represent 
themselves, 
these 
organizations 

are also University-sanctioned and operate under 
the University’s jurisdiction. Administrators 
have the power and the responsibility to 
facilitate cultural shifts by establishing concrete 
guidelines and engaging in collaborative 
efforts with student organizations. The 
meeting identified negative aspects of Greek 
life, but ultimately failed to offer genuine 
policy solutions.

The structure and emphasis of the meeting 

were also problematic. E. Royster Harper, 
vice president for student life, remarked in 
an interview with the Michigan Daily that 
the meeting was intended to emphasize the 
University’s concern for students’ health and 
wellness, not to scold them. However, Harper 
made clear at the meeting that others often 
perceive Greek life as racist, homophobic, 
sexist and unsafe. Further, the consensus after 
the meeting reflected disapproval of the event. 

Ultimately, the administration came off as 
punitive, putting many students on the defensive 
and risking creating a rift that could damage 
future efforts to effectively enact policy.

Given that the administration highlighted 

more problems than it provided solutions, and 
that no actual progress is likely to come of it, 
the meeting comes off as a publicity stunt that 
wasn’t meant to cause any tangible change.

Rather than condemn the entirety of Greek 

life, the University should seek to acknowledge 
the positive contributions individual chapters 
make to campus and the community at large. 
Reforms are needed, but generalizing the 
collective behavior of the students within these 
organizations will not bring forth any substantial 
solutions. The problematic actions of individuals, 
or even specific chapters, should not overshadow 
Greek life members who are instituting reforms 
and portraying the University in a positive light. 
To remedy these issues, the University needs to 
modify its approach in order to establish an open 
dialogue and a more cooperative relationship 
with these groups.

MICHIGAN
From Page 1

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, September 15, 2015

N

ews has been pouring out of 
Ann Arbor all summer. No 
matter how far away you 

were from hoMe, whether you were 
studying abroad in Barcelona, intern-
ing on Wall Street, waiting tables on 
Main Street or simply soaking up the 
sun on the shores of Lake Michigan, 
no Wolverine could bear four long 
months without checking in on their 
beloved campus. Between the dawn-
ing of the Harbaugh Era, the open-
ing of Mcity and the renovations on 
North Campus, the summer of 2015 
was by no means uneventful. One 
Ann Arbor resident, Joshua Wade, 
has been particularly busy.

In June, Wade filed a lawsuit 

against the University (which by 
itself is not entirely rare). This case, 
however, has nothing to do with 
affirmative action or sexual miscon-
duct. This case is about gun control.

Wade’s charge is simple: Univer-

sity policy states that no weapons can 
be carried on University campuses 
by anyone other than law enforce-
ment or the military. To Wade, this 
policy violates the rights he finds in 
both the United States and Michigan 
constitutions. He carries weapons 
for the defense of himself and his 
loved ones and “just want(s) U-M 
to come into compliance with state 
law,” because “police unfortunately 
can’t be everywhere … they can’t 
protect everyone, as evidenced by 
the fact that crime happens.” Uni-
versity spokesman Rick Fitzgerald 
issued a statement shortly thereafter 
announcing that the administration 
will “vigorously defend” their policy 
as a matter of safety.

Most observers of this case will be 

able to see the merits of each side of 
the argument, the complex conflict 
of interest between Mr. Wade’s Sec-
ond Amendment rights and the Uni-
versity’s desire to ensure the safety 
of its students. But in this case, there 

are not two sides. Contrary to popu-
lar opinion and the agenda perpetu-
ated by thousands of gun advocates 
in America today, this case should be 
a no-contest, easy win for the Uni-
versity. Because when it comes to his 
rights, Mr. Wade is absolutely and 
without a doubt dead wrong.

Let’s break down the argument 

in this case. The University can-
not ban the possession of weapons 
on campus because the Second 
Amendment guarantees the right 
to bear arms, right? Wrong, and for 
more than one reason. 

