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
4 — Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh, Victoria Noble,
Michael Paul, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm,
Matthew Seligman, Linh Vu, Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
W
hen I started college
last year, I averaged
about five hours of sleep
a night. As the
year
progressed,
my alarm clock
chirped an hour
earlier. Four hours
of sleep definitely
wasn’t something
I
enjoyed,
but
it was a routine
necessity, just like
everything
else
on my to-do list.
I enlisted it as
another
adjust-
ment made toward “maturing.” Col-
lege meant being career-driven with
lofty ambitions for success among a
competitive pool of peers — so natu-
rally, sleep-deprived, right?
Unfortunately, after a few months,
the human body realizes it cannot
physically operate with so little rest.
No phone can go without a recharge.
No road trip can happen without a
pit stop, and inconveniently, the body
will eventually demand sleep or oth-
erwise shut down.
This year, I remember setting an
alarm for an 8 p.m. power nap, then
awaking disoriented at 7 a.m. the
next morning. My roommate and I
consistently sleep through both our
alarms, leaving us frantic and hur-
ried in the mornings before class.
The problem is, I’m certain I’m not
the only one with these experiences.
One peek into any library on any day
indicates the sheer abundance of
students working from the moment
they wake up until the time they fall
asleep on top of their books.
Time has become most college
students’ most valuable possession.
Personally, I feel the need to take
advantage of all the University offers
while I’m already paying upwards of
$50,000 each year. However, what
started as getting the most “bang
for my buck,” transpired into a per-
sonal desire, a competitive urge to
do everything — to stay in good aca-
demic standing, to have a job, to learn
money management, to maintain a
social life, to lead extracurricular
clubs and more and more.
According to a recent Michigan
Daily survey, 63 percent of students
participate in clubs at least once a
week. Instead of striving to balance
our busy lives with good health, we
have instead redefined “balance” to
mean all-inclusive involvement. Col-
lege has turned us into workaholics.
Essentially, we forgo sleep com-
pletely or prioritize it at the bottom
of our lists, viewing it as more of a
hindrance to productivity rather
than a human necessity. We tell our-
selves to “suck it up” when we feel
burnout approaching to suppress and
endure onwards. What doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger, right?
In class, our professors point out
how we all look exhausted with
droopy eyelids in the middle of the
day, berating us to sleep at least
eight hours a day. Unfortunately, we
have heard this suggestion time and
time again. Yet we’re never galva-
nized to change our lifestyle, even
when we’ve experienced some of the
malignant consequences.
As a result, many students resort
to
caffeine-dependent
lifestyles
fueled by coffee, soda, energy drinks
and even attention-enhancing drugs.
Adderall and Ritalin are two of the
most common drugs sold on the
college “black market,” used most
commonly for academic rather than
recreational purposes. When I sur-
veyed a psychology discussion, 90
percent of the class raised their hand,
admitting they knew at least one per-
son who bought those drugs without
a prescription to more effectively
complete their work.
Last spring, the University’s Cen-
tral Student Government introduced
a pilot phase of napping stations at
the Undergraduate Library because
96 percent of 500 survey respondents
felt fatigue was disrupting their per-
formance. In addition to this, there
have been few initiatives to actively
decrease or temporarily ameliorate
sleep deprivation, and only a string
of elusive online tips to improve sleep
quality. Daily columnist Jenny Wang
also wrote about a burn-out the week
before spring break, where she hum-
bly asked professors for reasonably
manageable academic loads.
However, the crux of the issue
is not solely from schoolwork, like
the CSG initiative and Wang’s arti-
cle may suggest. Naps and lighter
coursework cannot remedy the situ-
ation long-term. Rather, our sleep
deprivation stems from our academ-
ic objectives paired with the work
outside of class that we voluntarily
take on (and persuade ourselves we
need for a complete college experi-
ence). Deprioritizing sleep has been
increasingly cultivated and perpetu-
ated by our scholarly, success-hungry
society so that the workaholic atti-
tude is no longer simply a cultural
factor, but now inherent within our-
selves. Sleep deprivation is more a
product of our mentalities.
We have already read the correla-
tive studies and heard the statistics
time and time again detailing the
relationship between sleep, memory
processing and academic perfor-
mance. We also don’t need to know
that 73 percent of college students
have sleep issues; we already know
that it’s some astoundingly high
number, so the specifics that almost
three-fourths of this campus feels
exhausted during the day isn’t a
shocker.
