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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Monday, March 23, 2015 — 3A
“If you just look at our out-of-
pocket expenses, things we’ve
paid to contractors, third par-
ties, it’s around $230,000. It
doesn’t take into consideration
management time or damage
to the resort’s reputation. Our
accountants and attorneys are
saying that this could be up to
an additional $200,000,” Barry
Owens, Treetops Resort general
manager, wrote in a statement
Friday.
The University’s chapter of
SAM was disbanded earlier this
week by its international board
in part for refusing to cooperate
in an investigation, as members
declined to name individuals
involved in the destruction.
The current members have
been placed on alumni status,
meaning they cannot affiliate
with another chapter, do not have
the rights associated with under-
graduate membership and are
ineligible for SAM scholarships.
The chapter members must
move out of their house by May 3.
In February, the University’s
disciplinary proceedings ruled
that the fraternity would no
longer be recognized as a cam-
pus organization and could not
reapply for a return to campus
for four years.
The sanction was the most
severe penalty the University
could levy on a student organiza-
tion. It requires SAM to pay the
damage to Treetops in full and
participate in “restorative mea-
sures” in the Gaylord community.
University spokesman Rick
Fitzgerald said the University
is still in the process of review-
ing the investigation, but will
consider initiating individual
complaints through the student
judicial process.
“We have said all along that
we wanted individual account-
ability and that if additional
information became available
we would consider that informa-
tion,” he said.
The Sigma Delta Tau soror-
ity was also on the ski trip with
SAM and faces a two-year dis-
ciplinary suspension, but will
continue to be recognized by the
University.
LSA junior Alex Krupiak,
president of the Interfraternity
Council, said Greek life lead-
ership has previously said the
events in Northern Michigan
were unfortunate and disap-
pointing.
“We have always hoped and
expected that the involved mem-
bers would be held accountable
for their actions,” he wrote. “We
are confident that Greek Life
will continue to move forward
and impact campus in a positive
manner.”
“These incidents simply do
not reflect the University of
Michigan’s values or its expec-
tations,” E. Royster Harper, vice
president for student life, said in
a statement. “The behaviors are
a contradiction of what it means
to be in and of a community,
and we do not believe that being
away from campus is a license to
act in destructive and irrespon-
sible ways.”
Datta said roughly 200 more
high school students submit-
ted pitch ideas this year, due in
part to the fact the expansion of
Startup High School’s advertis-
ing. The organization previous-
ly only catered to Detroit-area
schools — this year, however,
it appealed schools in areas
including Metro Detroit, Grand
Rapids and Battle Creek.
Datta and other members
of Startup High School visited
numerous Michigan schools and
delivered guest lectures encour-
aging students to submit to the
competition.
Datta
explained
that
the
workshop was meant to provide
a learning experience for the
semifinalists, who will now be
allowed to re-submit their origi-
nal pitches with their “field day”
lessons in mind.
Saturday’s event consisted of
several guest speakers, a pre-
sentation at the headquarters
of the business accelerator Ann
Arbor SPARK, a tour of Google’s
Ann Arbor offices and workshop
activities for the students.
Bill Mayer, SPARK’s vice
president
of
entrepreneur-
ial services, spoke to the high
school students about the pros
and cons of entering the entre-
preneurial field.
“I find it very valuable to pres-
ent to people that are in high
school,” Mayer said. “They’re
thinking about their college
choices, and if entrepreneurship
is something that they’d really
like to explore as a career choice
after they graduate, having a
university with a good entre-
preneurship curriculum is very
important.”
Mayer said joining a startup
tends to yield a meager sal-
ary. However, he added that
recent college graduates are
often eager to work on startups
because they provide a unique
environment with a direct con-
nection to an issue those stu-
dents care a great deal about.
“It’s a very nice path,” he said.
“The earlier we can start, the
better.”
After the presentation at Ann
Arbor SPARK, the high school
students were given a campus
tour of the University, followed
by a visit to Google’s Ann Arbor
office, where Ed Lee, an employ-
ee of Google for Entrepreneurs,
reminded the high school stu-
dents that even Google was a
small company at one point, but
became a thriving, multi-bil-
lion-dollar corporation through
innovative ideas.
After the presentation, the
students were invited to inter-
act with one of Google’s newest
products — Google Cardboard.
The toy is a simple cardboard
box that, when fitted with a
smartphone and special appli-
cation, create a virtual reality
experience.