If Joshua Wade read the exact 

phrasing of keystone of his legal 
argument, he would see that the 
amendment begins: “A well-reg-
ulated militia, being necessary to 
the security of a free State…” To the 
founders, the right to bear arms was 
exercised at Lexington and Concord, 
not by Mr. Wade at the corner of Lib-
erty and State streets. Not until 2008 
did the Supreme Court recognize the 
right to bear arms as one belonging 
to the individual. Not 1908, but 2008 
— the year Rich Rodriguez came to 
Michigan, President Barack Obama 
was elected and the No. 1 song on the 
charts was “Low” by Flo Rida. Up 
until then, in Washington D.C. and 
in school zones around the country, 
there were local bans on owning a 
firearm until cases like D.C. v. Hell-
er and United States v. Lopez at the 
Supreme Court changed this (though 
dissent remains).

Perhaps the greatest accomplish-

ment of conservatives on the issue of 
guns is the heinous and widespread 
oversimplification of what the Sec-
ond Amendment says. Americans like 
Mr. Wade tend to adopt summarized 
views of the Bill of Rights. The First 
Amendment gives me the right to 
free speech, the Second Amendment 
says I can bear arms, etc. Reading 
opinions from the Supreme Court, 

however, this is hardly the case.

“The Gun Lobby’s interpretation 

of the Second Amendment is one of 
the greatest pieces of fraud … on the 
American People … that I have ever 
seen in my lifetime. The real purpose 
of the Second Amendment was to 
ensure that state armies — the militia 
— would be maintained for the defense 
of the state. The very language of the 
Second Amendment refutes any argu-
ment that it was intended to guarantee 
every citizen an unfettered right to 
any kind of weapon he or she desires.” 
And this wasn’t one of your run-of-
the-mill liberal justices. This came 
from Warren Burger, stalwart conser-
vative from the Midwest.

Even if the Second Amendment 

read as simply as most people imag-
ine it does, they would still have a 
problem. As star-spangled awesome 
as Americans see themselves, no 
right is absolute. Look no further 
than the conservative champion 
and author of the opinion in the Dis-
trict of Columbia v. Heller decision, 
Justice Antonin Scalia. “Like most 
rights, the Second Amendment right 
is not unlimited. It is not a right to 
keep and carry any weapon whatso-
ever in any manner whatsoever and 
for whatever purpose.”

Misconceptions have made guns 

an integral part of our Constitution, 
and this delusion has gone too far for 
too long. Why Wade cannot see how 
a community that is often plagued 
by sexual assault, depression and 
inebriated college kids would have 
a vested interest in decreasing 
the number of guns on campus is 
beyond me. Read the amendment 
for yourself, free from prejudice or 
preconceived notion. And know that 
gun control is not a liberal fantasy, 
but a modern imperative.

— Brett Graham can be reached 

at btgraham@umich.edu.

Bullets over Ann Arbor

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh, 
Victoria Noble, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, 

Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

JAMIE BIRCOLL | VIEWPOINT

CLAIRE BRYAN | VIEWPOINT

Dear Mr. Vice President,
As I write this, I am watching 

your interview with Stephen Col-
bert. You crack jokes; you are pen-
sive and reflective. You are at times 
incredibly sad, and then you are 
smiling again. I see you, the real 
you. It’s the same Joe Biden who I’ve 
seen on MSNBC and CNN, who sat 
behind President Barack Obama at 
the State of the Union and cheered 
his accomplishments and his goals. 
You do not put on the political game 
face, switching personas with each 
new interview or address or fund-
raiser. You are always Joe Biden.

Watching this interview, I feel 

like I know you, have known you. 
And not in the “I’d grab a drink 
with that guy” sense with which 
we so often measure our politicians. 
You feel real, human. I see it in the 
way you stare at the ground when 
Colbert brings up your late son, 
Beau. I see it in the enthusiasm with 
which you talk about your son. It 
feels genuine and loving, as a father 
should talk about his son. I see your 
strength, your ability to withstand 
tragedy, to take it in stride and say, 
“but I’m not yet finished with my 
work.” You honor your loved ones’ 
memories by doing what you love, 
by devoting yourself to the service 
of others.

