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Wednesday, January 27, 2016 — 3A
GREG GOSS/Daily
Montana Stevenson, graduate student in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, speaks on issues ranging
from food scarcity to racial injustices during the Food Justice Panel at the Dana Building on Tuesday.
within cities like Detroit.
“This is legal segregation,”
Bernardo said. “This is what it
looks like.”
Another panelist, Mama Han-
ifa Adjuman, who is the Educa-
tion and Outreach Director of
the Detroit Black Community
Food Security Network, said the
city of Detroit doesn’t need mis-
sionaries, but rather needs allies.
While working with DBCFSN,
Adjuman said the organization
noticed a new phenomenon in
the city of Detroit: Young, subur-
ban white people were coming to
the city to teach members of the
Black community how to garden.
“To come into the city and
begin to garden was not the
issue, it wasn’t even the prob-
lem,” Adjuman said. “To dis-
respect
the
traditions,
to
disrespect the residents in the
city of Detroit — residents who
have for thousands of years been
engaged with agriculture — was
the problem.”
Adjuman said the most effec-
tive movements happen organi-
cally by the people who will be
most affected by the decisions.
“This is a grassroots commu-
nity organization that came out
of the people in Detroit — the
Black community in Detroit, first
identifying a very real problem
and then coming together collec-
tively to create a solution to that
problem,” she said.
Panelists Whitney Smith and
Montana Stevenson, both gradu-
ate students in the School of
Natural Resources and Environ-
ment, focused their presentation
on the Ypsilanti food system.
Their research examined food
accessibility for impoverished
areas of Ypsilanti by examining
the public transportation system
to those areas of the city.
Smith and Stevenson first
identified where residents in or
near Ypsilanti could buy food,
including both traditional food
stores as well as pharmacies,
farmers markets and food banks.
Their results concluded that
some of Ypsilanti’s most impov-
erished areas do not have access
to bus lines, and therefore don’t
have access to affordable and
nutritious food.
“Access is still a critical part of
food justice, and it is very impor-
tant to this conversation,” Smith
said.
Panelist Carla Dhillon dis-
cussed what she described as
the
unjust
appropriation
of
native communities’ food sys-
tems through government trea-
ties, highlighting how colonists
arrived in the United States
and erased native people and
their culture and have therefore
greatly altered their food sys-
tems.
She also said native food sys-
tems, such as sacred wild rice,
have become more difficult to
cultivate since native popula-
tions have been relocated to res-
ervations.
“The many ways that settler
America disrupts collective food
relations represent forms of food
injustice,” Dhillon said.
LSA senior Claire Roos, who
was also one of the event’s orga-
nizers, said the event was cre-
ated to recognize that while food
sustainability is an often-dis-
cussed topic, food justice is not.
“Oftentimes we forget to
address the social justice side,”
Roos said. “You can’t have sus-
tainable food without social jus-
tice.”
Business
junior
Courtney
Maliszewski, who attended the
event, said it particularly inter-
ested her because of current
health and nutrition concerns
addressed in the media in Flint
and Detroit.
“I really took away how
it affects so many different
groups,” Maliszewski said. “And
I definitely think that is some-
thing more people need to be
aware of.”
FOOD
From Page 1A
since its start in 2012.
“I think that resonated with
a lot of people who use social
media for dating purposes and
have
been
really
frustrated
with the way they’ve been
approached,” she said.
Kellie Carbone, a health edu-
cator at Wolverine Wellness and
director of the event, said the
evening’s theme was “surren-
der,” because everything that
could have gone wrong, did go
wrong, in each student’s story.
“That was half-joking,” she
said. “But it does seem like each
time the performer went to per-
form, their pieces constellated
around some type of theme,
some similarity that they can
draw from each piece.”
Public Health graduate stu-
dent Kristen Harden said she
found the storytelling format of
the event engaging and power-
ful.
“It’s a really awesome way to
put out messages about things
like positive body image and pro-
moting health and wellness on
campus,” Harden said. “I think
this is really great and wanted
to come and see that. It’s a really
nice sign of solidarity and sup-
port.”
