Opinion
SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF
CLAIRE BRYAN
AND REGAN DETWILER
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
LAURA SCHINAGLE
MANAGING EDITOR
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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4A — Friday, January 15, 2016
I
grew up in a conserva-
tive town on the other side
of the state — the type of
town where you
can’t
go
more
than a block or
two
without
being able to see
another church. Beginning at the
end of elementary school, I was
inundated with the use of words
like “fag” and “queer” by my friends
and
teammates.
Without
fully
understanding the implications of
these words, I used them myself
in making jokes or using them as a
casual insult, accepting it simply as
part of the world. As I grew older,
however, I began to understand the
context surrounding these words.
The understanding of what the
words meant, however, sadly did
not stop me from using them at that
point in my life. I deeply regret the
days I spent using those hateful
words, and the underlying assump-
tion behind them — that I did not
accept the people those words were
used to persecute. While my views
and behaviors did change, I will
never be able to change those years.
Should I be forgiven?
Does change beget forgiveness?
If one repudiates ideas, evolves
with the times, should that earn
your respect (and maybe even your
vote)? Because politicians live their
lives in the spotlight, should we
hold them to a higher standard than
we hold ourselves?
Now, these thoughts might seem
to be worth more than your penny,
and philosophical in nature, but
they are very important questions
at the present moment. We are not
far from the most important politi-
cal event of the next four years:
our nation’s presidential election,
which is just under a year away.
In political campaigns (like the
ones currently underway), candi-
dates often attack each other by
identifying who their opponent
used to be in relation to who they
currently are, selectively choosing
focus points for their own benefit.
If one candidate never changes, but
stays true to their ideals, the oppo-
sition will tout them as resistant to
change. If they change their thought
as public opinion shifts and new
arguments are brought to the table,
they will be marked as not sticking
to their morals or being inconsistent.
Hillary Clinton is at the center
of questions and attacks like this.
As she is herself a centrist/moder-
ate Democrat, she opens herself
to attacks from both the left and
the right. The right attacks her for
changing her opinions on issues
such as same-sex marriage and
criminal justice reform. The left,
for not changing her opinions ear-
lier.
“I believe marriage is not just a
bond, but a sacred bond between
a man and a woman,” she said in
2004 as a senator who initially
opposed same-sex marriage. Then
abruptly in 2013, as potential can-
didates were beginning to increase
the frequency of their speeches and
public appearances, she became a
supporter of same-sex marriage.
Her timing happened to match up
exactly with when those in favor
of same-sex marriage became the
majority in the nation.
Her views on sentencing laws
and criminal justice in general
have also changed over the years,
and quite radically. Here’s Clinton
in 1994 when her husband cam-
paigned for the now infamous
three-strikes law: “We need more
police, we need more and tougher
prison sentences for repeat offend-
ers. The three strikes and you’re out
for violent offenders has to be part
of the plan. We need more prisons…”
But in 2013, as other candidates for
2016 began to let their positions be
known, her views changed as she
began to talk about “ending the era
of mass incarceration.”
All the evidence I’ve presented so
far points to one conclusion: that she
is making these points for political
purposes — that she does not truly
care, but instead is just saying these
things to win office. But consider
my story of change, or one of your
own. The truth is that we all change.
Our minds expand as we meet new
people and learn new things. Some-
times change is abrupt and some-
times change takes time. Sometimes
it’s small and other times it’s monu-
mental. Humans have understood
for millennia that the only thing con-
stant in life is change.
And, luckily, even politicians
change. While I am unsure of
who I will support in the coming
election, I can believe that Clin-
ton’s ideas on these subjects have
changed and that they might have
taken almost two decades to do so.
It took me many years to change
my views on the use of word like
“fag” and “queer,” and I was not
raised in her time, nor in her envi-
ronment. And there is some evi-
dence that her positions on both
issues may have begun to change
much earlier — for instance, in
2007 (in the middle of another
political campaign), when she was
commenting on criminal justice
reform, she said, “I want to have a
thorough review of all of the pen-
alties, of all the kinds of sentenc-
ing, and, more importantly, start
having more diversion and having
more second-chance programs.”
