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, April 21, 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,
Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
T
his semester has been an
exercise in “putting myself
out there” in terms of my
writing. Last Sat-
urday, I read one
of my short stories
aloud for an audi-
ence. My whole
family drove out
to listen to me. I’m
not usually one
for public speak-
ing, so this was
a rather big deal
for them. My dad
commented
that
he didn’t think he had heard me read
since he and I would read “Harry
Potter” together when I was in first
grade. (This is not strictly true. In
fifth grade, I read my D.A.R.E. essay
about saying no to drugs for an audi-
ence of elementary school kids and
a few parents. It was a truly moving
piece, if I may say so.)
Reading my own work in front of
people was a gratifying and terrify-
ing experience — terrifying because
I mostly enjoy writing by virtue of it
not being public speaking. I tend to
be a very high-anxiety individual, so
the terror was something I expected.
I was surprised, however, to feel so
truly grateful for the opportunity to
share my writing with people who
normally would never read it.
Writing these columns has been
like that, too. This is the first time
I’ve had writing of mine out in a pub-
lic space with my name attached to
it. Like speaking in front of an audi-
ence, there’s terror in this, too. It’s
a bit like sending your children out
into the world to fend for themselves,
some better equipped to do so than
others. The ones with clearer argu-
ments can fend for themselves well
enough, but the weaker ones don’t do
so well. I learned this the hard way
when my first column came out and
the first comment on it said it was
“disheartening” to see a newspaper
give it space.
But I tried again, mostly because
I didn’t have a choice. I shared my
opinions on current events and
then I started sharing things about
myself. The Michigan Daily has
been very generous in allowing me
to share some very personal details
about my life, and it has turned out
to be extremely rewarding for me.
I wrote a column about recovering
from major depression that resulted
in a slew of e-mails in my inbox from
students thanking me for writing.
It’s heartening to have your own
experiences resonate with others —
that’s what writing these columns
has done for me.
The University has some really
cool forums for self-expression if
you’re looking out for them. Some-
times it’s public readings or stu-
dent publications, but in my four
years here I’ve also been to all kinds
of art shows, musical ensembles,
stage performances and film pro-
ductions. If you haven’t taken the
opportunity to share something
you’ve made with others, college
might be a good time to try it. It’s
horrible and incredible and I highly
recommend it.
— Sydney Hartle can be reached
at hartles@umich.edu.
B
ack when J. Edgar Hoover, that infallible defender of our
constitutional rights, was playing dictator and spying on
Americans as head of the FBI, The Michigan Daily’s editorial
page handed out the Edgar Awards annually to individuals and
institutions best embodying his many admirable characteristics. Of
necessity, we revived the tradition in recent years.
And so, without further ado and the
protection of the First Amendment on our side,
we present the 12th Annual Edgar Awards.
The Mark Zuckerberg Award goes to
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald for
issuing a press release via Facebook comment.
At the bottom of the Daily news story
“Investigational Equity: Student challenges
University sexual assault policies,” Fitzgerald
used his personal Facebook account to “add
some information regarding two important
points that are not clear in this detailed account
in the Daily.” Thanks for helping out, Rick!
Now you can add “social media proficiency” to
your LinkedIn profile. #professional
The Fifty Shades of Grey Award goes to
Central Student Government for once again
tying up the election in an obnoxiously long
litigation process. There’s nothing quite like
public bondage.
The Richard Simmons Award goes to
University President Mark Schlissel for
becoming the campus fitness figurehead.
Multiple sources at the Daily and many
pedestrians
on
South
University
have
confirmed seeing The Schliss hitting the
elliptical in the President’s house presumably
to work on his summer bod (or to stay in shape
— whatever). President Schlissel, let us know
when you’re releasing the sign-up sheet to use
your equipment … since the IM Building is no
longer an option.
