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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, April 9, 2015 — 3A

how much time he wasted try-
ing to figure out which teachers
were the best. He said he ended
up completing the app in one and
a half days at the 2015 MHacks
competition.

“I spent like two hours going

back and forth through like eight
tabs trying to find the best teach-
er, so I thought, ‘What if I just
made it automated?’ ” Gildenberg
said. “I didn’t really do anything
with the idea for a while, but
then I went to one of the Michi-
gan hackathons and I thought, ‘I
need an idea to work on, why not
do that?’ ”

In the weeks since publishing

the extension, Courseguide+ has
gained about 1,000 users, mostly
in the last week. Gildenberg said
he was surprised by the number

of downloads.

“I wasn’t even sure how it

would turn out in the beginning,
and it was really anyone’s guess
as to how people would receive
it, but it was something that I
really wanted, so I figured other
students would want it as well,”
Gildenberg said. “The friends I
showed went, ‘Mitchell this is
amazing.’ They wanted it very
much, so I figured I would release
it.”

Gildenberg said he believes

the extension will help speed up
the process of backpacking for
classes.

“I think it’s going to help them

speed up their decisions — having
all the information they need on a
teacher and helping them choose
the best professor they could get,”
Gildenberg said.

Though he thinks the exten-

sion and the site will help stu-
dents, Gildenberg recognizes the
flaws associated with students

trusting ratings based on little
feedback, as some of the profes-
sors only have one or two ratings.

Though
this
extension
is

geared toward students, some
professors say they have mixed
feelings about RateMyProfessors.
com, in general.

Physics Lecturer David Winn

said he would neither discourage
nor encourage students to use the
website. Winn is listed as one of
the more popular professors on
the site, but he said this does not
change his opinions. He pointed
out that students should not solely
use the site when deciding wheth-
er or not to take a class.

“These criteria make it use-

ful as a tie-breaker, but students
should really pick their classes
based on what subjects are inter-
esting and useful to them,” Winn
said.

“All of those efforts that, in

different ways, shine a spotlight
on this issue are really, really
important,” Harper said. “So
the more creative and diverse
we can be with our programs
means we will pick up differ-
ent students in different areas
to help understand and begin
to change the climate. And
that’s why I think culture
shift is so important.”

Though students raised ques-

tions related to sexual assault
during the chat, Schlissel set
the conversation by opening
the forum with a video to tie
with Sexual Assault Awareness
Month. The clip featured Uni-
versity administrators discuss-
ing their commitment to ending
sexual misconduct.

Schlissel
said
University

administrators dedicate a sig-
nificant proportion of their time
together working to create a
safer campus.

“...Sexual assault, in par-

ticular, is a topic of discussion
almost every time we meet,”
he said. “It’s not backburner,
it’s a front burner. I think
it’s going to take a consistent
effort that’s a collaboration
between the University lead-
ership, the faculty, the staff,
and then, all the members of
our community need to figure
out together how to make this
place the safest place to go to
school that there is.”

An LSA junior, who asked

to
remain
anonymous
for

this article, identified her-
self as a survivor of sexual
assault. During the chat, she
described
her
experience

with the University’s report-
ing process. She told Schlissel
she first reported the assault
to the University last July and
received her first decision that
September. Because she did
not agree with the initial deci-
sion, she was given 10 days to
file an appeal. The results of
her appeal were not released
until just before the fall
semester’s final examinations.

“I do not feel at all that

the
University
supported

me throughout the process
because it was a very trying,
very horrible time in my life
and I feel like, first off, that
the University could improve
its process is by shortening
the time between the report
and the decision,” she said.
“And also when we turn in
the appeal, we have 10 days
to write that appeal and
then we don’t get a decision
for a month and a half, it’s
extremely unfair.”

After hearing the account,

Harper apologized for the poli-
cy’s faults and said the University
is working to make the reporting
process more efficient.

“One of the things we are

changing
is
the
timeline,

holding
ourselves
to
that

standard much, much tighter
because it’s too hard,” Harper
said. “And also switching it so
that you don’t go all the way
through the process and then
appeal, but you can appeal
right away. You are absolutely
right about the timeline and
we are going to fix that.”

Several members of SAPAC

attended the chat, includ-
ing members of their Men’s
Activism Program.

Schlissel
also
discussed

engaging student-athletes in

sexual assault awareness,
and said he talked about
the issue during a recent
meeting
with
LSA
junior

Cooper Charlton, the former
president of the Student-Ath-
lete Advisory Committee and
Central Student Government
president-elect. Charlton said
there are two problems with
the existing sexual assault
education programs for ath-
letes — the programs are
lengthy and student-athletes
feel stigmatized.

“I think you need to reach

a student leader on each
of
those
teams,”
Schlis-

sel said. “Then they become
your champions and then it
becomes cultural.”

LSA senior Ashley Barnes, a

member of SAPAC, said sexual
assault education needs to become
more of a priority to the Univer-
sity. She said many administra-
tors don’t seem to have educated
themselves on the topic.

