Organizers 
signified 
them-

selves by wearing teal-colored 
shirts, and counselors for anyone 
who needed help during the event 
wore white armbands. Survivors 
were encouraged to wear teal 
arm bands if they felt comfortable 
doing so.

One of the speakers on behalf 

of Take Back the Night noted the 
organization’s frustration with 
the lack of attention University 
officials have given to the pre-
vention sexual assault. They said 
when they reached out to Univer-
sity President Mark Schlissel to 
speak at the event, he said he was 
unavailable, but would send some-
one else from his administration. 
However, they said, no one from 
the administration came. Mem-
bers of the organization took this 
as the University not making sexu-
al assault prevention a priority.

Quinn Davis, organizer and 

community member, listed off 
statistics about the rate of sexual 
assault, as well as defining con-
sent. She said one-fifth of women 
and one out of 71 men are raped 
in their lifetime; one-fourth of all 
women and one-sixth of all men 
experience sexual assault in their 
lifetime. She also said a majority of 
individuals are raped before they 
turn 24 and 42 percent are raped 
before they turn 18.

“Are we making any progress? 

Yes,” Davis said. “The Rape Abuse 
and Incest National Network 

estimates that the rate of sexual 
assault has fallen by more than 50 
percent in recent years.”

Before the march, Gretchen 

Whitmer, former Michigan Sen-
ate minority leader, expressed her 
experiences in combating sexual 
assault. Whitmer is an advocate 
of speaking against sexual assault. 
During debates in the Michigan 
Senate in December 2013 when a 
proposed healthcare law would 
not cover abortions for rape vic-
tims and the legislature would not 
allow anyone to be brought in to 
testify, she did.

Whitmer discussed her deci-

sion to break her silence as a sur-
vivor at 42 after being raped her 
freshman year of college. She 
recalled the frightening decision 
to finally speak about her experi-
ence after years keeping it private.

Whitmer was upset when her 

testimony did not sway any votes 
and characterized it as the worst 
time while she was in office. 
However, her outlook changed 
when she realized how important 
the moment was for her when 
she went to her office to find her 
e-mail inbox and voicemail full 
with messages from other survi-
vors thanking her.

“That’s when I realized it did 

have value to talk about it,” Whit-
mer said. “It added to the con-
versation that is long overdue in 
our state and in our country, long 
overdue. To the extent that I was 
involved in to encourage someone, 
anyone, to share their story, it was 
worth talking about. It’s at events 
like these that help women like us 

to know we are not alone, that we 
do not have to be silent. We are not 
alone. And we do not have to be 
silent.”

After she spoke, organizers 

asked men to sign a poster pledg-
ing to stand against sexual assault. 
About 50 men signed the pledge. 
LSA freshman Yong-Joon Kim 
said she believes sexual assault 
affects everyone on campus.

“Sexual assault and the prob-

lems that this culture faces with 
rape and the gender gap really 
drove me to come because it’s a 
really important issue for me,” Kim 
said “I have a younger sister and I 
want the best for her. This isn’t just 
an issue that affects women, it’s an 
issue that affects every gender on 
campus. I feel this is a really big 
thing, and with the University of 
Michigan still on Title IX’s watch 
list ... it’s just something I feel has 
to be changed.”

Organizers took turns read-

ing demands from a list of initia-
tives they hope will result from 
the night’s events. Their demands 
included: a call for the end to sex-
ual assault and violence, acknowl-
edgement that “no means no,” that 
consent is only active and sober, 
that domestic violence and assault 
be considered human problems 
instead of women’s issues and for 
recognition that victims are never 
responsible.

Throughout the past week, 

there have been demonstrations 
against sexual assault on campus 
in honor of Sexual Assault Aware-
ness Month. Tuesday, there was a 
Sharing with Survivors Speakout 

in the Michigan League hosted by 
Michigan Takes Back the Night, 
and a Diag Day on Wednesday 
hosted by SAPAC to inform stu-
dents on consent.

The ralliers left the Union at 

8:30 p.m. and marched approxi-
mately 1.6 miles for one hour 
around Ann Arbor to Liberty 
Street before returning back to 
have an electric-candlelight vigil 
in the Union to the song “Lean on 
Me.”