The Michigan State University Needless
Destruction
Award
goes
to
former
fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu and suspended
sorority Sigma Delta Tau for their just-a-
little-over-the-top shenanigans at Treetops
Resort during the weekend of Jan. 16. They
only caused an estimated $430,000 in
damages. Good work, everyone. At least there
weren’t any couches burned!
The Hillary Clinton E-mail Scandal
Award goes to former Athletic Director
Dave Brandon for having “no responsive
records” for FOIA requests for e-mails
requested by the Daily between March 13 and
March 14, 2014. This can only mean one thing:
his resignation was no coincidence. Dave
Brandon for President 2016, anybody?
The Francis J. Underwood Award goes
to former CSG President Bobby Dishell for
his incredibly quick rise to power during his
tenure at the University. First a representative,
then vice president, then president? This is
a little too similar to our favorite politician,
Frank Underwood. Luckily for us reporters,
the train station is far away.
The Taylor Swift “Shake it Off” Award
goes to LSA and Engineering junior Will
Royster for continuing to do great things
on campus despite losing CSG elections by a
mere five votes. Keep dancing on your own,
making moves as you go. Keep cruising. Don’t
stop groovin’.
The Kanye West “I Am a God” Award goes
to Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh.
Well, this one needs no explanation.
And lastly, the Stephen M. Ross Award
goes to Stephen M. Ross for his infatuation
with naming things after himself. Mr. Ross,
did you hear The Michigan Daily is launching a
fundraising campaign? Throw us a few million
bucks and we’ll tack your name on to our paper.
How does The Stephen M. Ross Michigan
Daily sound? The Michigan Ross? Take
your pick!
‘14-‘15 Edgar Awards
A Michigan Daily editorial page tradition
FROM THE DAILY
Platelets, past and present
This was the year I gave my blood
away. A brusque nurse pricked my
finger and tested my hemoglobin
count as I sat in the Michigan Union
Ballroom. She told me that if I had
gone to Kerala just one year later I
wouldn’t have been able to donate.
I lay back on a makeshift bed and
looked away as red cells clustered
fluidly into a bag, out of my body.
My blood comes from a place
carefully crafted to be the perfect
setting of a Southern Gothic novel.
The walls of white buildings grow
moldy seemingly overnight, and
secrets hang like overripe mangoes
from trees in parts of the country
that have not yet been tamed.
Everything is alive in Kerala, a
state in India’s southernmost tip;
Kerala, where backwaters run like
veins through the state’s green,
pulsing land.
Kerala, where I want, always,
desperately, to feel at home.
Kerala is light and lush flora and
love: love unspoken, love implicit,
love tied to land and blood. The
sense of belonging I have to a
state so different than the one I
grew up in can be explained by
nothing else. I’m Californian; I
grew up surrounded by mountains
of watercolored blue and In-N-Out
and libraries I lived in. But I’m also
Malayali, I’m also a Keralite, and I
know that must be part of my truth
because that’s what my mother and
father are. And if I’m not theirs, if
I’m not Kerala’s, then what am I?
Love is a tricky concept; home is a
tricky word. Blood connects us to
one — it draws us back to the other.
Blood is the most essential tie
I have to my heritage, even as
someone who has spilled little
of it on Kerala’s soil. My blood is
undeniably Malayali — my family
has been for generations. I am proud
of my bloodline, and I am proud of
the place and people from where it
springs. My maternal grandfather
was in the Indian Navy; his favorite
book is “The Count of Monte
Cristo” and both of us swear by
the same fierce loyalty. He left the
Navy to become a chicken farmer,
and the old chicken house lies a
stone’s throw away from the home
my brother and I stay in every time
we visit. My grandmother roots
for Germany during the World
Cup for reasons I don’t understand
and Parkinson’s has made her
movements butterfly-quick but has
not stolen or dulled her mind. She
can still tell me about my mother
as a young girl; she still cries when
my brother and I leave to fly back
across the Pacific.