Additionally, just 11 percent report
good sleep — far too small a fraction
especially since we know how closely
sleep is related to academic perfor-
mance. More specifically, accord-
ing to Shelley Hershner and Ronald
Chervin’s study relating college stu-
dents to sleep, rising just one hour
earlier decreases student GPAs by an
average of 0.132 out of 4.0 points.
You don’t need me to rattle off all
the pernicious consequences, like your
teachers and parents have done too
many times before, but it’s clear that
we are only shooting ourselves at our
shoes. At our age, we have surpassed
ignorance. Yet, we ironically continue
to deprive ourselves of the necessity of
sleep. Our motivation for consistently
harming our bodies in this way can
only be attributed to our rigid men-
talities, programmed by the anxiety of
ambition or the fear of inadequacy.
Each year, countless scientific
and psychological studies are con-
ducted about sleep deprivation, only
strengthening the same conclu-
sions citing its degree of detriment.
Regardless of the statistics from
research, advice from University
Health Services and pleas from
professors to better “balance” our
schedules and get more rest, our
mentalities are not so simply altered.
Old habits die hard, or not at all.
From an evolutionary standpoint,
will we, as humans, gradually require
less sleep in the future? Will we drive
ourselves to work all the time that
we’ll physically require less rest to
refuel? As we have seen, we turn a
blind eye or a helpless shrug regard-
less of our education and awareness
about the subject. So, as a collective,
competitive culture and individually
as insatiable students, what will it
take to change our minds?
— Karen Hua can be reached
at khua@umich.edu.
To be Malcolm X
Political dissent is a fascinating concept.
To me, the act of politically dissenting — from
popular opinion, from one’s own communally
associated belief or from previously held per-
sonal ideology — is a courageous act of defiance.
Last March, Students Allied for Freedom
and Equality brought forth a resolution to Cen-
tral Student Government that requested the
creation of a committee to investigate compa-
nies that the University invests in that violate
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and profit off of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and
the West Bank. I was a representative on the
assembly at the time, as well as a candidate for
student body president. Prior to the proposal of
this resolution, I didn’t know much about the
international Boycott, Divestment and Sanc-
tions (BDS) movement, and I had never formal-
ly engaged in any advocacy around Israel and
Palestine. What I did know, though, was how I
was supposed to feel in regards to the issue at
hand. Just by nature of my identity as a Jew, I
knew that I was supposed to oppose the reso-
lution, oppose divestment and propose a narra-
tive of peace and dialogue around Israel. I knew
this because Hillel told me so through the many
e-mails I received affirming their opposition to
BDS, and because of the many Facebook posts
about all of the Hillel-sponsored Israel solidar-
ity efforts I could join.
After reaching out to one of the resolution’s
authors, examining my own values in the con-
text of what was being asked of us as an assem-
bly and hours of extensive research, it intuitively
made sense that I would support a resolution of
this nature. I sat with a strong sense of cogni-
tive dissonance, weighing my moral and ethical
values against my Jewish identity. Saying that I
opposed the resolution felt morally inconsistent
with my values, but saying that I supported it
felt incredibly isolating.
With a public and political face that said no
to the resolution, but a heart and a mind that
said yes, I felt a moral tension that even today
still hasn’t gone away. The way that the Jew-
ish community on campus received my ambi-
guity was what ultimately led me to finding
my strength for the dissent. I have come to
actualize my dissent in small ways since last
March, from informing community members
and friends of my personal support of eco-
nomic boycotts in Israel to exploring “Jewish
Progressive Except for Palestine” identities
in academic research.
The way that fellow Jews on campus treat-
ed me and other Jewish students who did not
fully conform to the status quo Israel political
belief was disheartening. My unwillingness
to strongly oppose the resolution, demon-
ize its supporters and vocalize an unwaver-
ing dedication to the longevity of Israel as a
divided state meant that I was no longer wor-
thy of their love, their friendship and, some-
times, our shared Jewish identity.
It took me a summer of research and reflec-
tion to understand why this PEP identity
persists in the Jewish communities I have
always identified with, and why it’s so hard
to move past the cognitive dissonance cre-
ated by a resolution such as the one presented
to me a year ago and the one being presented
Tuesday night. I have come to understand
my experience with BDS and Israel politics
on campus in a larger social context, where
there’s a Jewish communal standard and
expectation for many historical, social and
political reasons, which Jewish community
members are expected to adhere to simply
by the nature of being Jewish. My explora-
tion away from this status quo, of an Israel
politic that is consistent with my values,
is what led to the intra-communal silenc-
ing of political voice that I experienced
on campus.
