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 ©2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com NEWS......................... 2A OPINION.....................4A ARTS.......................... 5A SPORTS ......................7A SUDOKU..................... 3A CL ASSIFIEDS...............6A NEW ON MICHIGANDAILY.COM Professors develop defense against coffee fungus MICHIGANDAILY.COM/SECTION/NEWS GOT A NEWS TIP? Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us know. 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