My mother and I bear little
physical resemblance. Our hands
and eyes don’t look the same,
but they gesture and widen in
parallel when we tell a story or
are caught up in worry. Half of my
genetic makeup comes from her, a
woman who came to snowy New
Hampshire as a young bride with a
flawless knowledge of the English
language as her greatest asset. It is
from my mother that I inherited a
love of words and the storytelling
she has made my birthright.
I carry my paternal grandmother’s
DNA as well as her name. Teresa
isn’t an Indian name, people often
say to me. And then I launch into
my well-practiced speech about
Catholicism in India, how it’s older
than Christianity in Europe and
how Teresa was passed down to me
through love and lineage. I never
met my namesake, by all accounts
an elegant and educated woman
who died when my father was four
years old.
Recently, my father said he
wishes he had asked his father
what had driven him to be the
first person from his family —
and from his village — to attend
college. What had driven him to
be a lawyer? What had driven him
to become part of India’s fight for
independence, a cause he believed
in strongly enough to be jailed for?
I looked at my father, a man whose
blood and forehead and sarcasm I
share, and I saw that what whatever
light and drive his father possessed
had been passed down to him as well.
My father, who never wanted to come
to America; my father, who is quiet
and reserved and doesn’t protest
when my mother’s stories are the
only ones my family tells. My father,
a child from a rural community who
spent his summers in the trees. Who,
when he was 11, decided he would
attend one of the nation’s most
prestigious engineering universities
— and did. The youngest of six; an
orphan at 21; a man whose word
and approval carry immeasurable
weight. He is forged of a strength I
am still trying to attain.
Blood carries both intangible and
tangible weight. It manifests itself
in the way I speak, in the hard “t” I
give the word “question,” something
I picked up from my mother. It
manifests itself in the clothes I wear,
in the difficulty I have justifying my
own short skirts and push-up bras.
It manifests in the dreams I allow
myself to have and the dreams I
have put aside. Because blood can
remember, blood can forgive —
blood can be disappointed.
Kerala manifests itself in ways
my cousins back in India would
not understand — to them, I am the
American. I am the one who can’t
speak Malayalam and comes back
once every two years. Coconut,
they call me affectionately, brown
on the outside and white within,
and I know they love me but it still
stings. My skin is more than a husk;
in this country it decidedly marks
me as other.
My mother once told me I would
never be mistaken for a true Indian.
The geography of my face, she
informed me, marked me as an
American. I didn’t know what she
meant then; even now it’s unclear.
How can the planes of my face
convey anything? In America, my
face marks me as Indian. In India,
apparently one look at the same
features is enough to tell people I
don’t belong.
And so I am a mixture of an
Indian-American face and Indian
blood. Look into my veins, look into
my eyes. See my blood, which, once
spilled, would look no different
from a born-and-bred Malayali
or an Anglo-Saxon American. My
blood, which tells me so much, but
gives me no direction. The iron in
my veins is trying to lead me due
north, but every platelet has its own
idea of where that may be.
Maybe I do belong in America,
where my blood has mixed with the
soil. Where I was born and raised
and wore a plaid schoolgirl skirt
more than I’ve ever worn a sari.
Where I have loved and been loved,
where I have hurt and been healed.
But my blood and the weight it
holds mean that I do not have the
luxury of forgetting where I came
from — even if I want to. And I
have no interest in living in a world
where what I do and who I am are
not influenced and enriched by my
love and light and blood.
A few weeks after I donated, the
card that came from the American
Red Cross told me that my blood
type is O positive. I’m close to being
a universal donor, apparently; I can
give blood to anyone with a positive
blood type. But I’m not a universal
recipient — I can only draw from
so much. I can only receive what is
directly, intangibly mine; I can only
take what is found in the marrow.
I have gained an immeasurable
amount from my blood. I have
gained strength, I have gained iron
— I am still trying to gain belonging.