Armed with makeshift drums, 

signs, and a handout of chants, 
approximately 200 people of all 
ages took to the streets. Organiz-
ers led chants such as, “We have 
the power. We have the right. The 
streets are ours! Take Back the 
Night,” and “Hey hey, ho ho, sex-
ual assault has got to go!”

On Thompson Street, march-

ers were asked to be silent and 
link arms to honor those who have 
died as a result of sexual assault, as 
well as release the balloons. Ann 
Arbor residents left their homes 
and apartments, and diners and 
restaurant staff left businesses to 
watch the ralliers go by. People 
in cars and on buses took photos, 
honked and chanted along with 
the group in support.

The march was not only 

attended by University students — 
Washtenaw Community College 
junior Michelle Smolarski said 
her girlfriend encouraged her to 
attend the event and that she felt 
powerful during the march.

“I felt very amazing and brave 

and very uplifted,” Smolarski said.

Action Party won one seat and 14 
seats were awarded to indepen-
dent or write-in candidates.

In an interview Thursday 

afternoon, Charlton, the newly 
elected CSG president, said he 
was looking forward to begin-
ning his role.

“It’s nice to finally come up for 

air,” Charlton said. “It’s a long 
process. Unfortunately it felt like 
it got a little political towards the 
end, which I don’t think is fair to 
the students, and I apologize we 
were going back and forth. But at 
the end of the day I think both 
The Team, the DAAP party and 
Make Michigan all are highly 
qualified and genuinely beautiful 
people that are all trying to make 
a difference and Steven and I are 
just honored we have this oppor-
tunity.”

Discussing the litigation pro-

cess, which has delayed results 
in CSG elections several times 
in recent years, Charlton said it 
should be a balance of promoting 
fairness while not misusing the 
process.

“It’s one of those things where 

we need to have it in a case where 
there’s been blatant cheating, but 
we also have to hold ourselves 
accountable,” he said. “We can’t 
just use this resource to drag out 
the process or to try to find the 
loophole. It’s meant to specifi-
cally target blatant and provable 
cheating. At the end of the day, 
everyone wanted to win, but it’s 
a very hard question to answer.”

LSA senior Annie Pidgeon, 

Make Michigan party chair, said 
the next step in the process is 
bringing CSG together.

“I think a lot of times what 

happens when you get elected to 

CSG, especially when there’s two 
big parties, is there’s not enough 
collaboration,” 
Pidgeon 
said. 

“I think the next step for Make 
Michigan is to unify CSG.”

Charlton said he had already 

collected descriptions of what 
each representative, regardless 
of party affiliation, wanted to 
do with their term. He added 
that he and Halperin hadn’t yet 
selected other members of the 
executive team, and planned to 
invite members from all parties 
to compete for selection.

LSA 
junior 
Jacob 
Abuda-

ram, the campaign manager for 
The Team, said though he dis-
agrees with University Elections 
Commission’s decision, he still 
respects the committee and the 
election process. He said mem-
bers of The Team are looking 
forward to keep working on the 
party’s initiatives.

“Will and Matt will continue 

to do their work,” he said. “Will 
is bringing in 42 students from 
underrepresented high schools 
in Kalamazoo next week. We’re 
excited to see what The Team 
representatives will do and the 
work they’ll do with the Make 
Michigan reps.”

In a Facebook post Thursday 

morning, LSA sophomore Matt 
Fidel, vice presidential candidate 
for The Team, called the experi-
ence of running difficult, but 
rewarding.

“It wasn’t always easy, but this 

election has been quite a valu-
able learning experience,” Fidel 
said. “I am humbled and honored 
to have been given the opportu-
nity to run for vice president of 
the student body of the greatest 
university in the world.”

Daily News Editor Shoham 

Geva and Daily Staff Reporter 
Tanaz Ahmed contributed to this 
report.

From Page 1

articles that show women tend 
to be more collaborative lead-
ers, to be very thorough, to work 
with people and solve problems, 
and those are things that women 
tend to do on a day-to-day basis,” 
Chang said. “Ultimately the goal 
is not just to get more people into 
office, but one of the results of that 
is better policy — better policy 
making especially for families, for 
children, for women.”

White said for many of the posi-

tions she has held, she was the first 
Black female to assume that role. 
She echoed Chang’s sentiments on 
the importance of increased rep-
resentation in government roles.

