-
tions for religious reasons, but not
for personal beliefs.
Robert Ernst, medical director
at the University Health System
medical director, said this law
prevents UHS from building a vac-
cination registry that would keep
track of the students’ vaccination
records. Ernst said as a result, UHS
does not know the exact rate of
unvaccinated students.
“We don’t really know,” he said.
“There is no such statute for indi-
viduals entering college in Michi-
gan, so we have not had a very
robust registry of individual stu-
dents’ vaccination record to know
the percentage of students who are
unvaccinated.”
Since Jan. 1, a new Michigan
Department of Community Health
policy requires parents in Michi-
gan to receive education from a
health worker before opting their
children out of vaccination for non-
medical reasons.
Freed said parents not vaccinat-
ing their children for non-medical
reasons does not have a benefit, but
rather leaves children at risk for
potential consequences of the dis-
eases, such as paralysis from polio
or brain damage from whooping
cough.
In the end, the parents make the
ultimate choice to vaccinate their
children or not, not the clinicians.
According to Freed, parents refus-
ing to vaccinate their children can
lead to doctors refusing to treat the
children in the future.
“(Some doctors) don’t want those
children to put the other children
at the practice at risk of preventable
diseases,” Freed said. “Some also
believe that if parents don’t trust
the physician’s judgment for advice
for regarding something basic
like immunizations, then they are
unlikely to develop a shared vision
for the care for their children for
other preventive care, or care when
the child becomes ill.”
Sarah Clark, associate research
scientist at the Department of
Pediatrics and Communicable Dis-
eases, said college students are not
traditionally considered “vulner-
able,” but they are at risk since they
live in close proximity to one other
and suffer from unhealthy condi-
tions such as sleep deprivation. As
a result, it is easy for a disease to
spread through dorms and houses.
Clark added that students still
could get vaccinated if they did not
as children, and they should do it
as soon as possible to minimize the
chances of exposing themselves to
the preventable diseases.
“The time to (get vaccinated) is
now,” she said.
VACCINES
From Page 1
On top of that, Detroit also
experienced the conflict between
Blacks and whites seen in most
all U.S. cities, such as housing
discrimination, police brutality
and segregated schools and busi-
nesses. These issues would persist
throughout the 20th century and
shape much of the city’s racial his-
tory.
What made Detroit stand out
from the broader national narra-
tive, Boyd said, was that despite
clear discrimination towards the
Black community — similar to
many other areas — the city also
had uniquely prosperous African-
American neighborhoods.
“By the time you get to 1967,
Black people are probably enjoy-
ing a better economic existence
than any other place in the coun-
try,” Boyd said. “In Detroit, Black
people lived in houses; they didn’t
live in tenement buildings. That’s a
huge difference on quality of life.”
Racial clashes in Detroit
“It had this feel of being a city
under siege, of being attacked.”
Marian
Krzyzowski,
direc-
tor of the University Institute for
Research on Labor, Employment
and the Economy, recounted his
experience living through the 1967
Detroit “race riot” as being surreal,
movie-like. At 19 years old during
the events, Krzyzowski recalled
seeing stores in his neighborhood
burned and tanks and U.S. soldiers
scattered throughout the city. He
remembers sleeping with his fam-
ily downstairs and away from any
windows to the sound of distant
gunfire.
“Essentially, it was a war zone,”
he said.
In Detroit’s history, two major
— and at least partly racially moti-
vated — clashes prompted federal
Army intervention, caught nation-
wide media attention and led to
brutality, extensive property dam-
age and murder.
The first incident took place in
June 1943.
History Prof. Charlie Bright
and Assistant History Prof. Ste-
phen Ward said leading up to the
1943 riot, Detroit had been experi-
encing an influx of new residents
from the South, both white and
Black, in the wake of the new jobs
created through the booming auto
industry.
Though jobs for the migrants
were plentiful, housing was not.