At the end of the day, students
split into startup-related work-
shops led by members of Start-
up High School. One group, for
example, discussed the impor-
tance of networking in develop-
ing a product.
Another group focused on
product
marketing.
In
this
group’s main activity, students
were given an amusing object
and were then tasked with cre-
ating a series of selling points
for it. Among these objects were
a coconut bra and a pair of rain-
bow suspenders.
Among the semi-finalists was
Evan Morton, a senior at Detroit
Edison Public School Academy
in Detroit. He said that he came
to the event to re-evaluate his
pitch and to get some outside
help.
“They had a lot of useful
information, especially break-
ing off into the workshops,” he
said. “I wouldn’t trade this for
anything. It was very valuable.”
CHARGES
From Page 1A
#TEDxUofM. After their official
lectures, the speakers answered
these questions in interviews,
which the University then posted
on its Snapchat story.
Prior to the event, attendees
were asked to complete the sen-
tence “The source of my energy
is...” Their answers were printed
on their nametags to spark conver-
sation. LSA sophomore Anthony
Okaneme’s nametag said his source
of energy was “drive.”
Some speakers discussed over-
coming hardships in their respec-
tive fields, others groundbreaking
work in areas such as technology
and health and others of combin-
ing different passions to solve prob-
lems. University professors, who
discussed using outside passions
to enhance their students’ learning
experience, gave two of the most
popular talks.
Herbert Winful, a professor of
electrical engineering and com-
puter science, spoke about incor-
porating music into one of his
engineering courses after one of
his students died in a car crash.
In the talk, “How Hidden Pas-
sions Can Connect People,” Winful
explained that combining the two
disciplines helped his engineering
students cope with and pay hom-
age to the student.
Winful said it was relatively easy
for him to choose the theme for his
talk because the event’s theme of
constructive interference was an
idea that he teaches every day.
“I teach optics, and in optics we
deal with waves, and waves get
constructive interference,” Winful
said in an interview after the talk.
“I thought, wait, maybe I’ll com-
bine what I do in engineering with
my passion for music, and see how
they’ll interfere constructively.”
Winful also discussed how
music has helped him overcome
other struggles throughout his
life. He admitted that this might
be unexpected for someone whose
career focuses on optics and pho-
tonics, but added that his grand-
father was a music composer, and
subsequently music has played a
significant role in his life.
He ended his talk by fulfill-
ing a dream of his — performing a
song of his own composition titled
“Spirited Away” on the piano. He
said he is currently teaching a class
on risk-taking and it only felt natu-
ral to end the talk on that note.
“I really liked Herbert Winful’s
whole discussion on engineering
and art connecting and stuff, and
how you can bridge the path and
find out things you don’t know
by taking things that aren’t usu-
ally seen together and combining
them,” Okaneme said, adding that
the talk was one of his favorites
Saturday.
Comprehensive Studies Lec-
turer Jill Halpern’s talk, “Beyond
STEM: The Whole Flower Class-
room,” was memorable for both
her message and delivery. Halpern
spoke in rhymes for a portion of the
presentation, mimicking the form
of Dr. Seuss’ “The Sneetches.”
She used the metaphor of a
flower’s growth to describe the
community she built within her
classroom. Halpern teaches Calcu-
lus II, which she said was formerly
known as “the most failed class at
the ‘U’ ” by students — now, she
said, the course ratio yields roughly
103 students with A’s and B’s, and
only one with a grade falling in the
D and E range.
Halpern told the story of how
she was lenient toward a student
who was caught cheating by dis-
cussing her motives for cheating
instead of just doling out punish-
ment. This process, Halpern said,
allowed the student to grow and
later admit that even though she
was tempted to cheat again, she did
not.
Halpern incorporated humor
throughout her talk, which kept
the audience captivated and laugh-
ing.
LSA senior Anuhya Bhogineni,
whose energy source was “hope,”
said she has watched TED videos
online and had been to two other
TEDx events, but was eager to
attend the event Friday because all
of the speakers were affiliated with
the University. Bhogineni pointed
out Halpern’s talk as one of her
favorites.
Other talks throughout the day
centered on the constructive inter-
ference within social media.
Cliff Lampe, associate professor
at the School of Information, and
Researcher Kyra Gaunt, a member
of the University’s ethnomusicolo-
gy faculty, took different approach-
es to this concept.
