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Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tuesday April 21, 2015
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LSA sophomores Anais Rachel and Sara Uhlenbecker pet a therapy dog as part of a stress reduction event at Shapiro Undergraduate Library on Monday.
THE DOG DAYS ARE ALMOST OVE R
GOVERNMENT
Proposal requires
governing boards
to open ‘informal’
meetings to public
By ALLANA AKHTAR
Daily Staff Reporter
A group of Michigan state
representatives introduced a
proposal earlier this month
that would require records
belonging to governing boards
be open for public inspection.
Furthermore,
the
resolution
would change the wording that
requires “formal sessions” of
governing boards be open to the
public, to all “meetings.”
The proposed amendment to
the state’s constitution — which
would apply to the Universi-
ty’s Board of Regents — would
require an agenda or specific
statement regarding the purpose
of all meetings be made public.
According to Ed McBroom
(R–Vulcan), the resolution was
developed after he and other rep-
resentatives learned that during
an unspecified public university
governing board meeting, almost
all the regents phoned into the
meeting, and nearly none were
physically present during voting
and public comments.
“Where do people go for the
meeting, and how could the
members of the board know the
opinion of the public when they
weren’t even here to hear the tes-
timony?” McBroom said.
McBroom said the represen-
tatives who introduced the bill
believe accountability and trans-
parency for elected governing
boards is essential.
“This constitutional amend-
ment will return transparency
and
accountability
to
these
boards, and give the legislature
the constitutional authority to
decide when these boards can
meet in closed session,” McB-
room wrote in an e-mail.
The resolution has been sub-
mitted to the House Committee
on Oversight and Ethics, and must be
approved by the House and Senate
before being placed on a statewide
Experts say
universities must
combat excessive
drinking
By JACK TURMAN
Daily Staff Reporter
Though national reports may
illustrate a correlation between
alcohol use and sexual assault,
recognizing the problem is just
half the battle for universities
trying to create a safer campus.
Antonia Abbey, a professor at
Wayne State University who has
been researching alcohol’s prev-
alence in sexual assault cases
since the early 1980s, said alco-
hol plays a large role in sexual
assault, but emphasized it is not
the cause of sexual assault.
In
addition,
Abbey
noted
many perpetrators have multiple
risk factors for committing sexu-
al assault — such as different atti-
tudes about women, anger and
aggression — that contribute to
a pre-inclination toward sexual
assault.
“If somebody already has some
of these risk factors and then
they’re drinking, I think that can
be that kind of final igniter that
puts them over the line,” Abbey
said. “But, it’s not like alcohol is
going to make someone be sexu-
ally aggressive who doesn’t have
any of those risk factors.”
Abbey said the impairments
and questionable decision-mak-
ing alcohol can cause adds to
the risk factors for a perpetra-
tor committing sexual assault.
Abbey cited a research study in
which women, after drinking,
were randomly assigned to read
a story that featured common
characteristics of a date rape.
These stories were embedded
with risk cues, such as a man
giving a woman a lot to drink at
See OPEN MEETINGS, Page 3
See MISCONDUCT, Page 3
ADMINISTRATION
Red House Imports
coffee company
partners with area
non-profits
By NEALA BERKOWSKI
Daily Staff Reporter
The Detroit Beat came up with
the business series to take a look
at what some University alums
were doing in the city. Whether
these wolverines were from the
city originally, or just studied
here in Ann Arbor, they, like many
alums, were drawn to Detroit and
its start-up culture. In the series,
we profile these UM grads and the
small businesses that they began,
to get a better idea of the diverse
range of opportunities in Detroit.
Read the rest of the series online at
michigandaily.com.
A red house on Hamilton Road
in Ann Arbor now serves as the
logo of Red House Imports, a
Detroit-based coffee company
co-owned by University alums
Jamie Olson and Travis Heeren,
who graduated in 2011.
Olson said he remembers sit-
ting on the porch of the house on
Friday afternoons, he had valuable
conversations with his friends.
“We sort of selfishly named
the company after the house to
remind ourselves that you want
to be a business that’s going to
make the right decisions for the
right reasons every step of the
way,” Olson said.
Though Red House Imports
was founded in August 2013, it
really began in September 2014
after more time and energy was
put into growing the business,
Olson said. He is currently run-
ning the company while Heeren
is in graduate school in Vermont.
Olson said Red House Imports
sells their coffee online on their
website, through Door to Door
Organics and in seven stores in
Metro Detroit. These locations
include Parker Street Market in
Detroit and Ypsilanti Food Co-op.
“Our landlord from Hamil-
ton has a bed and breakfast on
Washtenaw and she was the first
business-to-business sale that
we had,” he said. “So she brews
it for her clients every morning.”
Red House Imports has a
special focus on being environ-
mentally and economically con-
scious, while also giving back to
the economy, Olson said.
“One of the things that is kind
of unique is that we chose to
start it without seeking invest-
ments because we didn’t want to
give away from the mission of the
business,” Olson said.