But evidence of earlier change
does not erase the fact that her stanc-
es contributed to irreparable damage
to the lives of millions of Americans,
robbing them in turn of time and
happiness. Her words and support
helped increase the amount of their
children’s birthdays parents missed
in prison, or decreased the amount
of years two mothers could spend
together, bound in holy matrimony.
I’ve posed many questions in
this column, and answered fewer.
Your impression is all that’s left.
All I can hope is that my words
spur you to investigate further,
that they might encourage you to
expose yourself to information
that challenges your views, and
that you might be open to chang-
ing your own mind once in awhile.
—Connor Kippe can be
reached at conkip@umich.edu.
Legalize flip-flopping
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E-mail anniE at asturpin@umich.Edu
ANNIE TURPIN
Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan,
Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh, Anna
Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, Lauren Schandevel, Melissa Scholke, Rebecca
Tarnopol, Ashley Tjhung, Stephanie Trierweiler,
Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
CONNOR
KIPPE
I
write this article as I close
what most consider some of
the most whirlwind months
of their lives: the
first semester of
college.
Fresh-
man
students
must adjust to liv-
ing in a new envi-
ronment, navigating their newfound
social freedom and acclimating to
the difficulty of university-level aca-
demics.
Luckily, I was spared from much
of the stress that accompanies the
latter because my high school pre-
pared me for the rigor of college
coursework and provided me with
the skills I’d need to be successful
across various disciplines. Though
many students at this university
had high school experiences simi-
lar to my own, I constantly consider
that there are students here who did
not have this privilege and whose
schools did not prepare them for
college-level education.
This sentiment was reaffirmed on
the first snowy day of winter. I spent
that Saturday at the Undergraduate
Science Building volunteering with
STEM Society, a student organiza-
tion on campus that aims to expose
K-12 students, particularly those
from lower socioeconomic back-
grounds, to inquiry-based science
and math education. Our guests for
the day were 50 JROTC students
from Detroit-area high schools.
As the students were busy shak-
ing their rock salt ice cream (who
knew colligative properties could
be so delicious?), the group’s colo-
nel spoke before them to bring the
day to a close.
“How many of you found some
of the content today to be a bit over
your head?” the colonel asked.
About half of the students raised
their hands. The question was as fair
as the students’ response: As col-
lege students engrossed in our fields,
sometimes we forget the basics were
once not so simple.
He followed with another ques-
tion: “What do you have to do when
your teachers don’t teach these
things in school?”
“Self-educate,” they responded.
“Self-educate” resounded in my
head. They self-educate not because
they want to learn more for them-
selves, or because they have found
their passion in a given subject. They
self-educate because their teachers
don’t teach these things in school.
Yes, there is only so much teachers
can cover in the short period they’re
given with students each day, and
yes, students should be responsible
for learning material on their own
time outside of class to maximize
their education. But the notion that
these students should rely solely on
self-education upset me deeply.
We live in perhaps the most edu-
cated era of human history, one
where educational resources are
more available than ever — a luxury
that has resulted in an increased
emphasis on the value of quality
education. This shows in the efforts
of presidential hopefuls like Bernie
Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who
claim lowering college tuition to be
a tenet of their political platforms.
While a college education is (validly)
seen as a gateway to social mobility,
perhaps the real problem does not lie
in the rising costs of college tuition,
but in the unreliable nature of pub-
lic schools, especially those in low-
income neighborhoods.
Take Detroit Public Schools (DPS),
for example, the school system to
which many of the JROTC students
belong. Results from DPS’s ACT
scores reveal the lackluster educa-
tion students receive there. In 2014,
only 17.8 percent of DPS 11th grad-
ers were considered “college-ready”;
only 28.8 percent and 28.4 percent of
test takers demonstrated proficiency
in math and science, respectively.