“My issue is it’s not that

it’s only at the student level
at this point, it’s also at the
administrative level,” Barnes
told Schlissel at the chat.

Schlissel
acknowledged

that there is still room for
educating University admin-
istrators.

“Five years ago I didn’t

understand
this
issue
at

all,” Schlissel said. “I didn’t
understand why it wasn’t
the police and courts’ prob-
lem until I started talking to
people that had experienc-
es, so I think there’s a huge
amount of learning that has
to go on at all different lev-
els, and I do think I should be
responsible for helping train
the senior staff to understand
these issues.”

remember that 148 is not a number.”

Ajetunmobi said the relatively

small turnout at the vigil reflects
the need for students to know more
about international events than
what they can find on Twitter.

“We don’t want people to forget

the issues and simply move from one
hashtag to the next,” Ajetunmobi
said. “Hashtags don’t save lives unless
we do something about them.”

Social Work student Cynthia

Simekha also spoke of the lack of
media coverage of the murders.
She said events such as the January
2015 massacre of 12 people at the
offices of the French satirical paper
Charlie Hebdo garnered immediate

international attention, whereas the
murders in Kenya attracted suffi-
ciently less media coverage.

“We go on with our lives, be

happy and get our degrees, but what
for?” Simekha said. “Two-hundred
girls from Nigeria are still missing.
Forty-three children from Mexico
are still gone. What do we do? Noth-
ing. This isn’t a one-time incident.
It’s been happening for years.”

At the event, LSA freshman Davi-

na Buruchara spoke about three of
the students who were murdered as
they ran back to save their friends
inside the college building. She also
recited a poem about the experi-
ence, which was written by her
friend from Kenya.

“How many of you dream of

passing exams with honors and
getting an internship?” Buruchara

said. “Many of us also have dreams
about getting married soon. They
also had dreams just like us. But
now they are all gone.”

Trey Boynton, director of the

Office of Multi-Ethnic Student
Affairs, said it is important for the
University community to come
together during such tragedies and
help one another.

“Events like these allow people

to come together in a safe space to
express their grief and emotions
and not feel isolated,” Boynton said.

Ajetunmobi also emphasized the

importance of students having safe
spaces to talk about these events.

“The University needs to create

spaces for all students,” Ajetunmobi
said. “The University should take
time to learn about the students and
create resources for them.”

The hashtag generated thousands
of tweets from across the country.

Dillard said the #BBUM cam-

paign and other diversity-related
expressions of student concerns
generated an internal discussion
within LSA about how to educate
faculty on issues of diversity and
inclusion.

“We believed that the way of

addressing some of these concerns
was to give faculty more informa-
tion and then start to give them
resources for how to think about
microaggressions and the other
kind of things the students were
talking about, inside their own
classrooms,” she said.

Speaking to broader Univer-

sity struggles with low minority
enrollment, Dillard said one par-
ticularly troubling rate at which
enrolled Black students leave the
University for another institution.

She said the University must

take decisive steps to make signifi-
cant progress on the issue.

“When I think about race in

America, I am increasingly com-
ing to find that what we need to
do is to not just think in incremen-
tal ways,” she said. “I think we’ve
been really inhibited by that — we
can only do things around the
edges, that we have to be careful.
So it means that nobody wants to
do anything bold anymore.”

Dillard said there are currently

about 99 courses that fulfill the
University’s Race and Ethnicity
requirement. She said 43 percent

of these courses focus on issues
within the United States. Over-
all, Anthropology 101 is the most
popular.

She opened up conversation

of specific reforms to the crowd,
asking how attendees think the
requirement could be reformed.
Dillard said the committee plan-
ning the review of the requirement
remains in the information gath-
ering stages, and is still exploring
what changes could be made.

Students’ concerns were most-

ly centered around whether the
courses should focus more on
past or current issues related to
race, as well as whether current
courses clearly address matters
of race. Attendees also discussed
how future courses could do a bet-
ter job of educating students who
haven’t previously engaged with
these topics.

LSA freshman Darian Razdar,

a frequent seminar attendee, said
in an interview after Wednesday’s
session that while he was confi-
dent Dillard is passionate about
reforming the requirement, he
was disappointed by omissions in
the information she presented.

He pointed, in particular, to

courses listed in part of the require-
ment that he said don’t focus heav-
ily on race — an issue also raised
during the group discussion.

“I feel that she should want to

have substantive discussions of
race happening, and I didn’t hear
anything on that from her,” he said.

Schlissel also addressed the

requirement. He said he didn’t
think it was possible to design an
ideal Race and Ethnicity require-
ment course, and that he liked the
idea of many courses fulfilling the
requirement.

“I think that one purpose of the

race and ethnicity requirement
is to promote the discussion,” he
said. “Any kind of discussion that
taps into this set of issues and
that licenses you to speak with
one another and to speak with the
faculty about this set of issues of
what it’s like to be part of a group
or many groups in modern society
in any context.”

Schlissel added that he felt the

University did have an obligation
to make everyone on campus feel
safe, but said achieving that would
require some unsettling conversa-
tions.