“Men have the same interest as 

women do — we want to have rep-
resentative government that rep-
resents all,” White said. “It’s just 
a better way to have great democ-
racy: by not excluding 50 percent 
of the population.”

Whitmer agreed, emphasizing 

the importance of diversity in the 
legislature.

“The beauty of our system is it 

is diverse, and it works best when 
all voices are heard,” Whitmer 
said. “You can be a farmer or a 
pharmacist in the legislature, and 
(that) works better when we have 
many different voices that are part 
of the debate.”

Questions from the audience 

were taken throughout the event. 
Attendees asked what made each 
woman want to run for office, what 
advice the panelists would give for 
women interested in running for 

office and what they wished some-
one would have told them when 
they were starting their career.

The panelists also discussed 

their experiences campaigning 
and in elected office, encourag-
ing interested students to follow 
in their footsteps. Many of the 
panelists said they didn’t think 
they would ever run for office and 
had to be pushed by their friends 
and mentors to do so, or ran only 
after they saw an issue not being 
addressed.

Whitmer noted that when she 

entered Michigan’s state Sen-
ate the ratio between men and 
women was at its historic height — 
12 women to 38 men — which she 
called both an accomplishment, 
but also a sign that there was still a 
ways to go. The current ratio is at 
four women to 46 men.

“In the last session, there were 

more men named John in the 
Michigan Senate than women,” 
Whitmer said. “It’s really impor-
tant that our voices are heard. 
I’ve said it once and have repeated 
many times: if you’re not at the 
table, you’re on the menu.”

Dingell said she thought the 

current 
low 
representation 

stemmed equally from gender as 
from disinterest and distrust in 
government in this generation.

“I’m actually going to say: I 

don’t think this is a gender issue,” 
Dingell said. “I think we’ve got a 
problem in this country that people 
feel disconnected from the govern-
ment. Voting is at an all time low, 
people don’t think that they mat-
ter and that they can make a dif-
ference, and we need to get people 
engaged.”

PANEL
From Page 1

RALLY
From Page 1

living in our residence halls.”

When the plan for phase one 

of the RLI — titled the Compre-
hensive Housing Plan— was first 
presented to the University’s 
Board of Regents in September 
2004, it included proposals for a 
new residence hall, renovations to 
two existing residence halls and 
upgrades for several campus din-
ing facilities.

Rullman said a handful of fac-

tors have allowed the University 
to make significant improvements 
to campus structures over the past 
decade.

“We’ve had a very favorable 

bond market, construction mar-
ket, very generous donors, very 
supportive regents and very sup-
portive students who have partici-
pated,” Rullman said. “Those four 
factors over the last 10 years have 
been tremendous.”

Mosher-Jordan Residence Hall 

was the first large renovation 
completed under the RLI, during 
the first phase. In 2008, Mosher-
Jordan reopened after a two-year, 
$65 million renovation. The reno-
vation included a new, two-story 
dining center and set a precedent 
for campus dining facilities in 
terms of number of food options, 
scale and central location.

In 2010, construction of the 

$175 million North Quad Residen-
tial and Academic Complex was 
completed. The dorm, which is 
restricted to upperclassmen, was 
recently named one of the 30 most 
luxurious student housing build-
ings in the country by Best College 
Values. Before North Quad was 
completed, Bursley Hall, opened 
in 1967, was the newest residence 
hall at the University.

Kicking off the second phase of 

the project, East Quad and South 
Quad underwent multi-million 
dollar renovations, re-opening in 
Fall 2013 and Fall 2014, respective-
ly. Both residence halls received 
refurbished community rooms, 
dining facilities and bathrooms.

This fall, West Quad, also a part 

of the initiative’s second phase, 
will see changes as well. Origi-
nally built in 1937, it will re-open 
following a $114.5 million make-
over. The renovation will remove 
the dining center to provide space 
for additional community rooms. 
The expanded South Quad dining 
hall was designed to provide space 
for the resulting influx of Central 
Campus diners.

The RLI has been divided into 

distinct phases — phase one, from 
2004 to 2012, included renovating 
the Hill Dining Center, Mosher-
Jordan Hall, Stockwell Residence 
Hall, North Quad, Couzens Resi-
dence Hall and Alice Lloyd Resi-
dence Hall, while phase two has 
included the East, West and South 
Quad renovations.