And that is why, Mr. Vice Presi-

dent, you need to run for the Office 
of the President.

When I look out at the field of 

candidates throughout the politi-
cal spectrum I don’t see people. I 
see slogans, sound bites, names. 
These candidates represent ideolo-
gies, with or without the party. But 
you are human, you are real. You 
represent beliefs, beliefs that, when 
combined, create a mantra that says, 
“this is me, this is Joe Biden.” 

And those beliefs are good, hon-

est beliefs. You don’t fight for the 
votes. You fight because it’s the right 
thing to do. You are a practicing Cath-
olic, but you support both abortion 
(with restrictions) and gay marriage 
because you know that your views 
should not restrict the rights of oth-
ers. You fight for middle and working 
class America because you’ve seen 
their plight, you know firsthand what 

others can only read about.

Donald Trump thinks we need 

to “make America great again,” but 
we need to make Americans great 
again. At some point, we Ameri-
cans started to accept that the First 
Amendment was to be brandished 
like a sword to cut down our neigh-
bors, rather than a shield to defend 
against oppression. We became 
complacent. Those in power looked 
out and saw all that they had cre-
ated at the expense of others, at the 
rights ignored, at the lives lost. And 
in biblical fashion they said “and it 
was good.” We have accepted the 
status quo.

But you, Mr. Vice President, push 

onward. You continue to draft and 
push for policy even as the admin-
istration enters its final 16 months. 
You are progressive, but not so 
much as to alienate those who fear 
the word “socialist.” You are pro-
gressive in the sense that you are 
not content with the status quo; 
you recognize that in our modern 
political culture, “conservative” has 
come to mean to look backwards 
rather than forwards. But you know 
better. As John F. Kennedy said 
in 1963, “Change is the law of life. 
And those who look only to the past 
or present are certain to miss the 
future.” We need someone who rep-
resents those aspirations to lead us. 
So that when we look to him, we can 
say that he not only represents our 
beliefs, our values, but the very fab-
ric of being upon which this nation 
was founded.

You’re a career politician but you 

do it not for the status or the power, 
but because you want to help people. 
And all that time in office has given 
you more experience than any other 
candidate in the field. You have 
demonstrated an acute understand-
ing of foreign affairs with more 
experience in this field than Hillary 
Clinton and John Kerry combined; 
perhaps had we listened to you back 
in 2006 and broken down Iraq into 
specific regions for the Shiites, Sun-
nis and Kurds, we would not find 
ourselves in this most splendid 
quagmire we now face.

And on your own personal quag-

mires, those gaffes that the media 

craves, that the public loves to 
devour, I think you slip up because 
you are friendly. You see everybody 
as a good friend and there are few 
boundaries between good friends. 
And even so, those gaffes make you 
authentic — you make a mistake and 
you learn from it, as is human to do.

We need someone authentic to 

enter the fray, difficult as that may 
be for you. We need someone who 
feels no entitlement to the presi-
dency, by name or by wealth or by 
outsider status. We need someone 
who has held more than one term 
in office, someone who hides no 
secrets, someone who can run a 
sustainable campaign for a main-
stream, moderate American people.

We need someone real, someone 

good. You wrote this in your book, 
“Promises to Keep,” “For the world 
to follow, we must do more than 
rattle our sabers and demand alle-
giance to our vision simply because 
we believe we are right. We must 
provide a reason for others to aspire 
to that vision. And that reason must 
come with more than the repetition 
of a bumper-sticker phrase about 
freedom and democracy. It must 
come with more than the restate-
ment of failed policy. It must come 
with the wisdom to admit when we 
are wrong and resolve to change 
course and get it right.” That sounds 
real and good to me.