“If we want to make progress on

this set of issues together, which I
think most of us would recognize
are the most challenging issues
we’re dealing with in terms of the
campus climate, we’re going to
have to go through some uncom-
fortable times and some really
difficult, challenging, threatening
kind of conversations in order to
educate each other and to see how
one another are looking at these
difficult issues,” he said.

Along
with
discussing
the

requirement, attendees also asked
questions about a variety of issues,
including campus police and fac-

ulty and staff knowledge of diver-
sity issues.

In response to a question about

his plans to increase diversity
overall, Schlissel highlighted sev-
eral initiatives from the past year.
He pointed to his launch of a plan-
ning process for the whole campus
to increase the diversity of the stu-
dent body.

“There are series of creative

ideas that are being considered,
and we are going to pick some and
get started and see how it works,
with the goal of increasing diver-
sity of the campus in many ways,”
he said. “Not just racial and ethnic
but socioeconomic, geographic. I
think there is dearth of diversity
of political thought on our campus
— I think that’s an important thing
to diversify. So, in many ways.”

Razdar
said
hearing
from

administrators exposed him to the
realities of working within institu-
tions.

“I didn’t really hear completely

everything that I wanted to out of
the president, in particular, when
it comes to concrete solutions,” he
said. “Obviously it’s hard for him
to talk about that because he is get-
ting to know the University after
a year. I don’t know. I was slightly
disappointed. I felt like he could be
more pointed on his remarks.”

LSA sophomore Reon Daw-

son, who has attended several
seminars, said while the guests
addressed many issues, group
discussions like Wednesday’s also

showed that sometimes the chal-
lenge is not identifying problems,
but implementing solutions to
make the University a safer place.

“The way we talked about

(diversity) in class, there was no
set solution,” he said. “There were
solutions, but nobody was ready to
put it in place.”

In an interview with the Daily

after the event, Schlissel said he

thought these kind of discussions
help make progress on these sets
of issues.

“The things I learned today

give me a sense of what’s impor-
tant to students, what’s important
to some of the faculty and (to) this
gentleman from town,” he said.
“All these thing get incorporated
in how we think about the plans
we need to make.”

VIGIL
From Page 1A

EXTENSION
From Page 1A

SCHLISSEL
From Page 1A

“Michigan
Football
will

watch
‘American
Sniper’!

Proud of Chris Kyle & Proud
to be an American & if that
offends anybody then so be it!”
Harbaugh tweeted.

The controversy surround-

ing the screening — which has
since gained national media
attention — began Tuesday,
when Mekkaoui wrote a per-
sonal letter of concern to the
CCI.

After posting a screenshot

of her letter on Facebook and
garnering support from peers,
Mekkaoui created a collec-
tive letter urging the CCI, who
organizes UMix, to choose
a different film. The letter
attracted more than 300 signa-
tures from people who signed
as members of Middle East-
ern, North African or Muslim
communities. Those who did
not identify themselves as fall-
ing in this category signed “in
solidarity.” Mekkaoui said a
majority of the signatures were
signed by students in solidarity.

“There were actually more

non-Middle Eastern students
and non-Muslim students than

there were Middle Eastern or
Muslim students signed on,
so that’s fantastic,” Mekka-
oui said. “It shows that this
is clearly an issue that every-
one thinks, from a variety of
backgrounds, that it is some-
thing really salient and that it’s
something that needed to be
changed.”

Mekkaoui said during her

time as a student at the Univer-
sity, she has learned to take a
stance against injustice.

“U of M teaches us that when

we see something that is wrong
on campus to raise questions,
and we proceeded to, so I’m
really happy about that,” she
said.

However,
other
students

who disagree with Mekka-
oui’s views have united behind
third-year Law student Rachel
Jankowski’s
petition,
which

called on the CCI to reverse
their decision and show “Amer-
ican Sniper” on Friday as
planned. It’s unclear whether
the petition will be taken down
now that CCI announced its
plans to reschedule the show-
ing for a different forum.

“If the University prevents

a movie like this from being
shown, it promotes intolerance
and stifles dialogue and debate

on the subject and goes directly
against the atmosphere UMix
purports to provide,” the CSG
petition states. “As adults at a
public university, we should
have the option to view this
movie if we so choose and have
the opportunity to engage on
the topics it presents to come
to our own conclusions on the
subjects.”

The petition calls for the CCI

to show the movie as planned
but allow students to present
their own opinions on the film
after its showing. The petition
currently has 486 signatures as
of Wednesday night.

Jankowski
could
not
be

reached for comment.

University alum Hari Vutuk-

uru, an officer in the U.S. Army,
tweeted Wednesday morning
that he was disappointed in the
University’s initial decision to
cancel the screening.

“...Did you ever consider how

the hundreds of ROTC cadets,
midshipmen, & student-veter-
ans would react to this? Shame
on you,” he tweeted.

For continuing coverage, visit

michigandaily.com.

SNIPER
From Page 2A

@michigandaily

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