michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
ADMINISTRATION
Percentage of
minorities in first-
year cohort is the
highest since 2005
By ALLANA AKHTAR
and LARA MOEHLMAN
Daily Staff Reporters
The
percentage
of
underrepresented minorities in
this year’s freshman class is the
highest since 2005, according
to enrollment figures released
by the University early Monday
morning.
Underrepresented
minority
students represent 12.8 percent
of the 2015 freshman class,
a
2.8-percent
increase
over
last
fall’s
entering
cohort.
Minority
students
accounted
for 13.8 percent of the incoming
class in 2005, the year before
Michigan voters banned the
use of affirmative action in the
admissions process.
The
percentage
of
Black,
Hispanic and Native American
students all increased over last
year.
The undergraduate student
body
and
overall
students
saw less drastic increases in
diversity. The percentage of
Black undergraduate students
increased by .15 percent and the
percentage of Black students
overall increased by .19 percent.
Total enrollment this fall
stands at 43,651, an increase of
.06 percent (26 students) from
last year’s overall enrollment.
Undergraduate
enrollment,
however,
decreased
by
83
students, marking a .3-percent
decrease.
Meanwhile,
the
number
of
graduate
and
professional students on campus
increased by .7 percent (109
students).
The freshman class decreased
by more than 400 students
since last year, representing the
smallest incoming class size
since 2008, when the class size
was 5,783 students.
Last year, University Provost
Martha Pollack outlined a plan
to curb over-enrollment after
the University enrolled 500
more students than intended for
the freshman class.
“We have been over-enrolling
every year for the past five
years and we have to stop this,”
Pollack said at a September 2014
Board of Regents meeting. “I’m
Event aims to
provide context for
upcoming OITNB
creator’s lecture
By CHARLOTTE JENKINS
Daily Staff Reporter
The University of Michigan
Institute
for
Research
on
Women and Gender held a
panel
discussion
Monday
titled “Incarcerated Women: A
Conversation About Realities.”
The event was held in part to
provide context for Tuesday’s
campus
lecture
by
Piper
Kerman, author of “Orange Is
the New Black: My Year in a
Women’s
Prison.”
Kerman’s
memoir was the inspiration for
the Netflix series adaptation,
“Orange is the New Black.”
Members
of
the
panel
discussed
the
variety
of
challenges unique to female
inmates.
Some
panelists
emphasized
the
abuses
that
incarcerated
women
experience
are
precisely
because of their gender.
According to panelist and
Law Prof. Amanda Alexander,
a Soros Justice Fellow in the
Child Advocacy Law Clinic and
the Detroit Center for Family
Advocacy, incarcerated women
often face losing parental rights
over their children, and said the
average sentence length for a
parent in Michigan is three to
four years.
Alexander also discussed the
negligible rights afforded to
inmates who give birth during
their sentence. She said, in
Michigan, women who give birth
in prison have very little access
to prenatal care and are only
allotted 24 hours to spend with
their newborn in the hospital
after delivery. Additionally, some
other states allow incarcerated
women to pump breast milk for
their children, but Michigan
does not.
BOOK REVIEW
Interesting but
tedious new
Smith memoir
‘M Train’ can
be beautiful,
meandering and
exasperating
By GIANCARLO BUONOMO
Daily Arts Writer
Patti Smith is really cool. She’s
also funny, extraordinarily well-
read and well-traveled, multi-
talented and palpably kind and
compassionate.
She’s the kind of
person you want
to nurse a cup of
coffee with for
hours and hours,
talking
about
everything
on
your mind, and
things you didn’t
even realize were.
Smith is best known as a
musician
—
her
1975
album
Horses is considered a watershed
in the development of punk
rock, among many other popular
records and singles. In recent
years, she has also received
acclaim as a writer, winning the
National Book Award for “Just
Kids,” a memoir of her passionate,
tumultuous relationship with the
acclaimed photographer Robert
Mapplethorpe
and
their
life
together in the bohemian art scene
of 1970s New York. And, this past
week, she released a new book, the
enigmatically titled “M Train.”
If you’ve read “Just Kids,”
or decide to read “M Train,”
you’ll know what I meant in
the
first
paragraph.
Smith’s
writing is a stream of passionate
consciousness. Take this passage
from “Just Kids”: “There were
days, rainy gray days, when the
streets of Brooklyn were worthy
of a photograph, every window
the lens of a leica. We gathered our
colored pencils and sheets of paper
and drew like wild, feral children
into the night until, exhausted, we
fell into bed. We lay in each other’s
arms, still awkward but happy,
exchanging breathless kisses into
sleep.”