Moreover, nearly 200 schools in the
district did not have a single student
considered “college-ready” by the
ACT’s standards, with the average
score hanging around 16.4.
DPS’s teachers are not entirely
— if at all — culpable for students’
poor performance on the state’s
standardized tests. According to
the Detroit Free Press, DPS faces
an ever-increasing shortage of
teachers, with merely 2,580 teach-
ers to teach more than 46,000
students this school year. Teach-
ers’ pay remains stagnant, even
though the district expects many
of the teachers to be instruction-
al “coaches” in addition to their
normal teaching positions. This,
combined
with
the
uncertain
future of the district, has made a
difficult job — teaching — all the
more difficult. While the teach-
ers in the district are spread too
thin, the district, pressured to fill
vacant teaching spots, has pushed
non-teaching faculty into teach-
ing positions at the expense of the
quality of students’ education.
This phenomenon is also not con-
fined to Detroit’s city limits. Stud-
ies show a correlation between low
socioeconomic status and lower
ACT and SAT scores, and teacher
shortages plague districts across
the nation. Such large disparities in
the quality of education across dis-
tricts make it exceedingly difficult
for students in underprivileged dis-
tricts to receive the schooling they
need to make a college education a
reality for themselves — no matter
how much they “self-educate.”
As students at a university as
prestigious as our own, we often
forget how lucky we are to have
had the opportunity to get here.
The “normal” high school experi-
ence for many of us was one that
provided the education and extra-
curricular opportunities we needed
to earn admission to, and later be
successful at, the University. But
we must remember that there are
those among us who did not have
these privileges, a disadvantage no
sum of scholarship money can truly
mend. Perhaps this is the biggest
roadblock to the creation of a more
diverse campus community: If we
truly are to achieve the diversity
we’d like to see on college campus-
es, we must first fix the path stu-
dents take to get there.
—Rebecca Tarnopol can be
reached at tarnopol@umich.edu.
Roadblocks to college
REBECCA
TARNOPOL
S
ome time ago — my fallible memory
says the summer of 2010 — I noted
something different about my moth-
er. Alongside the alarm clock
and hand moisturizer, there
was a different set of books
on her nightstand. Not the
usual Paulo Coelho or India
Today, but the written works
of Deepak Chopra, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and
the like. These tend to be important to those
seeking something spiritual. At the time, it
was simply an observation — I didn’t think
much of it. Maybe a year or so later, I came
to her because I was really upset at someone
at school. After pouring out the wrongs and
grievances done to me, I hoped for her to con-
demn the doings of another. However, curi-
ously, she did the opposite. She asked me, “Do
you have to be unhappy?”
My memory continues to be unhelpful,
but it might have been during one of my
many teenage evenings of anxiety, sitting in
a poorly lit, silent room when I recollected
her words. By chance, I was in one of my few
moments of clarity, so I repeatedly asked
myself, “Why did I have to be unhappy?”
Now, it’s been years and those evenings might
be in the past, but the thought still remains.
Why did I have to be anything?
I kept thinking about my mother and what
happened to her. It wasn’t anything outwardly
apparent, rather something quiet and subtle. I
could feel it in the way she spoke, the way she
reacted, the way she gave advice. She no longer
wanted things, and she refused presents for
birthdays and Mothers Days. Whenever I com-
plained about something, she told me I didn’t
have to feel like this. It felt like she blamed
me for my problems. I didn’t know what was
going on in her head, so there indeed was some
unavoidable distance. It felt like she changed
the way she saw things and the way she felt
about people; like she almost seemed to live by
some new truth.
This affected me. Every now and then, she
would give me some vague-sounding philo-
sophical advice that was supposed to solve
my problem. It was always about me chang-
ing myself. I always acted like I wasn’t listen-
ing, like I had no time for philosophy. But on
a few very rare occasions, I heard her. I didn’t
always understand what she meant, but I cer-
tainly heard. And, in some inexplicable way,
it seemed to help.