And if I cannot convince you, 

then at least let me praise you for 
your interview on “The Late Show.” 
You said, “Nobody has a right, in 
my view, to seek that office unless 
they’re willing to give it 110 percent 
of who they are … but I find myself … 
it just sometimes overwhelms you.” 
This country was founded on the 
idea of personal success, on a go-
get-‘em attitude. To admit that you 
are not prepared, that you might not 
have the fire, takes incredible cour-
age and principle. I understand why 
you don’t want to run, but it’s the 
exact reason you should.

Sincerely,
A cynic who has found his faith 

restored.

Jamie Bircoll is an LSA senior 

and a Daily arts editor.

Last Thursday, I sat in Hill Auditorium along 

with thousands of other Greek life members 
listening to the University’s top administrators. 
I sat next to my best friends and role models, 
whom I love and respect, but when my gaze wan-
dered past the faces around me, I was ashamed to 
be a member of the entire Greek life population.

At this point, I know I’m not alone in lack-

ing Greek life pride. Interfraternity Council 
President Alex Krupiak said it at the conclu-
sion of the meeting. Students interviewed by 
the Daily said it afterward. My own soror-
ity’s former head of recruitment said it a few 
days later. And I’m certain if most members 
of Greek life sat down to write their own ideas 
into some concrete form, they would also 
say it.

This lack of pride isn’t just because of this past 

January’s ski trip, or just because the campus 
climate survey on sexual misconduct results told 
us that Greek life members are 2.5 times more 
at risk to be sexually assaulted than non-Greek 
students, or just because of any of the negative 
headlines that were screened in the PowerPoint 
as we all took our seats.

In my experience, Greek life members often 

critique the system (and by system I mean both 
the chapters and the recruitment process) as 
being weird, enormous and bizarre, but it has 
“introduced me to my very best friends so I 
couldn’t imagine not being a part of it.”

I heard those words when rushing during my 

freshman year, I’ve texted those very words to 
high school students who have asked me advice 
on whether to rush or not rush, and I believe 
those words are accurate and fair. In an entirely 
unnatural and fun way, you can efficiently be 
exposed to mass amounts of people. That in itself 
is simultaneously exhilarating and comforting 
for certain people, especially when entering a 
very large undergraduate population.

But these accurate, fair and seemingly harm-

less words are exactly what’s so detrimental to 
our Greek life system. It’s easy, in fact natural, 
to identify and be proud to stand with the indi-
viduals who surround you: your friends and the 
people you look up to. The values those individu-
als stand for are what you stand for, and if you 
and these individuals make up the group — your 
chapter — then you are proud of your chapter.

But when it comes to the larger picture — 32 

Interfraternity Council fraternities, 16 PanHel-
lenic Association sororities, 12 multicultural 
organizations and nine National Pan-Hellenic 
Council organizations — you do not know the val-
ues of members in every single one of these chap-
ters, and therefore it becomes a lot harder to know 
if you’re proud of the community as a whole.

In 1913, French engineer Maximilien Rin-

gelmann coined this fundamental idea in social 
psychology: as a group becomes larger, each 
individual member of the group becomes less 
productive. That Greek life’s size is negatively 
contributing to productivity is an argument I 
wish I could be making. But size isn’t really the 
crux of the issue. Yes, many members of Greek 
Life are strangers to each other, but so are thou-
sands of other University students.

The problem with the Ringelmann effect lies 

in identifying group goals. When it comes to 
joining Greek life, it feels like there’s a lack of a 
concrete, common and unifying end goal. In fact, 
some of the best advice I have received when 
wondering why I’m a part of an organization like 
my sorority is to not take it too seriously.