Though Rullman said approxi-

mately one-third of the Univer-
sity’s housing inventory has yet to 
be fully renovated, the first round 
of improvements funded life safe-
ty systems for every residence hall.

“One of the things we’ve done 

in all of our buildings already are 
life safety improvements,” Rul-
lman said. “So all of our buildings 
are incredibly safe, they just don’t 
all have brand new finishes in the 
bathroom and energy efficient fix-
tures and that kind of thing in all 
the bathrooms.”

The construction portion of 

phase two will conclude with the 
re-opening of West Quad, but the 
financing for phase two will carry 
into 2017. Financing for phase two 
entails a 3-percent increase on 
room and board rates.

“We say phasing so people 

understand you just can’t do it all 
at once,” said Rullman. “We have 
a commitment to make sure that 
all of our students over time live 
in good, healthy, productive facili-
ties.”

Henry Baier, associate vice 

president for facilities and opera-
tions, added that many external 
observers don’t see the extensive 
planning that goes into the reno-
vations.

“I think a lot of students don’t 

appreciate the length of time that 
it takes,” he said. “It’s not because 
we’re slow … they all take a while 
because you have to plan it out and 
get the construction underway. 
Even once we decide where we’re 
going there’s some start-up time 
that the public doesn’t see.”

Choosing buildings for reno-

vation

Baier said the University uses a 

deferred maintenance program to 
keep up with campus renovations. 
Through the program, the Uni-
versity conducts regular surveys 
and tracks maintenance records to 
see which buildings are in need of 
upgrades. It is designed to include 
day-to-day maintenance proce-
dures, planned renovations and 
major updates.

Baier said though the Univer-

sity has used a deferred mainte-
nance program for a while, the 
lack of regular upkeep in the years 
prior to the RLI left many Univer-
sity buildings in need of renova-
tion.

“What happened in residen-

tial life and housing, basically the 
housing system wasn’t re-invest-
ing in deferred maintenance,” 
Baier said. “It’s an easy thing to do, 
money gets tight, you don’t want 
to charge a student more to stay in 
University housing, so then the way 
you do that is you don’t keep it up, 
you just let stuff go. It just degrades, 
and all of a sudden you have to put a 
lot more money into it.”

Rullman said there is a common 

formula used to determine which 
buildings should be renovated. 
The University conducts facil-
ity condition assessments prior to 
renovations to determine which 
buildings are in need of updates. 
These assessments seek to deter-
mine both the state of the building 
and whether or not the University 
should keep the building.

Rullman said the buildings reno-

vated in phases one and two of the 
RLI were chosen both because they 
were in poor condition and because 
the University saw them as “impor-
tant, distinctive buildings.”

“The West Quads and the East 

Quads, they are iconic, they are 
architecturally significant, they 
have been here a very long time, 
their location is great, it would be 
unlikely we would not have resi-
dence halls there for the future,” 
Rullman said. “So once you know 
the condition, then you make a set 
of institutional policy decisions — 
in this case that we’re not going to 
abandon our legacy buildings.”

Baier added that in planning 

University renovations, they try 
to be flexible because unexpected 
factors such as increasing con-
struction and bond costs or large 
donations often impact which 
buildings are chosen for renova-
tion. He referenced in particular 
University alum Charles Munger, 
vice chairman of Berkshire Hatha-
way Corporation, who has donat-
ed significantly to the school. 
Munger recently contributed $110 
million to the construction of a 
new graduate residence on central 
campus.

“Along comes Charlie Munger 

and he gives us $20 million to 
help fix up the Lawyers Club,” 
Baier said. “That had a $28 mil-
lion deferred maintenance on our 
facility condition assessment and 
we had a donor who was inter-
ested in contributing $20 million 
toward an existing building to fix 
it up, that’s unheard of. We might 
have gone and done something 
else, whatever it might have been, 
but here’s $20 million and it made 
it a big priority.”

After the plans were released, 

many graduate students expressed 
concerns related to the cost and 
design of the project. However, 
during a forum in 2013, E. Royster 
Harper, vice president for student 
life, noted the nature of the dona-
tion somewhat limits the Univer-
sity’s ability to make changes.

“If this were ‘just us’ and the 

funding were ‘just us,’ we would 
have some different kinds of 
options,” Harper said. “But I think 
when you are in partnership … 
you make some agreements about 
what you’re going to offer, then we 
have to honor those agreements.”