Now, I don’t know why, but I was curi-
ous about how this had happened. I wanted a
meta-analysis of sorts. I found it interesting
how thoughts translated into actions, and these
actions were interpreted into thoughts by oth-
ers. The brilliantly understated manner in
which these ideas moved utterly fascinated me.
There is a general path by which ideas
are transmitted from person to person and,
somewhat virally, from community to com-
munity. Everything said or put forth is an
idea, sent into a person’s mind. The mind pro-
cesses it and either denies or accepts it. This
process works similarly in a parent-child
relationship, but some aspects are some-
what intensified. A young child has two main
spheres of knowledge to draw from: genetics
and experience. And at that young age, most
experiences involve the parents, resulting in
the child magnifying and studying religiously
every thought and belief their parent shows
to them. To a young child, the way a parent
lives is how all life is generally lived. Their
parents’ actions are the tenets of their per-
spective, the basis of what is and what isn’t.
Whether or not they keep these ideas later on
in life is a different thing, but these are the
fundamentals. These are what form the laws
of our newly formed skull-sized kingdoms, as
a certain Dave Wallace would put it.
An analogy I find useful is comparing this
effect with migration. A person migrates when
they desire a better life. That same concept
applies here, but instead of a physical space,
it occurs in a mental one. My mother must’ve
yearned for a better life, enough for her to
immigrate to a state of thought that clearly
made her life better, a state of thought I wish
I understood.
Going with this migration metaphor, it’s
interesting to consider how this effect trick-
les down through generations. What happens
when my children see my adopted tenets as
their base tenets? We know people are a com-
bination of their genes and their environment.
We know people with similar genes diverge
when in different physical environments, but
I’m curious how a person will act when they’re
in different mental landscapes, when the very
core framework of their mind is different.
Would their baseline happiness be higher?
Lower? How about general life and relation-
ship satisfaction? Unfortunately, I don’t know
the answers to these questions. Too many vari-
ables, too personal of a study. Maybe this is one
of those things everyone knows, but doesn’t
know for sure. Still, I really wish I did.
Some of you might be wondering why I
didn’t just ask her. I could’ve just spoken to her
about what happened, and I’d have spared all
these mental gymnastics. That is a fair point,
and so I did exactly that. I got over the some-
what Indian awkwardness that is asking your
parents about themselves. I sat down beside her
and asked away. At first, she smiled and told me
she never thought anyone noticed (I wonder
how she’ll feel when she finds out I wrote an
entire column about her). She gazed at the tele-
vision for a bit, paying it no attention. She told
me she felt mentally trapped. That for what-
ever reason, she felt she had no anchor, that her
state of being felt eternally tied to her husband,
her friends, her children, essentially everyone
other than her. She said she didn’t feel in con-
trol of her life, and she had to fix this somehow.
Finally, I wondered if she thought this change
in mindset would have changed the lives of her
children. She replied no, that if there indeed
was any effect, it was inadvertent.
Regardless of events of the transitory period,
I’m genuinely happy she’s content now. Wheth-
er she knew it or not, it did affect me. I’d like to
think that, after all this, I’m a bit more under-
standing, a bit more accepting of life and its
people and its events. While I cannot yet articu-
late all the ways, I do know something for sure:
that my mother, as usual, was right. She smiled
when I told her that.
I wish I had some sort of moral to tell you,
something beautiful and profound that would
make your life a little better. All I have are my
own experiences and my own perspective. I
wager that there is worth in simply being con-
scious of yourself and your actions. There is
also worth in knowing that, while you don’t
have control over many things, you do have
control over yourself, and you have the power to
do with it what you want. In our own personal
times of need, we might all have to be migrants.
My amma was one, and she exists contently.
Who knows. One day, if we’re all really lucky,
we might get to live like her.
—Bharat Nair can be reached
at bnair@umich.edu.
Thought migrants
BHARAT
NAIR