When I get disheartened that an initiative 

doesn’t launch or not enough girls show up to 
the events I plan, I remind myself that I joined 
this organization for fun. It isn’t a job that will 
help further me along my career path. It isn’t a 
class that will transfer to a letter grade on my 
transcript. I’m choosing to learn from it: con-
versational skills, time-management skills, net-
working skills. It’s a positive experience in my 
life but it isn’t my entire life or a portion of my life 

that I’m dedicated to more than other organiza-
tions or jobs I have on campus. I’m not saying 
this is true for everyone; there are some leaders 
who are working really hard, but for the majority 
of members I believe it is.

As part of the very large institution that is the 

University, your goals are to grow as a leader, 
student, person, what have you. As part of my 
sorority, my goals are to grow as a leader and 
organizer, understand myself through getting to 
know different people and provide a community 
for younger girls. As a part of the community of 
Greek life my goals are to … what?

Answering that third question is a lot harder 

than answering the previous two. This blank is 
the reason for the disrespect, the lack of change 
and the apathy I saw in my fellow Greek mem-
bers on Thursday.

The newest idea that came out of Thursday’s 

meeting was Schlissel’s call to action: to save the 
University’s reputation, because if we do not, it 
will devalue our own reputation as Michigan 
graduates, as well as that of those who came 
before and will come after us. The call to action 
feels like the closest thing Greek life has ever 
come to in terms of a collective goal.

It’s troubling considering the Office of 

Greek life has done a ton of work to answer my 
question. They have outlined strategic goals 
of what Greek life should be accomplishing: 
unity, safety, public service and tradition, to 
name a few, and outlined plans of how these 
goals will be accomplished. These goals and 
detailed plans aren’t really focused on when 
freshmen are deciding to rush or not rush, 
when bid-day pictures are posted or when 
weekly chapter meetings are held.

Schlissel ironically pointed to the fact that 

leadership and change must come from our 
student leaders: the presidents of each of the 
four councils. Something Greek life does pride 
itself on is being a student-governed organiza-
tion, and it’s pretty impressive when you think 
about it. Hundreds of young adults dedicate 
hundreds of hours a week to systematically 
categorizing themselves (even using complex 
coding systems to do it) into social groups, cre-
ating rules to be followed and a police force to 
enforce these rules.

But this leadership and organization that 

students are motivated to participate in is 
just a sliver of pride that needs to be utilized 
more. Though I know council presidents have 
been working hard to generate change, it does 
feel as if the Office of Greek life has done the 
planning for us and that administrators are 
overseeing us. That combination inspires no 
member of Greek life.

I believe the common reasons for joining 

Greek life — please hear me when I say are not 
at all the wrong reasons — are to meet new peo-
ple, attend events that get you out of your dorm 
room freshman year and give back to the com-
munity through service and philathropy. But 
very rarely do these initial reasons evolve into 
the highly important goals of bright, driven 
University of Michigan students. Very rarely 
do students take on sorority or fraternity lead-
ership positions with the same sincerity that 
they take their summer internships or their 
 

job recruiting.

The people sitting in Hill Auditorium Thurs-

day evening are not apathetic people, but they do 
not prioritize their chapter in a professional way. 
Neither do I. I care about it in a way where I take 
the good relationships it has given to me, but I 
look at it as a social institution, just one part of 
me, not my entire life and learning environment. 
I know I can escape it if I don’t want to tailgate 
one Saturday morning, so it doesn’t force me to 
look it in the eye and work for policies that pro-
mote safer tailgating. 

That’s the heartbreaking thing about Kru-

piak’s final statement, because though his 
chapter means the world to him, it just doesn’t 

Dear Joe, please run

Apathy toward accountability

mean enough for so many members. 
University students are doing a lot 
and, frankly, their social organiza-
tion isn’t going to keep them up late 
at night thinking of ways to innovate 
(though it might keep them up for 

other reasons). It isn’t a student orga-
nization or an internship or a class 
that they are passionate about. It isn’t 
creating enough collective good for 
the masses to take enough pride in it 
to change it.

Claire Bryan is an LSA junior, a 

senior editorial page editor, and vice 

president of membership programming 

at Alpha Chi Omega sorority.