No new housing had been con-
structed since the Great Depres-
sion, and Black residents were
excluded from almost all public
housing projects, forcing them to
cram into 60 square blocks on the
city’s east side, an area that ironi-
cally came to be known as “Para-
dise Valley.”
In response to the overcrowd-
ing and shortage of living spaces
for both Blacks and whites, in 1941,
the Detroit Housing Commission
approved two sites for housing
projects, one for Blacks and one for
whites, in a predominantly white
area. Many whites protested the
project and upon its completion,
when Black citizens had already
signed leases, over 1,000 white
residents picketed, vowing to keep
out any Black residents.
The tension over housing, over-
crowded public facilities and the
brutal heat of the summer all led
to several small-scale scuffles
between Black and white citizens
during the summer of 1943.
“The
city
was
physically
crammed,” Bright said.
On June 20, a brawl broke out
on Belle Isle between Blacks and
whites. After the brawl, rumors
circulated as to what took place
— many Black Detroiters claimed
whites had thrown a Black woman
and her baby off the Belle Isle
Bridge, while white Detroiters
said a Black man raped and killed
a white woman.
In response to the rumors, over
500 Black residents rioted and
looted throughout the night, while
white men beat Black men leaving
the Roxy Theatre on Woodward
Avenue.
Over the next 36 hours, Detroit
faced constant looting, rioting
and conflict between Blacks and
whites. It was not until Detroit
Mayor Edward Jeffries Jr. asked
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
to send in federal troops that the
mobs began to dissipate.
“It’s a crowded city full of hos-
tility, and a rumor or an altercation
can set it off,” Bright said.
The riot claimed 34 lives: 9
whites and 25 Blacks. Out of those
25, 16 Black men died at the hands
of police officers.
In response to the riot and
months
of
increasing
strain
between whites and Blacks in the
city, both the local and federal
government attempted to allevi-
ate tension through measures
like increasing federally financed
public housing and working to
advance Black prospects within
the labor movement.
“These are responses indirectly,
consequences really, of a collision
between the races and crowded
conditions that lead to federal
policies that try to alleviate those
conditions,” Bright said. “(Those
policies) produce new conditions
of ghetto concentrations of Afri-
can Americans inside the city and
suburban sprawl of whites outside
the city, both products in part of
federal interventions.”
However, with increasing pri-
vate housing available outside the
city, many white citizens departed
for the suburbs in the ‘40s and
‘50s, a phenomenon referred to as
“white flight.”
Ward and Bright said Black
residents initially welcomed the
shift, as it opened up affordable
housing space in the city near the
still-booming auto industries.
Both stressed that the riot in
1943 did not directly lead to factors
like white flight and police brutal-
ity — factors that contributed to
the ‘67 uprising — but were instead
an expression of the ongoing cir-
cumstances for Black and white
residents of the city.
In essence, Bright said racial
tension was not caused simply
through the riots, but was a long
term presence in the city.
“The riots are symbolic events,
but they capture and express the
eruption of forces that are not
resolved, and the continued inabil-
ity to resolve these problems con-
tinues now,” Bright said. “We’re
pushing against the notion that
there are living consequences of
‘43 and ‘67 and rather seeing ‘43
and ‘67 as living consequences of
unresolved race relations in the
city.”
The second major conflict
occurred between the police and
Black residents in the city.
Before the uprising of 1967, and
unlike the context of the ‘43 race
riot, Black citizens held relatively
more recognition and political
cachet, as the civil rights move-
ment and the Black Power move-
ment ramped up during the 1960s
and 1970s in the United States.
According to Ward and Bright,
both federal and state govern-
ments were starting to recognize
the rights and challenges facing
Black communities. For example,
Black citizens held seats in the
Detroit school board.
Feeling threatened, some white
residents sought to keep their
privilege over Black residents pri-
marily through the police.
“There was a population of
whites in the city that resented
concessions to the civil rights
movement, or the movement for
Blacks to be able to buy houses in
neighborhoods where they want-
ed to live, and so on,” Bright said.