Harden said she thought the
night’s theme resonated with her
the most.
“Surrendering to self-love and
to support and just being you is
wonderful,” she said. “Just sur-
rendering to being comfortable
with yourself and loving who
you are.
Public Health graduate stu-
dent Kathleen Koviak said she
learned not to be afraid of herself
by listening to the monologues at
the event.
“It’s all just to be yourself and
love yourself for who you are
and to share your story and what
makes you, you,” she said.
It’s important students attend
the event and experience the
performer and their stories,
Carbone said, because of what
she described as a campus-wide
obsession with attaining perfec-
tion.
“They’re used to being the
best, the brightest,” she said. “A
lot of the research we’ve done on
campus shows that the student
population as a whole is also
really reluctant to ask for help or
admit that anything is wrong.”
Carbone said the storytelling
format has encouraged students
to craft their own narratives and
share them with an audience.
“What we have found when
we started doing workshops and
events like this, is that when
you give people an opportunity
to say what’s going on, the light
bulb goes off for other people,”
Carbone said. “Our goal is to
challenge some of the stigmas
that exist on our campus, espe-
cially around appearance and
perfection and attractiveness
and weight.”
BODY
From Page 1A
Susan Ernst, director of Uni-
versity Health Services gynecol-
ogy department and assistant
professor of obstetrics and gyne-
cology, earned a grant for a pro-
posal pertaining to medical care
in Ethopia.
Ernst runs a gynecology clinic
at the University for adolescents
and women with disabilities,
and has been working to offer
similar services at the St. Paul’s
Hospital and Millennium Medi-
cal Center in Ethiopia.
Ernst said the Ethiopian Cen-
ter for Disability and Develop-
ment and the Ethiopian Women
Disabilities National Organiza-
tion both acknowledged there
were barriers preventing adoles-
cents and women with disabili-
ties from receiving reproductive
health services. Because of this,
she began working on a proposal
with the aim of creating focus
groups with these demographics
to gather information about the
obstacles to receiving medical
care.
Ernst plans to survey the
administrators,
faculty
and
nurses at the hospital about their
difficulties in providing care for
their patients, such as the physi-
cal barriers patients with severe
disabilities face from hospitals
not being properly equipped to
assist them.
“Our ultimate goal is to try
to improve those services that
are not only offered at St. Paul’s,
but throughout other reproduc-
tive health care clinics in Ethio-
pia,” Ernst said. “In the United
States we have code and all of
the buildings have to be built to
code for patients with disabili-
ties, but there, some of the clin-
ics may not have a ramp to get
up into the clinic area, or even if
the patients can get up into the
clinic area, the doorways might
not be accessible for somebody
in a wheelchair.”
Ernst said she appreciates the
award because it has allowed her
to collaborate with individuals
from Ethiopia, the University of
Michigan and University of Cen-
tral Florida.
“This
money
allows
the
research team to not only go back
to Ethiopia and do this work, but
to actually hire women with dis-
abilities in Ethiopia to help us as
study coordinators and to pay
the adolescents and women with
disabilities to be a part of our
focus group and just to work in a
collaborative manner to address
this problem,” Ernst said.
Other
recipients
included
Nancy Fleischer, an assistant
professor of epidemiology and
Elizabeth King, assistant profes-
sor in health behavior and health
education.
Fleischer said her project
is focused on the role of social
mobility in racial and ethnic dis-
parities and infant health. With
the grant, Fleischer said she will
be constructing a multi-gen-
erational data set to link birth
certificate data across multiple
generations to understand cross-
generational social mobility and
to see if that is related to adverse
birth outcomes such as prema-
ture birth.
As part of the grant, Fleischer
said she has been able to hire a
graduate student who has been
doing work on Institutional
Review Board applications and
data request applications. She
also said the award has allowed
her to work with colleagues in
South Carolina, as well as at
Michigan State University.
“It has been helpful for mak-
ing connections across campus,
since I started my faculty posi-
tion just in September of 2015,
and don’t have the research
linkages
already,”
Fleischer
said. “I am very grateful to have
received it and I look forward to
doing the work.”
