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Ann Arbor, Michigan
Thursday, October 29, 2015
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Take a walk in the Terrorfied
Forest.
» INSIDE
the b-side
Survey results
from Change It Up!
program illustrate
progress in 2014
By ALLANA AKHTAR
Daily Staff Reporter
Though violations related
to alcohol, drugs and sexual
misconduct increased in 2014
over the previous year, data
from the University’s Change
It Up! workshop indicates that
students feel more prepared to
intervene in potentially harm-
ful situations after participating
in the program.
According to survey data pro-
vided to The Michigan Daily by
the Office of Student Life, the
number of students who “very
strongly agree” that they are
motivated to intervene in harm-
ful situations rose by 24 percent
after completing the Change It
Up! program during the 2013-
2014 school year.
The survey is based on evalu-
ations of students’ propensity to
intervene in harmful situations
and responses to what they con-
sider harmful behavior. Those
markers were measured before
and after participating in the
Change It Up! training, which
is mandatory for first-year stu-
dents.
Overall, the total percentage
of students who said they agree
it is their business to intervene
in harmful situations rose by
93.89 percent following the
workshop.
The University began imple-
menting Change It Up! pro-
grams last year for incoming
freshman students.
Will Sherry, director of the
Spectrum Center, said the pro-
gram is an introduction to help-
ing students identify a variety
of harmful situations.A number
of other programs throughout
the year, including Relationship
Remix and AlcoholEdu, also
aim to teach first-year students
aspects of bystander interven-
Austin Hatch
discusses hardship,
overcoming obstacles
By ISOBEL FUTTER
Daily Staff Reporter
When LSA sophomore Austin
Hatch was 8 years old, his life
changed completely. His father
was piloting a plane intended to
return the family home from a
spring break trip when it stalled
and crashed, killing his mother,
younger brother and older sis-
ter. Then, in 2011, nine days after
Hatch committed to play for the
Michigan men’s basketball team,
the
unimaginable
occurred:
Hatch was the sole survivor of a
second plane crash with his father
as the pilot. The crash killed his
father and stepmother.
“I was told there was a one in
3.4 million chance in surviving a
plane crash with at least one fatal-
ity,” he told a crowd in Hatcher
Graduate Library on Wednesday.
“That’s just one, so if you multi-
ply that against each other, I had
a one in 11 quadrillion 560 trillion
chance to survive.”
Hatch, along with several fac-
ulty members who faced their
own challenging circumstances,
shared his story of resilience
Wednesday at Talk it UP!
Sponsored by the Newnan
Academic Advising Center, Talk
it UP! provided a forum for mem-
bers of the University community
to reflect on the meaning of fail-
ure, success and endurance. The
event featured a handful of short
talks throughout the day.
Hatch told the audience he had
to relearn to walk, talk, eat and
live a normal life after the acci-
dent.
“I had basketball in my future,
and I knew I had committed to
Michigan,” he said. “I had some-
thing to work towards. All of
See RESILIENCE, Page 2A
See INTERVENTION, Page 2A
MARINA ROSS/Daily
LSA sophomore Austin Hatch, a two-time plane crash survivor and undergraduate student assistant to the Michigan men’s basketball team, speaks about facing
challenges at the Talk it UP! event in the Hatcher Graduate Library on Wednesday.
PUBLIC SAFETY
MEDICINE
HEALTH
CAMPUS LIFE
Discovery could
advance treatment
of lymphoma, breast
and colon cancer
By KATIE PENROD
Daily Staff Reporter
For years, scientists have been
attempting to turn off Notch, a
common cancer-causing gene,
without much success. Now, Uni-
versity researchers may have dis-
covered a solution.
A new study focused on Notch
was led by Mark Chiang, assistant
professor of internal medicine
in the Medical School. Notch is
heavily involved in T-cell leuke-
mia, a cancer commonly found
in children, and is also involved
in breast cancer, colon cancer,
melanoma and other lymphomas.
In the past, Chiang said, all drugs
aimed to target Notch have been
associated with serious and even
life-threatening side effects. This
motivated his team to find a safer
way to target the gene.
Chiang said targeting Notch
has been particularly difficult
because the gene also has benefi-
cial functions within the body.
“It’s been very hard to target
Notch because Notch not only has
cancer causing-functions, but also
important normal functions like
keeping your intestines healthy
or preventing you from getting
cancers,” Chiang said. “If you
simply block off Notch functions,
yes you can kill some cancer cells,
but then you have diarrhea — that
can be life-threatening — and also
second cancers.”
Chiang said the team wanted to
investigate exactly what activates
Notch’s cancer-causing activi-
ties. The team discovered a pro-
tein called Zmiz1, which sticks to
Notch and turns on the cancer-
causing functions. When the pro-
tein was separated from Notch in
mice, Chiang said mice did not
experience side effects typically
associated with Notch-inhibiting
drugs.
“If we try to break the interac-
tion between or unstick Zmiz1
from Notch, then we can actually
cause tumor regression,” he said.
“This may be a way to kill cancer
cells but without the major toxici-
ties of Notch inhibitors.”
Study explores links
between past drug
experience, misuse
down the road
By ALEXA ST. JOHN
Daily Staff Reporter
Adolescents who reported
receiving a prescription from
a doctor for a pain reliever are
nearly 33 percent more likely to
misuse pain relievers compared
to those who never received
a
doctor-prescribed
opioid,
according to recent University
study.
The subjects of the study’s
focus group, 12th grade students,
were asked to report whether or
not a doctor prescribed them a
pain reliever and if they used it.
Researchers then provided the
same students with follow-up
questions between the ages of 19
and 23 to see if the students who
had been prescribed pain reliev-
ers were more likely to misuse
them when they get older than
those who never used an opioid.
Conducted by the University’s
Institute for Social Research,
the
study
also
determined
whether a student’s previous
experience with drugs — includ-
ing drugs other than opioids,
such as marijuana and alcohol —
played a role in a student’s con-
University alum
talks desperation
in central Asian
republics
By BRIAN KUANG
Daily Staff Reporter
In a lecture at the LSA
International
Institute
on
Wednesday, Kelly McMann,
a University alum and politi-
cal science professor at Case
Western Reserve University,
challenged traditional con-
ceptions of corruption based
on more than a decade study-
ing post-Soviet Central Asian
republics.
Referencing
her
2014
book, “Corruption as a Last
Resort: Adapting to the Mar-
ket in Central Asia,” McMann
argued that petty political
corruption in developing post-
communist countries is not a
result of bureaucratic over-
reach, poverty or a culture that
disregards rule of law. Rather,
it occurs when citizens have
DAVID SONG/Daily
Ann Arbor resident Chris Liu, known by his barista name Butch Lao, prepares coffee for customers at Comet Coffee
on Wednesday.
COFFE E CR A ZE
See CORRUPTION, Page 3A
See PAINKILLERS, Page 3A
See CANCER, Page 3A
‘U’ officials:
Bystander
intervention
efforts work
Talk it UP! provides forum
for reflection on resilience
Researchers
target cancer-
causing gene
Adolescent painkiller use
may impact later drug abuse
Lecturer
discusses
post-Soviet
corruption
INDEX
Vol. CXXV, No. 21
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