michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Friday, November 20, 2015
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Students reflect on
progress toward
goals, current
campus climate
By ALYSSA BRANDON
Daily Staff Reporter
As the Black Student Union
honors the second anniversary
of its 2013 #BBUM Twitter
campaign, dozens crowded into
the Trotter House Multicultural
Center on Thursday night for
a candid conversation on the
lasting impacts of the campaign
on the University.
Started by Black Student Union
members as way for students of
color to share their experiences
as Black students on campus,
in
November
2013,
#BBUM
went viral, accumulating more
than 10,000 tweets by the first
evening of its launch.
The
movement
captivated
the attention of the University
community and inspired similar
efforts at other college campuses.
During
Thursday’s
event,
which was hosted by the BSU,
members displayed tweets from
2014 that were critical of the
#BBUM movement.
Some
attendees
connected
negative reactions to #BBUM
with
negative
reactions
to
arecent campus demonstration
on the Diag in solidarity with
protests at the University of
Missouri.
Several
shared
Facebook
comments and tweets posted
during
and
after
the
Diag
demonstration. Another student
shared an anecdote of a friend
being threatened by a white
man not to participate in the
demonstration.
During the event, University
alum Veniece Session said there
are still strides to be made
LEFT: LSA sophomore Breanna Wyrick talks about her personal experiences with #BBUM during the two-year commemoration at the Trotter Multicultural
Center on Thursday. RIGHT: University alum Rayonna Andrews performs a self-choreographed dance during the #BBUM commemoration talk.
January strategic
meeting marks
third year board has
met privately
By LARA MOEHLMAN
Daily Staff Reporter
At Thursday’s meeting of the
University’s Board of Regents,
Regent Shauna Ryder Diggs (D)
announced that the board will
participate in a private session
in January in lieu of its regular
monthly meeting.
The regents have held private,
strategic planning sessions in
January for the past three years.
A private session was held in
California in 2013, New York in
2014 and Ann Arbor in 2015. This
year’s session is slated to be held
in Detroit.
Before 2013, a regular meeting
open to the public was usually
held in January.
“Holding an annual strategic
planning session has proven
very useful to the regents and
to the University,” Ryder Diggs,
who chairs the board, said at
Thursday’s meeting.
University spokesman Rick
Fitzgerald said the board had
the opportunity to interact with
other leaders in higher education
from different parts of the
country during previous strategic
sessions.
“This is really an opportunity
for
the
board
to
do
some
strategic thinking in a less formal
atmosphere where there’s no
decisions being made,” he said.
“It’s just sort of a blue sky kind of
session.”
During their 2014 trip to New
York, the board met with leaders
from several colleges on the East
Coast, including William Bowen,
Princeton University professor
emeritus,
Yale
University
President Peter Salovey, Michael
Johns, retired executive vice
president for health affairs at
Emory University and Edward
See #BBUM, Page 3
See REGENTS, Page 3
Zinc-oxide could
coat medical
devices to prevent
bacteria’s spread
By TOM MCBRIEN
Daily Staff Reporter
In the hands of University
researchers, sunscreen may do
more than just protect our skin:
It might also protect our medical
devices from bacteria that kill
more than 100,000 Americans
every year.
In a paper published Oct.
27, a University research team
showed
that
coating
objects
with nanoparticles of zinc oxide,
a key ingredient in sunscreen,
reduced the growth of a species
of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by
95 percent.
In
hospitals,
where
antibiotics are used extensively,
particularly dangerous bacteria
like
methicillin
resistant
Staphylococcus
aureus
—
or
MRSA — evolve because they
are able to survive antibiotic
treatments. If these bacteria get
on objects like replacement joints,
artificial heart valves or screws
used
with
common
athletic
injuries, they can multiply inside
a patient’s body and cause severe
infections that can’t easily be
cured with antibiotics.
If bacteria can’t grow on the
objects in the first place, however,
antibiotic resistance poses less of
a problem. This is where the zinc
oxide nanoparticles could help.
Medical
School
Lecturer
J. Scott VanEpps, head of the
research team that presented
the
findings,
said
the
field
of
antibacterial
coatings
is
important because of its life-
saving implications.
“About
a
million
medical
devices
are
infected
every
year,” VanEpps said. “The best
way to treat this is often to
take the infected device out.
It’s relatively simple if you’re
removing
something
like
a
catheter. But when you’re talking
about removing a heart valve or
prosthetic joint, that requires a
long, taxing surgery that could
involve complications.”
Engineering
Prof.