“There was a resentment in the
power centers of the city for going
over to the other side, and they
looked at the police as the last line
of defense of white power.”
Bright added that though Mayor
Jerome Cavanaugh attempted to
reform the notably racist police
force, the endeavor failed.
“Clearly a police department
that’s almost all white, in a city
that’s had a significant African
American population, is a formula
for disaster,” Krzyzowski said.
The ‘67 uprising was triggered
by a police raid of a “blind pig,” or
unlicensed bar, on the corner of
12th Street and Clairmount Ave-
nue, one of the poorest neighbor-
hoods in the city, during which 82
arrested patrons were arrested.
Following reports that police
were using excessive force on the
arrested patrons, a crowd grew
around the bar and began to throw
objects at police cars and loot
nearby stores.
After an ensuing day of violence
between police officers and resi-
dents, along with vandalism and
buildings set aflame, Cavanaugh
requested Army troops and the
National Guard be brought in to
quell the violence. They arrived
one day after the police raid and
stayed for four more days.
According to The New York
Times, at the end of the five-day
uprising, local police killed 20
residents and the Army troops
and National Guardsmen killed
10, leaving 43 dead in total. Among
the dead, 10 were white and 33
were Black.
“It wasn’t a race riot in the
sense of white against Black,”
Krzyzowski said. “This wasn’t
a race riot; this was a rebellion
of years and years of frustration
exploding and when it exploded
everything just went to hell.”
At one of the Detroiters Speak
Series hosted by the University’s
Semester in Detroit Program,
Detroit Reverend Dan Aldridge
and David Goldberg, assistant
professor at Wayne State, echoed
many of the same points.
“It’s so similar to what we see
transpiring with ‘Black Lives
Matter’ today,” Goldberg said,
specifically discussing the police
decision to hold the arrested on
Belle Isle and the poor treatment
they received from the police.
“You have in social movements
events that prove to be a spark and
the event that is a spark sometimes
isn’t necessarily something that’s
distinctive.”
Goldenberg added there were
several smaller incidents during
that summer that set the stage for
an eruption, creating a general
racial frustration in the city.
“I mention this because Mike
Brown being killed by police, that
happens, according to studies,
basically every 28, 24 hours right?
He’s not the only one this happens
to but there’s certain moments,” he
said. “The blind pig being raided in
the summer of 1967 wasn’t distinc-
tive, that happened all the time.”
Aldridge also said the situation
for Black Detroiters went beyond
just issues with the police. The
Black community had been largely
deteriorating, he said, noting in
particular poor economic oppor-
tunity as jobs started moving out
of the city. He added that much
of the city’s new development at
that time only served white work-
ers in the suburbs, saying projects
like the freeways uprooted Black
neighborhoods and destroyed the
Black middle class.
“The
Detroit
conflagration
didn’t just happen one night. This
was some decades in the begin-
ning and it was an explosion,” he
said.
While these first and second-
hand accounts tell a complicated
story, according to Krzyzowski,
the media portrayal of the uprising
suggested a racial clash, as it tend-
ed to present Black looters when it
was proven that many looters and
rioters were white.
In his own experience after the
riot, Krzyzowski said he found
most white people tended to make
assumptions that Black people had
a significantly negative role to play,
even though the Black citizens
experienced the majority of fatali-
ties and injuries.
“It was a confirmation or vali-
dation of their racist stereotypes
of African Americans,” he said. “I
wouldn’t say everyone did, but it
was there significantly.”
The fraction of white residents
in the city fell from 70.8 percent in
1960 to 55.5 percent in 1970 and to
34.4 percent in 1980.
In 2010, white residents only
made up 10.6 percent of the city’s
population.
Ward said the change in the
demographics of the city was
not directly caused by the riot, as
many whites were already exiting
the city due to the changing ste-
reotypes of Blacks at the time.