“Just Kids” worked because
it
had
that
Mapplethorpe
relationship as a narrative baseline,
off of which Smith could riff. You
could forgive her occasionally vatic
prose and erratic scene setting,
because the book still told a
specific, heartfelt story. “M Train,”
heartfelt and passionate as it is,
suffers from a lack of specificity.
It’s a meandering lecture of a
book, often interesting, sometimes
beautiful, but also tedious and
exasperating.
“M
Train”
is
seemingly
structured as a series of dreams,
reflections and flashbacks that
Smith has while sitting in her
favorite Greenwich Village café,
which she attends every morning
for a sacrament of black coffee,
bread and olive oil. These vignettes
trigger further ones, and they
others, until you’ve moved with
Pending Senate
Assembly vote
could persuade
provost to delay
By GENEVIEVE HUMMER
Daily Staff Reporter
Faculty
concern
over
the
impending release of course
evaluation
data
has
caused
University
Provost
Martha
Pollack to reconsider the current
timeline for such a release.
During
her
comments
at
Monday’s
SACUA
meeting,
Pollack said she would be willing
to reconsider the release date,
pending a vote at the Senate
Assembly meeting later this
month.
“If the Senate Assembly votes
no, I am happy to slow it down,
but I generally need this group
to meet with (Central Student
Government)
and
(Rackham
Student Government) and talk
with them,” Pollack said. “This
all came up because the students
asked for it at least three years
ago now.”
Pollack
has
formed
a
committee to create a new tool,
in place of the current course
evaluation, to better meet the
needs of faculty and students.
She invited SACUA to appoint
a member to the committee,
which will also include members
from
student
government
and evaluation experts at the
University.
At
a
Senate
Advisory
Committee on University Affairs
meeting last month, Engineering
Prof. James Holloway, the vice
provost for global and engaged
education,
announced
that
course evaluation data could
be published as soon as this
semester.
The
decision
provoked
pushback
from
faculty
governance, which criticized the
administration for constructing
a plan without extensive faculty
consultation.
“It has not been debated
at SACUA and it has not been
debated at Senate Assembly,
and so we feel like there hasn’t
been enough broad consultation
because this is something that
affects everyone, faculty and
students,”
said
Comparative
Literature
Prof.
Silke-Maria
Weineck, SACUA’s chair, at the
time.
Weineck
said
another
committee with faculty input will
need to be formed to determine
the best way to release the data —
an issue that she noted is separate
from what type of instrument
See SACUA, Page 3
See SMITH, Page 3
See PANEL, Page 3
See ENROLLMENT, Page 3
Council hires
firm to conduct
national hunt for
replacement
By ISOBEL FUTTER
Daily Staff Reporter
The
search
is
underway
for Ann Arbor’s next city
administrator.
The Ann Arbor City Council
voted last week to authorize
the
Council
Administration
Committee to serve as a five-
person search party for a new
city administrator. Steve Powers,
the current city administrator,
announced plans in August to
leave the post for a new job as
city manager in Salem, Ore. He
is set to depart in November.
“It’s a larger community than
Ann Arbor and a professional
opportunity that will help me in
my professional development,”
Powers said in an interview
with
The
Michigan
Daily.
“It’s
a
larger
organization,
with
more
responsibilities
and opportunities to help a
community and help a council
accomplish its policy goals and
policy agenda.”
Powers said he has enjoyed
working with Ann Arbor’s city
staff and council.
“I’ve been here a little over
four years, and it’s gone by
See CITY, Page 3
CITY COUNCIL
M Train
Patti Smith
Alfred A. Knopf
$25
Fall 2015
enrollment
shows more
diverse class
Panel hosts discussion on
women and incarceration
SACUA protests release
of course evaluation data
Search for
Ann Arbor
city admin.
underway
INDEX
Vol. CXXIV, No. 9
©2015 The Michigan Daily
michigandaily.com
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O PI N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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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HI: 60
LO: 38
HALEY MCLAUGHLIN/Daily
Art & Design professor Carol Jacobsen speaks on a panel titled “Incarcerated Women: A Conversation About Realities” at the School of Social Work on Monday.
The discussion precedes a larger conversation which will culminate with a public lecture by Piper Kerman, author of the memoir “Orange is the New Black: My
Year in a Women’s Prison,” scheduled for 5p.m. today at Rackham Auditorium.
RYAN MCLOUGHLIN/Daily
University Provost Martha Pollack discusses the University’s transition to Canvas and preparations for the March
Faculty Governance Conference at a SACUA meeting at the Fleming Administration Building on Monday.