Opinion
SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF
CLAIRE BRYAN
AND REGAN DETWILER
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
LAURA SCHINAGLE
MANAGING EDITOR
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Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, February 4, 2016
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, Hunter Zhao
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
S
aturday evening, I slid into
the back seat of the third
Uber I have ever been in. I
was on my way
to a near-Main
Street bar with
two
friends,
both from states
with
stricter
seatbelt
laws
than Michigan.
They
instant-
ly
harnessed
themselves into
the
passenger
and
rear-pas-
senger
seats
of
the
Uber
driver’s car. I remained unbuck-
led in the rear driver-side seat. I
didn’t even notice I was the only
one without a seatbelt on until we
arrived at our destination. Though
I always buckle up in the front seat
of any car, it isn’t as instinctive to
me when riding in the back.
Fifty years ago, the federal
government passed the National
Traffic Safety and Motor Vehicle
Safety Act of 1966, allowing it to
create and enforce safety stan-
dards for motor vehicles. As the
years passed, seatbelt require-
ments became more and more
strict. In 1984, New York became
the first state to require drivers to
wear seatbelts.
About one year later, Michigan
was the third state to enact some
sort of seatbelt requirement. By
2000, the Michigan legislature,
similar to several states across
the nation, instituted a primary
enforcement
law
giving
police
officers the authorization to pull
over drivers for not wearing a seat-
belt. Originally, officers were only
authorized to ticket unrestrained
citizens after pulling them over for
a separate offense.
In 2004, Michigan was the first
state east of the Mississippi River
to achieve a 90-percent seatbelt
use rate. Five years later, it held
the national record for highest
seatbelt use at 97.9 percent. Today,
Michigan requires that all drivers
and front-seat passengers always
wear their seatbelts. However, if
you are over 15 years of age, a seat-
belt is not required in the back seat
of vehicles. In 2010, the state had
the fifth-highest seatbelt-use rate
at 95.2 percent. Nationally, the
rate is 87 percent for drivers, 85
percent for front-seat passengers
and 78 percent for rear-seat occu-
pants in 2013.
According to the National High-
way Traffic Safety Administration’s
2010 State and Territory survey,
“Jurisdictions with stronger seat-
belt enforcement laws continue to
exhibit generally higher use rates
than those with weaker laws.”
The Insurance Institute for
Highway Safety and the High-
way Loss Data Institute notes
that seatbelt rates are often lower
among men, younger people and
occupants of pickup trucks. A 2012
national telephone survey found
that short-distance drives, forget-
fulness and discomfort were the
top reasons for not wearing a seat-
belt among those who sometimes
used a seatbelt. Among those who
never wore a seatbelt, discomfort,
the belief that seatbelts are not
necessary and a dislike of being
told what to do were the top three
reasons for their decisions.
Seatbelt-use rates have soared
since the 1960s as researchers
and citizens have come to realize
how vital they are to protection
while riding in vehicles. In 2009,
more than half of passenger occu-
pant fatalities occurred while the
passengers
were
unrestrained.
NHTSA estimated that seatbelts
saved more than 62,000 lives from
2009 to 2013.
Growing up in a rural Michigan
county, I witnessed a lot of unbuck-
led car passengers. Whenever I went
on long trips as a kid with my cousin
and her dad, he would make the back
seat of his van into a pull-out bed
and let us sleep during the ride. My
mom always scolded me, telling me
to make sure to wear my seatbelt in
cars, but I was a kid. It was fun not
having to wear a seatbelt.
When I turned 16, I stopped
wearing my seatbelt in the back seat
during short-distance rides or with
drivers whom I knew. With fewer
than 800 residents in my home-
town, the roads are nearly always
empty. I never questioned my
behavior until I came to Ann Arbor
and made friends who did.
After watching the Democratic
debate nearly three weeks ago, my
friend Derek offered to drive me to
my car. It was freezing outside. We
piled into Derek’s roommate’s car,
dropped another friend off at her
apartment and then headed across
campus to the Maynard Street
parking garage. Almost 300 feet
from our destination, Derek had a
sudden realization.
“You’re not wearing a seatbelt,”
he said.
“You don’t have to in Michigan
when you’re over 15 years old and
in the back seat,” I retorted.
“There’s a strict seatbelt rule in
this car,” replied Derek’s room-
mate, Sam. “I wouldn’t even start
the car until everyone was buckled
when I was a camp counselor.”
“Well, I trust your driving,” I
directed toward Derek.
“It’s other people on the road
that you have to worry about,”
responded Sam, poking me in the
knee as he said it.