In beginning of the 20th cen-
tury, Blight and Ward described
the “biggest threat” to a white
family as a Black family moving
in. With the emergence of the civil
rights movement and growing
racial acceptance, this stereotype
quelled. However, through the
growing number of Black citizens
in cities across the nation and sim-
ilar uprisings, many white citizens
began to fear the “lone Black mug-
ger in the shadows,” Bright said.
“Black people and crime and
cities all came to be associated
in this period, largely because of
these riots or uprising,” Ward said.
Because of these growing ste-
reotypes and increasing afford-
ability for suburban homes, rather
than specifically the riots, white
people left the city en masse.
“An acceleration of so called
‘white flight’ is an impact of ‘67,
but it’s often said, but it’s too
sophisticated to say ‘67 caused or
continued white flight. All those
dynamics a part of ‘67 intensifies
and those contribute to why peo-
ple are leaving the city,” Ward said.
“ ‘67 accelerates a process that was
already happening: of whites leav-
ing the city, of racial dynamics.”
DERTOIT
From Page 1
the School Aid Fund, as part of the
$1.2 billion they receive from the
General Fund. The Snyder admin-
istration has said the funding will
now come entirely from the Gener-
al Fund, as was the practice several
years ago.
In addition to the monies from
the General Fund, 13.5 percent of
higher education funding comes
from state-restricted funds, and 6.4
percent from federal funds. These
in total comprise the over $1.5 bil-
lion that is distributed to colleges
and universities across the state.
During the meeting, represen-
tatives highlighted that higher
education
funding
has
seen
significant cuts in the past few
decades, which has resulted in a
rise in tuition. Over the past few
years, state funding has fluctuat-
ed — in 2011, Snyder cut funding
for higher education by 15 per-
cent, but has raised it incremen-
tally since.
2002 was the first year that
the amount that the state appro-
priates was less than the amount
paid by students, according to a
report presented at the meeting
by Marilyn Peterson, committee
clerk and senior fiscal analyst.
Since then the gap between
student tuition and state appro-
priations has only grown, accord-
ing to the report.
Students contributed 71.4 per-
cent of the total $5.9 billion that
comprised the Public Univer-
sity General Fund Revenue for the
2013-2014 fiscal year. State appro-
priation only made up 21.3 percent
of it, and 7.3 percent came from
other sources.
“With the increasing reliance on
tuition and fees, and decreasing on
appropriations, the numbers sim-
ply work out that it becomes more
difficult to make a large impact
with state appropriation dollars,”
Peterson said.
Irwin said the issue of rising
tuition isn’t new, but rather had
accumulated over a long period of
time.
“You can draw a straight line
between declining state support
for higher education and increas-
ing tuition,” Irwin said, “That’s
what’s driving the outrage in stu-
dent debt loads, and that’s the prob-
lem that the last couple decades of
budgeting has caused.”
The majority of the commit-
tee also asked questions regarding
how Michigan’s state funding to
student funding ratio compared to
other states’, which Peterson said
she wasn’t certain.
The largest percent of the $1.5
billion
that
state
institutions
receive in appropriations — 88.4
percent — goes directly to univer-
sities through University Opera-
tional Support. The University of
Michigan receives more funding
for operational support than any
other in the state: $295.2 million.
The amount that each university
receives is calculated based on the
institution’s number of full-time
students.
Seven percent of the remaining
higher education appropriation
goes to financial aid, 3.9 percent
goes to MSU AgBioResearch/
Extension, 0.4 percent goes to
other university funding, and the
remaining 0.3 percent is appropri-
ated to other higher education pro-
grams.
During the meeting, members of
the subcommittee asked whether
the $500,000 provided for the
North American Indian Tuition
waivers is enough. The North
American Indian Tuition waiver
gives free tuition to Michigan pub-
lic higher education students of at
least one-quarter Native American
descent.
State Rep. Michael McCready
(R–Birmingham), the committee
chair, asked what happens if there
are more students of Native Ameri-
can descent enrolled in public insti-
tutions than the amount of money
allocated to the fund.