I know what flows within me but I
don’t yet know what — and where —
I can claim.
But I can give blood out, and so
maybe the point has never been
to examine the texture and ties of
what lies within me. I have no power
over that, but I do have agency over
where my blood and love go. I have
the agency to not choose one over
the other. And I should not have to
choose. I should not have to pick
A over B, India over America, any
future over my family. I will not be
afraid to give my love away.
I am made of tendons and
muscles and bones. I am made of
the scars I have gotten in America
and the forehead I have gotten from
my father. But, most of all, I am
made of my heart, which pumps out
dark fluid and vibrant feeling and
the knowledge that the past and the
future and the present are not tied
to any one land or any one love.
Teresa Mathew is a
Michigan in Color editor.
TERESA MATHEW | MICHIGAN IN COLOR
Put yourself out there
SYDNEY
HARTLE
T
wice a year, I pick up my life and move
it 2,000 miles east or west. This will
be the eighth time. The eighth time
I have moved in my four years at college and
the eighth time I have gone
to an airport just this year.
I
spend
finals
week
splitting my time between
packing
up
and
taping
boxes and cramming for
my finals. My belongings
are all labeled: “Michigan”
or “California.” And I am
labeled. In Michigan, I
am the “California girl.”
In California, I “go to
Michigan.” I am defined by
where I am not.
But slowly, the room that I have spent
the last eight months turning into my home
reverts back to its Ikea-issued bedposts and
desk, ready for the next student to move in.
I take my last final, return my textbooks to
Ulrich’s and call a cab to pick me up from
Espresso Royale. I pass out on the plane since
I probably haven’t gotten that much sleep in
between all-nighters for study, packing and
hanging with friends. When I wake up, I am
on summer vacation.
Even with so much practice, I still hate
goodbyes. I usually have to leave so suddenly
after my last final that I get to avoid them all
together. But this year I can’t. This year, it
isn’t a goodbye for a few months and I’ll see
you when football season starts up again.
This time it’s a real goodbye that I can’t
schedule my way out of. My friends are all
moving to different parts of the country, and
this time it isn’t for internships or vacations
for a few weeks. It’s for years at new jobs or
graduate school.
As an out-of-state student, I always felt
like my heart was in two places: half in my
hometown and half at Michigan. There are
things I love about California that I can’t get
anywhere else. But I can get sick of living
with my parents and bored of doing the
same things I did in high school. I start to
crave the craziness of life at the University.
And then, after eight months here, I can’t
wish for anything more than to be on a plane
back home.
I have always been moving, rushing
between one state and the other. But it felt like
Michigan would always be here waiting for
me in September. The school will stand for the
next 200 years. Pushing open the Chemistry
Building’s doors will still be the equivalent to
a weight lifting workout. The Law Quad will
still kick out undergrads at 8 p.m. Charley’s
will still serve individual Fishbowls — “perfect
for sharing” — to everyone at the table. But it
won’t be my Michigan anymore. I won’t count
pushing open the Chem Building doors as my
workout for the day. I won’t get kicked out of
the Law Quad and walk, defeated, to the UGLi.
I won’t not share a Fishbowl with my friends.
Just like the rooms I vacate every May,
someone else will move in and make it
their sanctuary. And I will come back and
stand outside, looking in the windows
and reminisce.
— Jesse Klein can be reached at jekle@umich.edu.
Leaving my sanctuary
JESSE
KLEIN
— Rebekeh Gregory said Monday after finishing the Boston Marathon. Gregory lost her
leg in the bombing of the 2013 marathon.
“
NOTABLE QUOTABLE
The emotion just brought back everything
from that day and I started reliving the
whole experience. But when I was able to
see the finish line, I knew I had to finish.”
Doing something fun this summer? Want to write about it?
Apply to be a summer opinion columnist!
Not doing anything fun? Still apply!
For more information, e-mail Melissa Scholke at melikaye@umich.edu.