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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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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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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