King said she’s planning on
working
with
collaborators
in Russia to do a qualitative
research study on why women
who test positive for HIV dur-
ing pregnancy do or do not stay
in HIV care.
“This Seed Grant is allow-
ing us to do this project, which
hopefully will be the foundation
for designing an intervention
to improve women’s outcomes
related to getting enrolled in,
and staying on, HIV treatment
services,” King said. “We’re hop-
ing to use our findings from this
project to design a program to
help women.”
Other beneficiaries include
Shobita Parthasarathy, associate
professor of public policy, Musi-
cology prof. Louise Stein and
Ruth Tsoffar, associate profes-
sor of women’s studies and com-
parative literature.
Stein is planning to utilize the
funding she received from the
IRWG to pay for travel to Italy.
Her research focuses on famous
17th century alto castrato singer
Giovanni.
She said this is an impor-
tant component to traditional
Italian gender roles because
Grossi seems to represent the
emergence of a new kind of mas-
culinity. In particular, Stein said
she’s interested in understand-
ing how Grossi succeeded in the
competitive operatic market-
place, as well as how he executed
different kinds of masculinity on
stage.
“(The grant) will provide me
the funding to be able to travel
to the libraries and archives in
Italy that have the materials I
need,” she said. “I also appreci-
ate this because gender study is
a new area for me ... I look for-
ward to also collaborating, get-
ting advice from scholars here at
U of M.”
Applications for the grants,
which are annual, opened in the
fall. They were scored based on
multiple criteria regarding the
project, including its quality
and importance, its relation to
IRWG’s central focus on women,
gender and sexuality, and its
inclusion of issues regarding
race, sexual orientation or cul-
ture. The significance of the
project to its field as well as the
contribution to the University
was also taken into account.
GRANT
From Page 1A
in two student forums in the fall
aimed at gathering feedback on
the R&E requirement.
According to the resolution,
the center would provide train-
ing and resources for graduate
student instructors and profes-
sors to better facilitate sensitive
discussions regarding race and
ethnicity. It would also create a
space for students to engage in
further dialogue.
Several members expressed
confusion about the functional-
ity of such a facility. LSA senior
David Shafer, a CSG representa-
tive, said he appreciated the spir-
it of the resolution, but wanted
to know more about the logistics
of the center, such as who would
work there and how it would
operate.
In response, LSA junior Sean
Pitt, CSG chief of staff, stressed
the intent of the resolution. He
explained that it aims to serve
as a sign of student support for
the proposal to the University’s
administration so that the LSA
committee currently reviewing
the R&E requirement will fur-
ther entertain the creation of a
support center for R&E courses.
The committee could then work
to strategize and develop specif-
ics.
The resolution was referred
to the resolutions committee for
further review. Shafer also sug-
gested hosting a forum to gain
feedback for such a center.
Guest Speakers
LSA senior Adam Waggoner,
chair of the Student Organization
Funding Commission, updated
CSG on the commission’s activi-
ties at Tuesday’s meeting. SOFC
is the branch of CSG that makes
funding decisions to support stu-
dent organizations on campus.
Waggoner said SOFC’s budget
was about $200,000 last semes-
ter, which represents about half
of CSG’s. $198, 927 was reim-
bursed to student organizations
by the end of the semester. Stu-
dent groups requested nearly
half a million dollars in funding
total, and slightly over a quarter
million dollars were awarded.
He explained that demand for
funding has been increasing
both because of a rise in requests
and easier accessibility due to
the online application.
This semester’s budget has
been raised to $225,000; howev-
er, Waggoner said it’s not propor-
tional to the increase in demand.
Out of the nine periods of
funding CSG divides the semes-
ter into, seven waves remain for
this semester.
we can give people except to be
conservative.”
Neeley said one of the most
important steps for the commu-
nity to take is restoring trust in
the government.
“We have to go back and
rebuild the trust and confidence
of those in the geographical area
who were severely impacted so
they can feel comfortable living
CSG
From Page 2A
WATER
From Page 2A