working in public health, told
the crowd that the University’s
commitment
to
community
service and human rights is
impressive.
“The University of Michigan
has been a real beacon of hope
and prosperity and human
rights for so many years,” she
said. “The bond between Peace
Corps and the University of
Michigan could not be stronger.”
Members of the University
community may not be aware,
however, of the crucial role
University students and faculty
played in the formation of
the program, a government
organization that deploys young
adults to developing countries
to
provide
assistance
and
promote cultural tolerance and
interaction.
University alum Al Guskin,
president emeritus of Antioch
University, was a doctorate
student in social psychology
at the University 55 years ago
when he attended Kennedy’s
speech.
Guskin
recalls
Kennedy
asking the crowd of about
10,000 students: “How many of
you who are going to be doctors
are willing to spend your days
in
Ghana?
Technicians
or
engineers, how many of you are
willing to work in the foreign
service and spend your lives
traveling around the world?”
Four
days
later,
Chester
Bowles,
Kennedy’s
foreign
policy adviser, spoke to a crowd
in the Union ballroom. He
discussed the work his son and
daughter had been doing in
Nigeria.
“Making
Kennedy’s
challenge
such
a
concrete
reality
triggered
something
deep inside me,” Guskin said.
That night, he wrote a letter
to The Michigan Daily on a
napkin, challenging University
students to commit to serving
abroad.
Before
the
letter
was
published in the Daily, Guskin
gathered with fellow students
and friends to discuss ideas
for the creation of a foreign
service program. Together they
formed a group that developed
materials on what such a
foreign service would entail
and collected roughly 1,000
students’ signatures of those
committed to serving.
According
to
Guskin,
Kennedy’s Michigan campaign
manager heard about what their
group was doing on campus
and asked them to send their
materials to him so that he
could give them to Kennedy’s
aides and speechwriters.
“Kennedy was taken with the
idea — the fact that students had
responded to his challenge,”
Guskin said. Six days before the
presidential election, Kennedy
announced his commitment to
the creation of the Peace Corps
during a major foreign policy
speech in San Francisco.
The
Peace
Corps
was
officially formed on March 1,
1961, and Guskin and his wife
served with the first group to go
to Thailand from 1961 to 1964.
University President Mark
Schlissel spoke later in the day
at a panel for returning Peace
Corps volunteers to share their
experiences serving abroad.
“I’m delighted to be able to
renew our collaboration and
enhance our work to build a
better future for our world. At
the University of Michigan,
we’re
tremendously
proud
of the global opportunities
we
provide
to
students,
and the Peace Corps is an
essential component to our
work,” Schlissel said. “The
transformative
experiences
provided
by
the
program
closely
align
with
the
University of Michigan’s global
engagement philosophy.”
Schlissel noted that the
University is the fourth largest
producer
of
Peace
Corps
volunteers over the course of
the organization’s history.
“At
the
core
of
this
philosophy is the University
of
Michigan’s
passion
for
advancing
the
public
good.
High
quality
global
collaborations
enhance
our
ability to address the biggest
challenges in our society while
providing
students
with
a
cross-cultural foundation that
will help them lead in a rapidly
changing environment.”
wondered
about
the
major
difference the cash infusion
had caused, which ultimately
inspired her book.
“What was it about the cash
that was so special?” Edin asked.
“If it was true that there was a
whole group of people living
without cash since welfare
reform, what did that look like
and what were the implications
for the well-being of families
and children?”
Using data from the Survey
of
Income
and
Program
Participation,
a
household-
based survey conducted by the
U.S. Census Bureau, Edin and
Shaefer found that in 2011 there
were 1.5 million households
— which included 3 million
children — living on $2 a day.
Edin and Shaefer chose
to investigate the $2 mark
specifically because the World
Bank defines moderate poverty
worldwide as surviving on less
than two U.S. dollars per day.
For “$2.00 a Day,” Edin and
Shaefer conducted research in
Chicago, the Mississippi Delta,
Cleveland
and
Tennessee.
Edin said they found many
impoverished residents did not
know about welfare programs
such as Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families or were told
by social services that they did
not qualify for assistance.
The authors discussed the
major welfare reform in 1996
that established TANF and
eliminated a previous program,
Aid to Families with Dependent
Children. They cited that in
1994, AFDC served 14.2 million
people, but TANF today only
serves 4.1 million people.
The authors said this decline
in numbers of people receiving
government
assistance
has
contributed to the problem,
and as a result, those who are
extremely impoverished turn to
other means of earning money
— even repeatedly donating
their own blood plasma.
Edin said Jessica Compton, a
resident of Johnson City, Tenn.,
sometimes relies on the $30 she
makes from donating plasma
despite the negative health
effects many repeat donors
experience,
like
exhaustion
from low iron levels.