“What’s presumed to be rolled
up into the University Operations
Grants does fall short of the actual
cost of the tuition waiver pro-
grams,” Peterson said.
She added that universities typi-
cally make up the shortfall through
their general funds.
The subcommittee also ques-
tioned whether language about
the portion of financial aid funding
currently allocated to the Michigan
Competitive scholarship, which
provides aid to students who attain
a qualifying ACT score and demon-
strate financial need, will be rewrit-
ten to reflect the fact that public
schools in Michigan will now take
the SAT instead of the ACT.
Besides the budget, the commit-
tee also discussed a concern for the
future — the decrease in student
enrollment in higher education in
Michigan. There has been a grow-
ing trend of students not complet-
ing high school and in turn not
going on to college, Peterson told
the committee.
At least in the immediate time
frame, that trend is not expected to
change, she added.
However, unlike other schools in
the country, the University did not
experience a significant decrease in
enrollment for the fall 2014 term.
BUDGET
From Page 1
campaigns on record,” Mallette
said.
Herbert said he believed it was
unlikely that “The Interview”
would cause a domino effect in
Hollywood and would not result
in qualms among producers and
filmmakers toward releasing simi-
lar movies. He said, however, the
effect of the hack on Sony has been
chilling.
“It’s not this chilling effect that
concerns me most, but rather, the
chilling effect that the Sony hack-
ers could and likely will hack on
the freedom of discretion of pri-
vate individuals who work in a
large institution,” Herbert said.
Ratner specializes in counter-
terrorism,
human
rights
and
international law. He focused his
discussion on the regulation of
speech in international communi-
ties on the basis of the Internation-
al Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
In his argument, Ratner said
globally, court cases concerning
free speech often result in restric-
tions on the speaker’s rights,
unlike in the United States.
“The fact is that international
human rights law and European
human rights law gives the state
a significant degree of discretion
to prohibit certain forms of hate
speech,” Ratner said. “It’s very dif-
ferent from what we’re used to in
the United States, but it’s one that
comes out of a tradition where the
rest of the world sees it as retalia-
tion to awful crimes.”
However,
Ratner
said
the
robust regulation and policing of
free speech in some international
communities is not always feasible
and rationally warranted from the
state.
“The state can’t just completely
cut off free speech just because
they’re advancing a legitimate
goal,” Ratner said. “They have to
do it in a method that’s propor-
tional.”
LSA juniors Erica Dickinson
and Fatima Chowdhury said they
thought the event was important
to be held at the University and
realized that unregulated freedom
of speech was difficult to come by
in any modern state.
“There is no absolute freedom
of speech anywhere in the world,
but the U.S. comes closest,” Dick-
inson said.
Chowdhury said inclusion of
the power of the Internet as a
forum for free speech is a neces-
sary segment in discussions of free
speech both nationally and across
countries.
“I think the Internet changes
things. The Internet definitely
changes things,” she said. “A lot
of governments can track citizens
and what they say and persecute
them based on (the Internet),
which they couldn’t do in the
past.”
This makes international law
more important, Dickinson said,
when news stories or blog posts
targeting international cultural
groups become more accessible to
those groups.
“If someone hears (appropria-
tion) in America and someone
hears (appropriation) in Germany,
you’ve already involved two coun-
tries and that changes the game,”
she said.
ROUND TABLE
From Page 1
our use of renewable energy and
reduce our greenhouse gas emis-
sions. The siting of Michigan’s
largest solar field on the city of
Ann Arbor property is an impor-
tant step to realize the goals of
both those plans.”
Briere echoed Taylor’s com-
ments when discussing her own
motivations for co-sponsoring the
contract.
“I believe that the City should
continue to reduce its dependence
on petroleum products,” Briere
wrote. “As the City continues to
address our sustainability frame-
work and climate action plans
… this project addresses several
important aspects, including …
our community’s desire to have
access to more renewable energy
sources.”
SOLAR
From Page 2