Lampe argued against the com-
mon narrative that social media is
bad for people by noting its benefits
in his talk, “Social Media is Good
For You.” He said most people
spend the majority of their time
around people like themselves, but
can interact with a more diverse
range of people through social
media, gaining new information
and perspectives with which they
would otherwise not come into
contact.
He acknowledged that anony-
mous social media platforms like
YikYak can be places for cyber bul-
lying; however, he added that they
also serve as forums where people
can gain help for things they would
feel uncomfortable turning to their
friends for, such as suicide.
In summary, Lampe said, social
media is a place for “social groom-
ing.” In some cases, he said, people
can feel loved by others through
sites such as Facebook.
“One of the important parts of
social media is this social grooming
effect,” Lampe said. “The likes, the
votes, the shares, the comments,
what we consider banal, can be
extremely important.”
While Lampe said he does not
think that, on his birthday, all of his
500 Facebook friends would send
him a cake, and he probably would
not want 500 cakes, if they had not
posted “Happy Birthday” on his
wall, they probably would have not
reached out to him at all.
After the talk, Lampe explained
why he chose to speak on the posi-
tive aspects of social media.
“When I was talking with stu-
dents, I realized that a lot of them
felt really bad about their social
media use,” Lampe said. “A lot
of them were talking about how
they’d gotten off Facebook, and
they felt ashamed of their social
media use, and I thought ‘you know
what? I’m just going to do a very
simple social media is good for you
talk,’ and that’s the one (the orga-
nizers) really clicked with.”
Though Gaunt agreed in her
talk, “Broadcasting Black Girls’ Net
Worth,” that the social grooming
aspect of social media is important
to study, she said this is not so for
the positive reasons that Lampe
described.
Gaunt, who earned her Ph.D.
in musicology and ethnomusicol-
ogy from the University, began her
speech by recounting her audition
process in the Power Center years
before she broke out into an opera
song. From there, using her per-
sonal anecdote of overcoming her
feelings of low self-worth, she tran-
sitioned into her research today on
Black girls younger than 18 twerk-
ing in YouTube videos online.
While Lampe discussed how
social grooming helps build people
up, Gaunt spoke on how it dete-
riorates young African American
girls’ self worth. She said 40 per-
cent of the videos that fit into this
category are uploaded by men, and
the comments section sexualizes
and degrades the minors featured
in the video, which is harmful for
their self-confidence.
Okaneme, the LSA sophomore,
said he would like to see more
events like TEDxUM.
“I’ve always really enjoyed going
to TED talks and have watched
them online,” he said. “The chance
to do this on campus sounded
great. It’s been really interesting,
there’s a lot of different speakers
from across different disciplines,
and I thought that was really nice.”
TEDX
From Page 1A
junior Jibran Ahmed, MUSIC
Matters
fundraising
chair,
referenced the organization’s
pending
summer
leadership
camp
for
underrepresented
Detroit ninth graders.
“Our hope with that camp
is to bring together these stu-
dents, show them that one, col-
lege is attainable and something
that is very much tangibly in
reach for them, and two, to pro-
vide them the resources, expe-
rience, mentorship that allows
them to continue their higher
education pursuit,” he said.
He added that the summer
program will likely form a rela-
tionship with its participants
through the University’s Detroit
Center that allows the students
to regularly return to Ann
Arbor for continued mentorship
with MUSIC Matters students
throughout high school.
As far as SpringFest goes, Sie-
gel said the layout will remain
the same as last year’s event.
Participating student organiza-
tions will be stationed through-
out the Diag up to North
University Avenue, and split
into five sections: arts, innova-
tion, sustainability, social iden-
tity and philanthropy.
Food trucks will line up
North University, along with
a local farmers market and a
station for MTank — where a
panel of judges will evaluate
startup pitches from Univer-
sity students. Ahmed noted that
SpringFest will also feature its
inaugural fashion show, bring-
ing together a number of student
groups in the “fashion realm.”
The event’s overall theme will
focus on social activism.
“A big thing too, with Com-
mon, having someone like him
with his respect at a historic
venue like Hill, where all these
speeches have been, where
Martin Luther King (Jr.) has
been … Hill is seen as that his-
toric place where all sorts of
impactful speeches have been
given,” Ahmed said. “To bring
someone like Common in there
just kind of merges the venue’s
historical value with our mis-
sion with his mission, and we
just really think that’s a nice
mesh.”
COMMON
From Page 2A
STARTUP
From Page 1A