Future renovations

Though Rullman said phase 

two of the RLI will conclude in the 
near future because all the allo-
cated money has been used, the 
University still plans to continue 
renovating.

Rullman said the University 

will conduct facility condition 
assessments and student satisfac-
tion surveys, on top of evaluating 
the bond market and interest rates, 
to determine which buildings will 
be renovated in the next phase.

“We don’t know what we’re 

going to renovate next, but we 
think all of the buildings are safe 
and adequate, we just need to 
improve the experience,” he said.

Recent comments from admin-

istrators, as well as from the Uni-
versity’s Board of Regents, have 
suggested that North Campus 
might be the next area to undergo 
construction.

In an October interview with 

The Michigan Daily, Harper said 
it’s likely that if a new undergradu-

ate dorm were constructed in the 
future, North Campus would be 
a potential location. She cited the 
decreasing availability of open 
Central Campus property, and the 
desire to improve the community 
on North Campus.

At a fireside chat in March , 

University President Mark Schlis-
sel acknowledged that the qual-
ity of life on North Campus is an 
issue that has been brought up at 
nearly every fireside chat in recent 
months.

“The residential life is in the 

midst of a 10- or 15-year effort to 
really upgrade residential life, liv-
ing and eating on campus,” he said. 
“The next frontier is the North 
Campus.”

At last month’s Board of Regents 

meeting, the regents approved 
two North Campus construction 
proposals — schematic designs for 
the North Campus Grove project 
and a $13 million renovation of the 
North Campus Recreation Build-
ing.

During the March event, Schlis-

sel said the University wants to 
improve North Campus so that it is 
on par with the rest of the campus.

“The ultimate goal is to make 

the North Campus as dense and 
vibrant as the Central Campus, 
and to have the businesses sur-
rounding North Campus sort of 
grow up in a way that living up 
there won’t require you to be down 
here to socialize,” he said.

Baier said the University is 

working on plans to increase 
development of North Campus.

“We’ve actually done a lot of 

work on North Campus in terms of 
early planning and we have some 
ideas about what we’d like it to be,” 
he said. “It’s more of an aspiration, 
it’s not concrete in terms of what it 
would be.”

Both Baier and Rullman noted 

that several renovations and addi-
tions have taken place on North 
Campus in recent years — Mitchell 
Field, the Fireside Café in Pierpont 
Commons, the Walgreen Drama 
Center, the Stamps Auditorium 
and M City, a network of roads 
used to test automated vehicle sys-
tems.

There are also plans for several 

North Campus projects aside from 
the grove and the NCRB renova-
tions. The construction of an addi-
tion to the School of Music, Theatre 
& Dance is currently underway, 
and there are plans to add on to the 
Art and Architecture Building. In 
addition, the Bursley Dining Hall 
will receive new furniture and car-
pet over the summer.

Rullman said there has been an 

emphasis on improving the den-
sity of North Campus.

“There’s a lot going on up there 

… and we need to do more, frankly, 
but what we’re doing now and 
what we’ve done over the last 
eight, nine, 10 years is try to make 
it a much more livable place for 
students, for faculty, for staff,” 
Rullman said. “I think when you 
look at all the improvements on 
balance, it’s doing that. The chal-
lenge is it is such a big campus and 
until you get this density you sort 
of can’t notice it.”

DORMS
From Page 1

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Friday, April 3, 2015 — 3

3-News

News

of the unequal are below the 

poverty line,” Robinson said.

Along with directly address-

ing the monetary inequities, 
Rahbi said an additional way to 
combat inequality within the 
community was to remove bar-
riers that could prevent impov-
erished citizens from living a 
comfortable life.

He mentioned, in particular, 

the City Council’s plan to distrib-
ute Washtenaw County ID cards 

for citizens who do not have 
proof of documentation — usu-
ally undocumented immigrants, 
the elderly and those under the 
poverty line.

“All the people that live in 

our county are people, and they 
all deserve to be treated equally 
when it comes to government 
services or even just when you 
go to get your birthday dinner 
and they ask for your driver’s 
license,” he said. “Your ID helps 
you to be human, and so we 
dehumanize a lot of our citizens 
by not providing that.”

POVERTY
From Page 2

@michigandaily

