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

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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

