michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Friday, December 11, 2015
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
DELANEY RYAN/Daily
Art & Design freshman Laura Desimine works on a Rube Goldberg project for her first-year 3D class at the Art & Architecture building on Thursday.
RUBE GOLDBE RG’S DEVICE
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
POLITICS
Eleven members
step down from
their positions after
chair’s termination
By EMMA KERR
Daily News Editor
The
Central
Student
Government’s Campus Inclusion
Commission, which aimed to
address campus issues related
to race, gender and the LGBTQ
community,
has
effectively
disbanded,
following
the
resignation of 11 of the group’s
members.
At last week’s CSG meeting,
CSG President Cooper Charlton,
an LSA senior, told the assembly
that the commission’s chair,
Matthew
Fleisher,
a
School
of Music, Theatre & Dance
sophomore, had been terminated
from his position. According to
members of the commission,
the 11 other members resigned
shortly afterward in response.
During an interview Tuesday,
CSG
executives
declined
to
answer questions related to the
commission, and at this time,
there is no active CSG commission
related to diversity and inclusion.
Charlton
did
address
the
matter at the Dec. 1 CSG meeting,
saying he and the body’s other
executives stand by Fleisher’s
termination, citing “deceptive
behavior, the misrepresentation
of facts, and racially charged
statements to members of CSG
staff and colleagues.”
Charlton
addressed
the
situation after a Michigan in
Color article, published in The
Michigan Daily, criticized how
the body’s executive leadership
interacted with the commission
and its members. The article
was temporarily retracted, but
an edited version has since been
republished following additional
review.
Fleisher provided a written
statement
on
behalf
of
the
Campus Inclusion Commission,
but declined to further discuss
the circumstances surrounding
the resignations and termination
or the commission’s future.
“The former Campus Inclusion
Commission advocated for the
inclusion of minority voices and
perspectives in the common
campus narrative, as well as
the narrative within student
government,” he wrote. “We are
handling this situation with as
much care for the community and
ourselves with principles of truth,
reconciliation, and justice. Going
forward, we will continue our
inclusionary work through other
See INCLUSION, Page 3
‘U’, campaign not
actively highlighting
candidate’s time on
Ann Arbor campus
By EMMA KINERY
Daily Staff Reporter
With a third-place position
in the Republican presidential
primary, Ben Carson is not
an unknown name for most
Americans.
The now-presidential hopeful
first made his mark as the
first neurosurgeon to separate
conjoined twins in 1987 — a feat
rooted in the medical training
he received at the University’s
Medical School.
But while he’s known to many
Americans, his alum status at the
University isn’t as well known
— and little has been done to
connect the presidential-hopeful
to his alma mater, by both the
campaign and the University.
Until Wednesday, Carson had
yet to visit Ann Arbor while on
the campaign trail, and when he
did, the visit was brief — a closed-
press meeting with Medical
School leaders and students
before a campaign stop in
Ypsilanti and a fundraiser in Ann
Arbor. The meeting on campus
was closed per the University’s
request, according to the Carson
campaign.
Later in the day, Carson
introduced
his
health
care
reform plans not on campus
but
30
minutes
away,
at
Eastern Michigan University in
Ypsilanti. During previous visits
to the state, Carson hasn’t visited
Ann Arbor, and the University
hasn’t made much mention of the
candidate since he launched his
campaign in May.
The
University
declined
requests for comment about
See CARSON, Page 2
TMD
LSA junior
Shoham Geva to
serve as paper’s
editor in chief
By KATIE PENROD
Daily Staff Reporter
With 2016 around the corner,
The Michigan Daily staff has
selected its new editor in chief,
managing editors and section
leaders for the 2016 calendar
year. The editor in chief and
editorial page editors were
chosen during a staff-wide
election, while other positions
were
elected
within
each
section.
LSA junior Shoham Geva,
a senior news editor in 2015,
will serve as editor in chief.
Generally, her goal for the
upcoming year is to move the
Daily in a more digitally focused
direction.
“Specifically, I’d like to focus
a lot on our online presence,”
she said. “Two of the initiatives
I’m planning on pursuing right
away are really defining what
our
social
media
presence
looks like — so sitting down
and creating a strategic plan
about how we brand ourselves
and how we promote ourselves.
I’m also hoping to create a new
position entirely focused on
multimedia in recognition of
the fact that it seems like a lot of
newspapers have seemed to fold
that more and more into their
coverage.”
LSA junior Laura Schinagle
will serve as managing editor,
and echoed Geva’s thoughts
about
creating
an
online
presence that caters to readers.
She added that she wants to
make every staff member feel
welcome in the newsroom.
“One of our main initiatives
is ramping up social media,
something
we’ve
already
started
doing
through
Shoham’s strategic plan,” she
said. “Also implementing more
online packaging and working
with web team to create more
interactive things online.”
LSA
junior
Emma
Kerr,
the incoming managing news
editor, said she hopes to foster
more long-form investigative
work
with
her
reporters
while continuing to engage
RYAN MCLOUGHLIN/Daily
Engineering graduate student Martin Harris demonstrates how his team’s Rubik’s cube works in the GG Brown Building
on Thursday. The cube could possibly be named the world’s largest Rubik’s cube that is solvable under human power.
& RU BIK’S CUBE
See EDITORS, Page 3
Warren, Irwin,
Zemke focus on
diverse range of
policy goals in 2015
By LYDIA MURRAY
Daily Staff Reporter
With the 2015 legislative
session coming to a close, Ann
Arbor’s
representatives
in
the State House and Senate
discussed the year’s successes
and challenges as they played
out in a Republican-controlled
legislature.
State House
In January, Rep. Jeff Irwin
(D–Ann Arbor) and Rep. Adam
Zemke (D–Ann Arbor) spoketo
The Michigan Daily about what
they hoped to accomplish during
the year. Both emphasized goals
related to higher education
funding, which has been in flux
over the past five years. In 2011,
Gov. Rick Snyder (R) cut state
funding for higher education by
almost 15 percent. Since then, he
has proposed modest increases
each
year,
though
overall
funding has not reached pre-
2011 levels.
With
this
year’s
budget,
higher education funding for
the University increased by 1.9
percent.
“We really have to work
to preserve funding at the
current levels,” Zemke said in
January. “And really it should be
See LEGISLATURE, Page 3
SCIENCE
GOVERNMENT
Research uses
clips from trials to
identify deceptive
gestures, words
By ALYSSA BRANDON
Daily Staff Reporter
What does lying look like? Two
University researchers believe
they have found the answer.
Using video footage of high-
profile court trials and hearings,
Rada Mihalcea, professor of
computer science and electrical
engineering, and Mihai Burzo,
assistant professor of mechanical
engineering at UM-Flint, are
leading a project to build lie-
detecting software that can
gauge
deception
through
a
speaker’s words and gestures.
Mihalcea said the research
team first began developing the
software by studying 120 video
clips from media coverage of
court trials. She said the team
chose to analyze videos as part
of building the software to add a
real-life element to the software.
“I think that one of the
challenges in doing the research
on deception is that usually you
get your data in lab, which is fine,
but I think that people who come
See LIES, Page 3
At his alma mater, mixed
impressions of Ben Carson
Daily staffers
elects 2016
leadership,
section editors
‘U’ profs.
create new
software to
detect lies
State reps. face challenges
in majority GOP legislature
Commission
on inclusion
inactive after
resignations
INDEX
Vol. CXXV, No. 44
©2015 The Michigan Daily
michigandaily.com
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S U D O K U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
CL A S S I F I E DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
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