Nicholas
Kotov is head of the chemical
engineering
laboratory
that
synthesized the nanoparticles.
While
zinc
oxide’s
bacteria-
fighting properties are relatively
well known, examining different
shapes it forms on the nanoscopic
scale is an area of active research.
The
researchers
examined
whether
the
shape
of
the
particles mattered, testing three
different types: spheres, plates
and pyramids with hexagonal
bases. They produced four kinds
of pegs: uncoated, coated with
spheres, coated with plates and
coated with hexagonal pyramids.
VanEpps’s team took pegs and
put them in a bacteria-growing
environment. After giving the
bacteria 24 hours to grow, they
found that the pegs coated with
the nanopyramids had 95 percent
fewer Staph bacteria — including
MRSA — than the uncoated pegs.
While
the
researchers
know that the nanopyramids
DELANEY RYAN/Daily
Law student Sarah Alsaden shines the light from her phone at a rally in support of Syrian refugees in the Law Quad
on Thursday. The Racial Justice Coalition and the Muslim Law Students Association held the rally as a response to
spreading Islamophobia following the terrorist attacks in Paris last week.
Event aims to
counter spread
of Islamophobic
sentiments
By LYDIA MURRAY
Daily Staff Reporter
Omar El-Halwagi, a second
year
Law
student,
began
Thursday night’s vigil — held for
the victims of recent terrorist
attacks in Paris and Beirut —
with an anecdote.
He told of a boy in Texas who
donated all the money in his
piggy bank to the local mosque
after hearing it was vandalized
in wake of the attacks.
“As
we
are
here
today
reflecting
on
peace,
we’re
reflecting on the attacks, we’re
reflecting on Islamophobia and
racism on our campus and the
marginalization of voices of
color,” he said. “Every now and
then, all you need is a glimpse of
hope.”
That was the message as
about 50 students gathered
in the Law Quadrangle for a
peace rally which addressed
recent waves of Islamophobia
following the attacks. The attack
in Paris spurred an increase
in
discriminatory
backlash
toward Muslims, particularly
Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS for
the United States. Michigan
Gov. Rick Snyder, along with
several dozen other governors,
have called for a temporary or
permanent halt to the entry of
Syrian refugees into their states.
Organized
by
the
Racial
Justice Coalition and the Muslim
Law Student Association, aimed
to give students the opportunity
to express their feelings about
the attacks, as well as voice
concerns about Islamophobia as
a reaction to them.
The Islamic State claimed
responsibility for the Nov. 13
attacks, which killed 129 people,
on Saturday, according to the
Washington Post.
El-Halwagi,
who
is
the
co-president of MLSA, opened
the rally by reflecting on his
reaction to the Paris attacks, as
well as separate attacks in Beirut
Nov. 12 in which a pair of suicide
bombers killed 43 people and
injured 239 others.
“(I
felt)
this
feeling
of
hopelessness when last Friday
I learned about the over 130
people who were killed in Paris,
while I was still dealing with
the hopelessness from the day
before as those same individuals
were killed in Beirut,” he said.
“While I was then dealing with
See SUNSCREEN, Page 3
See PEACE, Page 3
Initiative follows
death of ‘U’ alum
from co-ingestion
of adderall, alcohol
By JACKIE CHARNIGA
Daily Staff Reporter
Central
Student
Government will partner with
the College of Pharmacy and
Wolverine Wellness to launch
a prescription drug misuse
awareness campaign during
the Winter 2016 semester.
The initiative was driven in
part by the death of University
alum Josh Levine, who passed
away from an overdose after
mixing adderall with alcohol
at a party.
The campaign aims to
focus
on
the
correlation
between academic pressures
and drug abuse, and will
launch at a time when the
CSG representatives planning
the event said they expect
on-campus drug use to spike
— during midterms.
LSA junior David Schafer,
a CSG representative working
on the project, said it is
important to raise awareness
about how academic pressure
can impact drug abuse and
the effects of that abuse,
particularly
on
college
campuses.
A
survey
from
the
University Substance Abuse
Research Center found that
Adderall
ranked
second
See CSG, Page 3
INDEX
Vol. CXXV, No. 34
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WEATHER
TOMORROW
HI: 40
LO: 32
Regents to
hold closed
session in
Detroit
ADMINISTRATION
BSU gathers at Trotter to
mark two years of #BBUM
Key sunscreen
ingredient may
halt infections
Students hold rally for peace
in response to ISIS attacks
CSG plans
campaign
to combat
drug misuse
RESEARCH
STUDENT GOVERNMENT