“Plasma
sales
are
so
ubiquitous that many people
(interviewed) had a little divet
in their arm,” Edin said. “(It is)
a marker of $2 a day poverty.”
The United States is the only
developed country that allows
blood plasma donations more
than once a week.
The authors also encountered
a 15-year-old girl living on $2 a
day in Mississippi who resorted
to exchanging sex after school
with her gym teacher for food.
“We do understand that our
book is depressing,” Shaefer
said. “So, sorry about that.”
Edin
and
Shaefer
said
parents
do
their
best
to
maintain a sense of dignity
for their children, and anti-
poverty policies should focus
on incorporating the poor and
not isolating them.
They
also
emphasized
that many people living in
poverty want to work and not
rely
on
welfare
programs,
saying everyone deserves the
opportunity to work.
“This very strong connection
to work in part comes from
a desire to be a part of a
community, to be apart of
America,” Edin said.
Sandra Danziger, director
of the Michigan Program on
Poverty and Social Welfare
Policy at the Ford School and
professor of social work and
public policy, said the topic of
“$2.00 a Day” is important for
fostering dialogue.
“As much as the media and
information is supposed to be
so broad, you can live in this
country and have no idea that
this is happening,” Danziger
said. “I think every college
student should have to read it.”
don’t,” Assari said. “But the
type of psychiatric disorder
that
may
influence
my
perception of my mental health
may be different than yours or
other people’s.”
The
study’s
two
focus
groups — African American
and
Afro-Caribbean
communities — were asked
to self-evaluate their mental
health. For the roughly 3,600
African American individuals
studied,
anxiety
but
not
depression was more likely
to result in reporting mental
health
issues.
In
contrast,
for the approximately 1,600
Afro-Caribbeans in the study,
depression was a more common
indicator
for
self-reporting
mental health challenges, as
opposed to anxiety.
Assari
said
this
finding
about self-rated mental health
could be key to innovation
in
psychiatric
treatment.
Specifically,
knowing
how
seriously
or
not
seriously
certain
groups
perceive
mental
illness
can
help
doctors convince patients to
seek treatment, even if they
do not see their disorders as
problematic.
“Self-rated mental health or
the perception of our mental
health is the type of certainty
that makes you, if you have a
psychiatric disorder, go take
care of yourself,” he said. “It
has major implications for
connecting
actual
need
to
providing the care for the
population. We are extending
our
research
on
group
differences on how having
that actual need doesn’t really
translate
similarly
to
that
‘check engine’ light coming
on.”
Assari
added
that
self-
rated mental illness can lead
to more effective treatment
than
diagnoses
made
by
psychiatrists.
If
someone
recognizes they feel bad, he
said, they are more likely to
react to medication for their
illness.
“Psychiatrists may diagnose
anxiety or depression, but what
brings people to take care of
themselves is, overall, a very
simple feeling,” he said. “There
is a mismatch between what
psychiatrists diagnose and the
perception of the person.”
Julie Ober Allen, a third-year
doctoral student in the School
of Public Health who has
worked on with Assari on other
studies, said the new research
is crucial, particularly because
national surveys don’t often
provide breakdowns within
racial groups. The Institute
of Medicine, for example, has
recommended questions that
group ethnicities within a
racial group together.
“The Institute of Medicine
really wants to include a single
mental health item, but this
study suggests that in doing
so we would really limit our
capacity to provide services
and to identify subgroups in
the population,” Allen said.
Allen said the study is a
starting point for changing
how people think about mental
health within racial groups,
but noted that real changes
in policy will take significant
time.
“A single study such as this
is not going to change the
development of policy,” she
said. “I think the more we can
develop a body of research that
problematizes some of their
recommendations, the more
it’s going to push some of the
internal folks at the Institute of
Medicine to question the value
of
their
recommendations.
3-News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, October 15, 2015 — 3A
University music
competion to
award $100,000
to winner
The
University’s
School
of Music, Theatre & Dance
announced
it
will
hold
an
international music competition
called M-Prize, which aims to find
the most talented music ensembles
in the world. The competition’s
grand prize is $100,000, an award
larger than any other offered in
comparable competitions.
For at least its first year,
the competition will focus on
chamber music, a form of classical
music that was originally played
by a group of people who could fit
in a palace chamber. Ensembles
made up of between three to eight
members are eligible to apply.
Begining in 2016, M-Prize
will take place each May. The
comptetition
will
be
divided
into a junior (participants 18 and
younger) and senior (averaging
19-35 years of age) competiton.
M-Prize is currently accepting
applications
online.
The
registration deadline is March 1,
2016.
A dozen alleged
pimps arrested in
Detroit FBI sting
The FBI announced Tuesday
that they arrested 12 pimps and
rescued 19 teenage girls in a child
sex trafficking operation out of
metro Detroit.
