The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, April 16, 2015 — 3A
of the countermovement, said he
led the protest because he believes
minimum wages are destructive,
in part because they cause people
to lose their jobs when employ-
ers can’t afford to pay all of their
employees after a pay raise.
Miller said raising the University
minimum wage to $15 would not be
beneficial for the community.
“Prices will go up, prices will be
worse off in the long run,” he said.
The protesters marched from
South Quad to the steps of the
Michigan Union. Upon reaching
the Union, individuals were given
another opportunity to discuss
why the cause was important to
them. Tynes recounted times she
simultaneously worked and took
classes at the University, when she
worried about being evicted from
her apartment and her electricity
being turned off.
“I’m here today because I under-
stand the struggle; I understand
not living a lavish life, but still just
trying to have the bare minimum,”
Tynes said. “As a worker, and as
a student worker, we have to do
something to make sure that people
aren’t struggling. Some people are
just trying to eat food — we are not
a third world country — and at the
University of Michigan, we are the
leaders and the best, so we need to
take up and step up and fight for 15.”
Kallman advised the protest-
ers to leave one of their large ban-
ners lying on the steps of the Union
so that passerby would see them.
From there, the protesters contin-
ued on to the Fleming Administra-
tion Building.
Sociology Lecturer Ian Robin-
son attended the rally and spoke in
favor of raising the wage.
“I would say almost everybody
on the council is strongly sup-
portive of this because we realize
that we can’t really have a labor
movement that’s just comprised of
unions,” Robinson said. “If we had
just kept up our minimum wage
with inflation, let alone productiv-
ity, in the real dollar terms back in
the late ’60s, we’d be about $18 an
hour for minimum wage.”
During this portion, some of the
leading members of the movement
marched inside to speak with Uni-
versity President Mark Schlissel,
but when they reached his office,
they were met by police officers.
The protesters said they handed the
officers the list of demands, read
them aloud and left. They said they
have already e-mailed the regents
and are awaiting a response from
them. If the regents do not answer,
protesters said they are willing to
take less “polite” action.
“We explained to them that
we’re doing it politely this time,
we’re not trying to walk in there
and cause a ruckus, but that’s not
going to be true next time,” Ellis
said.
University
spokesman
Rick
Fitzgerald said the University has
received the list of demands but has
yet to address them.
“It’s not unusual for our students
to make their point of view known
on different topics and we certainly
respect their rights to bring this
issue to the attention of the Univer-
sity community,” Fitzgerald said.
“At this point, they did drop off a
letter to the president’s office, and
we’ll have to take a careful look at
that.”
housing in Ann Arbor.
“We are not going to get any-
where if we don’t also tackle the
income disparity that’s in our
community,” she said “And that’s
a bigger issue than just talking
about housing affordability.”
Leaf also noted that restriction
of housing supplies due to current
zoning restrictions is a funda-
mental cause of expensive hous-
ing in the city.
Read the rest online at
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CANDIDATES
From Page 1A
Supreme
Court
decision
will
impact LGBTQ families in Michi-
gan as well as understand the cur-
rent legal landscape.
Moore, who is also the vice
president of the Jim Toy Com-
munity Center — a group focused
on offering resources to LGBTQ
individuals in Washtenaw County
— said she thought the law com-
munity as a whole was becoming
more open to granting legal sta-
tuses to LGBTQ individuals.
One example, she noted, is how
courts are addressing divorces
between same-sex couples.
“We’ve had a few judges here
in Washtenaw County who have
entertained annulments and we
had one judge perform a divorce,”
Moore said. “It’s a lot of pressure,
but the legal community is com-
ing around. We’ve been working
on the conversation of how to give
same-sex marriage these legal
rights.”
Martell, an attorney special-
izing in family law, said the legal
definition of marriage is also an
ongoing issue. She said many in
the legal community still disagree
over the differences between mar-
riage as a civil concept and mar-
riage as a religious institution.
According to Martell, civil
marriage
doesn’t
differentiate
between gender or sex, whereas
many conceptions of religious
marriage do.
“I believe the U.S. Constitution
has required universal marriage
equality,” Martell said. “We’ve
gotten lost in the difference
between civil marriage and reli-
gious marriage.”
Kaplan,
from
the
ACLU,
addressed the potential aftermath
of the Supreme Court case specifi-
cally, citing several other issues as
areas of concern for the LGBTQ
community in Michigan.
“One fear that I hold is that
many people will think that once
we have marriage equality, that
everything will be taken care of,”
Kaplan. “We still have tons of
issues to take care of. For example,
in most communities in Michi-
gan, it’s legal to be fired from a job
because you’re gay.”
Kaplan also touched on the
Religious Freedom Restoration
Act, which has generated national
controversy in recent weeks fol-
lowing the passage of a similar
proposal in Indiana.