Heeren said he chose to base
the business in Detroit because of
his love for the city and Olson said
he is also coming to understand
this appreciation for the city.
“I just got back from Seattle
and was like, ‘This is the best
city I’ve ever been in,’ ” he said.
“Everything
is
perfect
and
everything is functional. You can
walk five miles straight across
the entire city and feel totally
comfortable the whole time. And
then it kind of dawned on me,
like, after living in Detroit for six
months, I thought, ‘Well I don’t
know if I like that.’ You want to
be a part of something and it’s
not always easy. And Detroiters
have that pride, and I’m just
starting to get that.”
Red House Imports has part-
nered with nonprofit organiza-
tions in Metro Detroit. Olson
said he has been working with
Hope Center, a nonprofit food
pantry in Macomb.
“A lot of food pantries will just
be a depressing scene of metal
shelves, and a lot of it is empty
so you feel like you’re getting the
scraps,” Olson said. “You’re hav-
ing a having a subhuman experi-
ence when you’re going out and
seeking food from people who are
trying to help you, and so Hope
Center has totally redesigned it.
They’re trying to make it look like
almost like a farmers market.”
Coffee
from
Red
House
Imports supplies the coffee for the
pantry. Hope Center pays for the
coffee at cost, meaning Red House
One Custom City
printing, design
shop aims to help
Detroit community
By PAIGE PFLEGER
Daily Staff Reporter
The outside of Ron Watters’
studio in Detroit doesn’t look
like much — just a door with
iron bars on a street scattered
with broken glass. But through
that door is Watters’ office, a
white room with cement floors
and walls covered in brightly
colored prints and posters. He
has a low, smooth voice and
comes across as though he’s
not trying to impress anyone.
He doesn’t have to.
Through a heavy metal door,
the space opens onto a ware-
house containing a spattering of
abstract, artsy-looking things —
there’s a plastic mold of a dog, a
giant Plexiglas dome with sound
equipment inside of it, some sort
of science experiment involving
melting candy and, in Watters’
domain, gigantic screen-printing
machines. They look like massive
mechanical spiders with multiple
arms that reach out to flat metal
feet. There are boxes on the floor
with T-shirts and sweatshirts
spilling out of them.
This is where Watters does
the printing for the business he
started, One Custom City. With
a mission to give opportunities
to rising printers and to help non-
profits in the city, One Custom is
more than just a T-shirt business.
Watters went to the Uni-
versity in the late ’90s, and he
wasn’t surprised to find there
weren’t many Black students.
His childhood had prepared
him for that though. He lived
in Detroit with his mother and
in Grosse Pointe, one of Metro
Detroit’s richest suburbs, with
his father. When he attended
Grosse Pointe South High
School, he was one of the only
Black students.
“You start liking girls and
then their fathers say you can’t
go to dances because you’re
Black,” Watters said. “At the
end of the day, it rounded me.”
He pursued a dual degree in
LSA’s General Studies and the
School of Art & Design indus-
trial design program. During
the summer, he worked at auto-
motive plants — not because he
needed the money, but because
his parents encouraged him to
see what the real world was like.
Watters said many people he
knew from high school didn’t
get a college degree because
they were making such good
money in the plants, but in
Assembly discusses
process of resolving
discrimination and
harassment issues
By CARLY NOAH
Daily Staff Reporter
During the Senate Assem-
bly’s final meeting of the aca-
demic year Monday afternoon,
the faculty governance body
discussed concerns with Office
of Institutional Equity proce-
dures, reviewed a number of
standard practice guidelines and
discussed the potential for fossil
fuel divestment.
One of the primary focuses
of the meeting was reviewing
a report SACUA filed in March
which detailed a number of
concerns with OIE’s process for
handling allegations of instances
of discrimination against fac-
ulty or misconduct. The report’s
central concerns focused on the
adequacy of due process protec-
tions in OIE procedures, as well
as how OIE’s has applied of those
procedures in the cases of three
faculty members who submitted
complaints to SACUA.
At
the
meeting
Monday,
SACUA Chair Scott Masten, a
professor of business economics
and public policy, said SACUA
was “pretty disappointed” with
the written response the faculty
governance body had received
from University Provost Martha
Pollack.
See ASSEMBLY, Page 3
See PRINTER, Page 3
See RED HOUSE, Page 3
PUBLIC SAFETY
DETROIT
b u s i n e s s e s
State reps
introduce
open meeting
resolution
‘U’ officials discuss sexual
misconduct, alcohol use
Faculty
senate talks
changes to
OIE policy
INDEX
Vol. CXXIV, No. 106
©2015 The Michigan Daily
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O PI N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
S U D O K U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
CL A S S I F I E DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
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University research funding update
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WEATHER
TOMORROW
HI: 46
LO: 28
INDEX
Vol. CXXIV, No. 106
©2015 The Michigan Daily
michigandaily.com
N E WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
O PI N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
S U D O K U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
CL A S S I F I E DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
NEW ON MICHIGANDAILY.COM
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