I think political dissent is naturally coupled
with feelings of fear. For me, it was fear of
political loss, personal isolation and commu-
nal rejection. I decided to sit silent in consent,
weighed down by others’ constructed realities,
instead of adhering to my values, my truths, my
Judaism. But, more important than my own
fears, identities and intra-communal politics
are the silenced narratives of Palestinian stu-
dents on campus and our greater complacency
in the human rights abuse that is Palestinian
occupation. So while I didn’t dissent that day
last March, I am dissenting now. I support
SAFE’s resolution, I support economic sanc-
tions on Israel and I support the validation of
all narratives.
Carly Manes is a Public Health senior.
I can sleep when I’m dead
KAREN
HUA
You know when someone you hate throws
a party so you try to get all your friends to not
go? In my experience, it usually doesn’t work
that well and you just end up looking like an ass.
How does the United States feel now that all of
its friends have ignored its stern warnings and
joined the Asian Infrastructure and Investment
Bank anyways? This is the most dramatic
diplomatic isolation of the United States since
that whole Operation Iraqi Freedom debacle, so
hopefully a little like an ass.
In 2014, China laid down $50 billion and its
signature alongside 22 other Asian countries
from Kuwait to Indonesia, creating the AIIB to
finance infrastructure projects in the region.
The United States tried cashing in on its
diplomatic ties by coercing its global network
of allies from joining the bank that has been
formally endorsed by both the World Bank
and IMF. Until this month, the tactic seemed
to be working. But that was before the United
Kingdom, which many Americans consider
their closest ally, defected. Today, on the
membership deadline, virtually every single
major economy including U.S. allies such as
Australia, South Korea and an entire concert
of Western European pals, have joined. The
only bitter holdouts are the United States, with
Japan expecting to join.
The State Department’s (and Japan’s, for
that matter) formal statement against the AIIB
questions its regulations on issues such as
environmental protection and human rights
— how will these be considered when making
loans? Please spare us these airs and graces.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
and various other NGOs have raised noise
about the shady dealings of these American-
led institutions. John Perkins, a consultant
who used to work with indebted developing
countries, described how World Bank and
IMF loans are almost publicity agreements
to complement a sweeping privatization and
deregulation of developing economies to fit
nicely into the pocketbooks of American and
European multinational corporations.
And despite their international scope
and image, the World Bank and IMF are
undoubtedly American-led institutions. This
makes perfect sense — they were created in the
1940s when the U.S. was beginning to assume
its role as the global hegemon, but that was 70
years ago. Nothing has changed. Despite being
the world’s second largest economy, China
only has only about 5 percent and 4 percent of
total voting power in the World Bank and IMF,
respectively, compared to 18 percent in both
institutions by the United States. Just to put it
in perspective, only a handful of countries have
more than 1 percent of voting power in either
institution, and the United States is the sole
veto power in the World Bank.
China’s creation of the AIIB was an attempt
at an institution that would better reflect the
changing power relations of the modern world.
This does not exclude the United States. Last
I checked, the United States is still the world’s
only superpower, and North Korea was the
only country whose application was rejected
from the AIIB. The U.S. blunder has not only
damaged its credibility with allies, but also
signaled an appallingly myopic refusal to
cooperate with Beijing. If the United States is
truly concerned about those regulatory “best
practices,” what better way to improve the
AIIB than from within?
Finally, let’s not forget that because the AIIB
is a development bank, those who will pay the
most for America’s inaction are not China,
but developing countries who will receive aid
from the AIIB. Investment from the wealthy
United States would be translated into real
improvements in the infrastructure developing
countries. In the future, when AIIB loans start
flowing across Asia, recipients will remember
well that despite all the talk by President
Obama about a pivot to the region, the United
States was ultimately unwilling to do anything
meaningful besides play childish popularity
games.
Brendan Wu is an LSA junior.
BRENDAN WU | VIEWPOINT
Childish popularity games
W
hen I was a kid, the only
thing I ever wanted to
be was a comic book art-
ist. I spent hours
alone in my room
trying
to
copy
the characters I
adored,
creating
my own and build-
ing stories around
them.
Truth
be
told, what I really
wanted was to be
the superheroes I
drew, but that was
unlikely. My crime
fighting abilities were capped off by
a general lack of athleticism, and my
green belt in taekwondo won’t be foil-
ing many villains.
But I could draw — so I sketched out
characters and told my own stories,
where I would invent new powers,
build new teams of super people and
flip the roles of villain and hero.
Much to my father’s relief, as I got
older my interests shifted from comic
books and superheroes to politics, law
and civil rights. I had my future law
school pegged down at 17, around the
same time I found a new standard for
heroism in the writing and speeches of
Malcolm X.