The RFRA is also a federal law
that aims to protect religious free-
dom by allowing businesses and
individuals to not follow laws they
deem in violation of their religious
beliefs. Because of a 1997 Supreme
Court decision that ruled the fed-
eral RFRA not applicable to state
laws, multiple states have passed
their own state RFRAs. In Michi-
gan, no RFRA has been passed,
but a bill has been introduced sev-
eral times over the past few years.
“The marriage equality for
same sex couples is coming, and
(RFRA) is the last gasp of people
trying to find their way around it,”
Kaplan said.
Kaplan also highlighted some
challenges
transgender
people
face in Michigan.
“We make it very hard for trans-
gender individuals to get a driver’s
license or a state ID,” Kaplan said.
“We require that a transgender
has to have surgery and have a
gender mark and change on a
birth certificate. This is expen-
sive, complicated and dangerous
to many people.”
Ruby, with the Michigan Pov-
erty Law Program, focused her
remarks primarily on discrep-
ancies found in Social Security,
adoption agencies and public ben-
efits for LGBTQ individuals.
Following
the
speaker’s
remarks, the panel opened up
to questions from the audience,
many of which touched on per-
sonal questions such as how they
could file for taxes as a same-sex
couple or what their legal rights
were if married in a different
states.
The conversation ended on the
topic of homophobia. Ruby said
she hopes the idea of homosexual-
ity was becoming less alien to peo-
ple. She recounted her former fear
of using the term “wife” to address
her partner.
However, she said she receives
many positive reactions to her
relationship and no longer feels
that kind of discomfort.
WAGE
From Page 1A
then an LSA undergraduate, was
among the students who partici-
pated in the sit-in. In an interview
with the Daily, Kisch said one of
the goals of the sit-in was to edu-
cate Johnson about sexual assault
on campus.
“We spent the day in his office
and we educated him about date
rape and acquaintance rape, and
that those were huge issues on
campus, and the things he said in
the magazine weren’t true,” she
said.
Kisch also said she and other
protesters felt University admin-
istration did not view sexual
assault as a relevant issue on
campus.
“The comments he made real-
ly made it clear to us that Univer-
sity administration didn’t really
take these issues seriously and
were really kind of clueless about
the lives of women on campus in
this regard,” she said.
Rider-Milkovich said students
also wanted to discuss the need
to open a rape crisis center for
students on campus.
“The students really wanted
for there to be more institutional
infrastructure and for there to
be more of a comprehensive and
integrated response, and more
specific dedicated resources for
sexual assault survivors,” she
said.
Following the protest, Univer-
sity administrators created a task
force comprising students and
administrators to develop an out-
line for a sexual assault program
for the campus community.
“It couldn’t be just a little
office somewhere,” Kisch said.
“It needed to be its own program,
with its own budget and direc-
tor and needed to be on Central
Campus.”
In May 1985, the University
approved $75,000 for an assault
prevention program for the cam-
pus community.
Students played a significant
role in helping operate the pro-
gram early on. Kisch collabo-
rated with fellow protester David
Lovinger to develop the Peer
Education Program and become
the program’s first co-leaders.
“We trained students and
sent one man and one woman to
groups of students to model and
demonstrate things like stereo-
types around men and women
and what consent really was,”
Kisch said. “The Peer Education
Program launched even before
the first director was hired.”
It was not until February
1986 that the program officially
opened and named the Sexual
Assault Prevention and Aware-
ness Center, hiring Julie Steiner
as the first director.
In 1988, SAPAC launched its
24-hour crisis line, which was,
at first, monitored by students.
Rider-Milkovich said they even-
tually decided to hire profession-
als for the job to protect students
from trauma.
“The University made the
determination that students who
were staffing the crisis line and
answering crisis line calls would
sometimes experience secondary
trauma and came to the decision
that that was not responsible for
us to allow,” she said.
Rider-Milkovitch
also
said
another one of SAPAC’s bigger
innovations was transforming
the program to focus more on
intervention rather than sexual
assault education.
“We wanted to move away
from awareness raising kind of
model to one that focused more
on primary prevention and pro-
moting healthy sexuality,” she
said. “Now, college campuses
across the country are mandated
to provide that type of training.”
This year, as SAPAC celebrates
its 30th anniversary, Rider-
Milkovich said she wants to work
with her colleagues to continue
providing necessary innovations
for the program.
“We are always scanning the
horizon and looking for what are
the most promising practices out
there,” she said. “We ask our-
selves, ‘What are new ideas that
need to be tested? What are ways
in which we see gaps in the kinds
of services the campus provides
that we might innovate or pilot for
the benefit of students and oth-
ers?’”
SAPAC
From Page 1A
LGBTQ
From Page 1A