According to the Detroit Free
Press, the girls, all minors ranging
from 13 to 17 years old, were
working as prostitutes in Detroit
and other areas in Michigan.
FBI
spokeswoman
Jill
Washburn said the operation,
which was part of a national
operation to stop sex trafficking
across the nation, was conducted
throughout last week.
Michael
Glennon,
FBI
supervisory special agent, said
the pimps were both male and
female and working primarily
in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne
counties. He also said while most
of the girls his team rescued in
the sting have since returned to
their families, some have fallen
back into the sex trade, despite
an FBI victim specialist having
worked with them.
MSU to expand
lab for growing
diamonds
Michigan
State
University
announced that it will invest $5
million into expanding the MSU-
Fraunhofer Center for Coatings
and Diamond Technologies, one
of the university’s laboratories
that is used to grow diamonds for
industrial purposes.
According to the Detroit Free
Press, the university plans to add
15,000 square feet of space to the
lab, as well as new diamond syn-
thesis equipment. The expansion
is expected to accomodate double
the lab’s number of staff mem-
bers, which is now 30 scientists
and technicians.
As the new space and equip-
ment will allow for an increase
in personnel and research proj-
ects, the expanded lab is expect-
ed to earn $7 million in annual
research revenue.
MSU opened the lab in 2003
with its corporate partner for the
project Fraunhofer USA.
$6.7 million ‘U’
research project
aims to improve
dialysis care
Information
Prof.
Tiffany
Veinot received $6.7 million from
the Patient-Centered Outcomes
Research Institute to fund a
project that aims to find healthier
treatment and ensure longer lives
for dialysis patients.
Because of the extensive length
and consequent complications
of current dialysis treatment,
patients often become unstable.
Veinot’s project aims to educate
those on dialysis and their
medical teams on how to make
treatment sessions safer.
POVERTY
From Page 1A
PEACE CORPS
From Page 1A
Barack Obama has also affirmed
the strategic importance and
mutually beneficial nature of the
dynamic.
Singh was similarly emphatic
about the partnership, citing
shared institutions, aspirations
and values.
“Together,
we
have
characterized the motive of our
partnership as, I quote, ‘Shared
effort, progress for all,’ ” he
said. “What does that mean? It
implies that as the world’s largest
and oldest democracies, and as
pluralist
and
multiculturalist
societies, India and the U.S.
possess a natural synergy between
our governments.”
Since
India
gained
independence
from
Great
Britain in 1947, the country has
slowly
developed,
grappling
with the large size, diversity
and complexity of the Indian
nation. Singh said only a quarter
of the Indian population can be
classified as middle-income, while
about 200 million people live
in poverty and 400 million lack
access to commercial sources of
energy.
Moving forward, Singh said
it is critical that India embraces
globalization and partners with
the United States, one of the
world’s largest economies. He also
said the rest of the world must
acknowledge India’s complexity
to effectively engage with the
country.
Singh was quick to stress that
the relationship has not been only
beneficial to India. He said the
United States has also benefited
from Indian friendship by taking
advantage
of
the
country’s
advancements in the science and
technology fields.
“The high-level attention that
the two governments are now
giving each other is not one-
sided,” he said.
He also spoke of how an Indian
space vehicle reached Mars just a
week after the U.S. vehicle landed
there, adding that the cost of
India’s vehicle stood relatively low
at about $74 million U.S. dollars.
He jokingly said this was less than
the budget needed to produce a
Hollywood movie about space.
The
ambassador
also
championed the achievements of
the United States’ Indian-origin
community and its contributions
to the country. He said 15 percent
of all startups in Silicon Valley
are owned by Indians and that
one out of seven patients receive
treatment by an Indian doctor.
In regards to international
relations, Singh emphasized that
India’s proximity to Pakistan,
Afghanistan and the Middle East
renders it a key strategic player in
combating terrorism.
He also discussed his nation’s
efforts to combat the global
problem of climate change. He
said
the
Indian
government
hopes to employ more renewable
energy in the country’s future
development.
“We should not just see what
India and the U.S. can do for each
other,” he said. “But what we can
do for the world.”
LSA
sophomore
Hannah
Lynn said she appreciated the
contextual knowledge that Singh
provided into Indian society,
especially
given
her
Indian
heritage.
“I came to hear more about the
politics between India and the
U.S., which he definitely covered,
and just a little more insight on
what his position is,” she said. “I
definitely learned more about the
Indian population.”
DAVID SONG/Daily
Kathryn Edin, a professor of sociology and public health at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the book she
co-authored with H. Luke Shaefer titled “2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” at Weill Hall on
Wednesday.
INDIA
From Page 1A
ETHNICITY
From Page 1A