Coming to college, I knew exactly
where I was going: I’d find a life as a
lawyer and a public servant, while
— like Malcolm —I would become a
leader on the vanguard of the fight for
civil rights. Hell, I even ran for Central
Student Government with the Defend
Affirmative Action Party.
Like the comic heroes I drew as a
kid, the heroes of social movements
— current and former — do not have
an easy life. Everyone wants to be
Superman when he’s vanquishing vil-
lains and basking in the glory of sav-
ing planet Earth, but the life of a hero
requires constant sacrifice that often
becomes a burden.
Malcolm X is an icon today, but
near the end of his life his home was
firebombed, his friends turned against
him and he was vilified by people
Black and white, liberal and conser-
vative. Activists commit their lives to
a cause, and the most heroic activists
fight the most challenging, polarizing
battles. Even for lawyers at well fund-
ed NGOs, the hours are long, the victo-
ries are few and the defeats are many.
The people who do this kind of work
often feel compelled, and they have a
combination of fervor, talent and opti-
mism.
For a while, I thought that I was one
of these people.
I fell in and out of various causes,
all of which fit vaguely into the same,
elaborate daydreams where I com-
mand a massive crowd of protesters
or argue in front of the U.S. Supreme
Court. I’ve been to my fair share of
protests while I’ve been in college,
typically serving as half demonstrator,
half spectator.
As a junior, I traveled with other
Daily writers to Washington, D.C. to
cover a landmark case on affirmative
action, an issue still close to my heart.
Standing on the steps of the Supreme
Court, Aarica Marsh — now my edi-
tor — and I looked out onto the slew of
student protesters in red shirts chant-
ing for justice. After taking a few pho-
tos, I reluctantly agreed it was time
for some interviews and wandered
nervously into the demonstration.
Writing my column later that night,
rather than a screed for racial justice,
I tried to weigh my support for affir-
mative action with my disillusionment
toward the radical group BAMN.
Several months later, walking
through a mostly empty campus, I
heard chanting and came upon a vocal
demonstration against the ongoing
war in Gaza. The protesters demanded
Palestinian liberation and a boycott of
Israel. One sign stuck out, thanks in
part to its neon color and liberal use of
swastikas.
To protest a Jewish country.
I wanted to know why, and there
was only one way to find out. My heart
pounding, I wandered nervously into
the center of the demonstration, found
the man, and we spent a few minutes
arguing. I wrote about it in my col-
umn, and despite my frustrations, I
felt more knowledgeable because of it.
On March 26, on my way to a lec-
ture, I heard the familiar sounds of
chanting and saw people on the Diag
holding signs. Following my intuition,
I wandered over to the demonstration,
nervous as ever.
The rally was a warm up for an
event on the 50th anniversary of the
Teach-In Movement, this time the
focus aimed firmly on climate change.
I knew I had made the right decision
when I saw a disheveled, unstable
looking older man (this is an archetype
of the protest genre) walking around
with a sign labeled “Israel nuked NY
City on 9/11.” I bit my knuckles trying
to hold back my laughter, especially
as he wandered from the crowd and
directed his sign at a nearby campus
tour group. I don’t know what this
guy was thinking, or if he realized that
the demonstration was about climate
change, but if his sign was serious it
really didn’t matter.
I regained my composure to listen to
the speaker in the middle of the crowd,
University alum and former campus
radical Tom Hayden. I had wanted to
meet Hayden since I came to Michi-
gan, as he was a legend in both student
activism and the editorial pages of the
Daily. After we made our way into the
auditorium, I cornered Hayden and
asked him for an interview, hoping my
invocation of the Daily’s opinion sec-
tion would help me along. After a short
conversation, Hayden was told he had
a place reserved in the front. I told him
I was almost finished, but instead he
invited me to continue the interview
among the other VIPs.
We talked for a while about his
time on campus, then sat and watched
an almost two-hour event featuring
“Democracy Now!” host Amy Good-
man. As the program ended, he gave
some parting words about the line
between activism and journalism, and
then he was off. I walked home with
my adrenaline pumping, shaking my
head and laughing as I thought about
what just occurred.
Just like I’ll never get super powers,
I will likely never be a Malcolm X or a
Tom Hayden. But there are stories to
be told, and I enjoy writing them. And
deep down, I enjoy that feeling in the
pit of my stomach, as I put one foot
in front of the other and wander ner-
vously into the unknown.
— James Brennan can be reached
at jmbthree@umich.edu.
JAMES
BRENNAN
A Jewish dissent on divestment
CARLY MANES | VIEWPOINT