Instantly, I felt guilty. As much
as I hated to admit it, they were
right. How many times have I
heard of a fatality when a car pas-
senger was unrestrained? How
many public service announce-
ments have I watched about the
importance of seatbelts? How
many lives could have been saved
with a seatbelt?
The answer is too many.
And yet, last weekend I found
myself once again slipping into
old habits. I remained unbuck-
led during that Uber drive Satur-
day night. But, looking at my two
friends safely strapped to their
seats, I once again felt guilty.
Aarica Marsh can be reached
at aaricama@umich.edu.
On seatbelts and identity
AARICA
MARSH
E-mail BoB at wEisBEcr@umich.Edu
BOB WEISBECKER
In September 2015, I launched a UROP-
supported project with four undergraduates
and a graduate research assistant to explore
and make public the history of LSA’s Race
and Ethnicity requirement.
The first question we set out to ask and
answer was: What conditions on campus
led to the creation of the Race and Ethnicity
requirement? The second question has to do
with the process that led to the vote of the
LSA faculty on Oct. 8, 1990, which established
the requirement. Leading up to the decision
were what then-Dean Edie Goldenberg
called “several years of soul-searching and
intellectually challenging dialogue” in the
Spring 1991 issue of LSA Magazine.
“Faculty of all ranks and disciplines
questioned the rationale of a ‘diversity
requirement’ and asked how it could fit
within the traditional understanding of
a liberal arts education. Some expressed
skepticism that a requirement would lead to
the desired outcome, however worthy the
intent. They were answered by others who
argued that the College would be derelict if it
failed to attempt to prepare students to face
one of the most pressing social problems of
the late 20th century,” Goldberg said.
While Dean Goldberg uses the phrase
“diversity requirement” in her carefully
worded letter to LSA alumni, the real impetus
behind the requirement was about racism.
The first proposal for a “racism requirement”
was generated by a student activist group, the
United Coalition Against Racism, in tandem
with two faculty groups: Concerned Faculty,
and Faculty Against Institutional Racism.
Motivated by a string of racist incidents on
campus in 1987, they worked for over a year
to get the proposal on the agenda of an LSA
faculty meeting.
Though this first proposal — sometimes
called the “radical alternative” — was
defeated, authorization was given to establish
UC 299 as a pilot course dealing with issues
of racism and intolerance. This was not what
UCAR envisioned; the organization sought
a committee consisting of seven faculty
members from various ethnic and gender
studies departments and two students from
the Baker-Mandela Center to work together
over the development of the course. They
feared the course’s supervisory board would
consist of people who had little understanding
of race, racism and discrimination.
In the meantime, the LSA faculty continued
to consider and debate several alternatives.
All of this unfolded against the backdrop
of continued student protest by UCAR and
within the broader Black Action Movement,
dubbed BAM III. As was the case with BAM
I and BAM II issues of campus climate, the
diversity of the student body and the faculty,
questions of equity in funding and, of course,
the nature of the curriculum continued
to swirl. Some administrations, like LSA’s
Dean Peter Steiner, were denounced as
unresponsive and obstructionist.
The debates over what would eventually
become LSA’s Race or Ethnicity requirement
(the name was changed to Race and Ethnicity
in 1995) revealed stresses and fault lines
within the faculty and on campus. Some
warned of an overly politicized curriculum
that would substitute “indoctrination” for
“education”; others warned that the proposed
requirement would not go far enough in
fully addressing the underlying problems of
racism; some feared more student activism,
while others sought to promote more radical
alliances between students and faculty. The
tensions over whether the requirement should
focus on racism or on diversity was never, we
think, fully resolved. Most understood that
no single course or degree requirement was
sufficient to solve the problems of race and
racism, intolerance and discrimination.
The debates — captured in the pages
of the local press, including the Daily, in
archival materials stored at the Bentley,
and in the living memory of participants —
offer a historical window into the origins
and evolution of the Race and Ethnicity
requirement. We also believe they tell us
something important about the history of our
campus and the ways we have struggled with,
and sometimes struggled over, questions of
race, identity and education.
The main goal of our project is to use a
variety of sources to tell the story of the
Race and Ethnicity requirement and to find
creative ways of share our findings with
the Ann Arbor campus. You can follow us
on Twitter (@reumhistory). We’ll also be
partnering with the Daily on an oral history
project to capture the voices of faculty,
students, alumni and administrators who
took part in the events of the late 1980s and
early 1990s. As LSA continues to review the
requirement and to think carefully about
the role of the curriculum in its Diversity,
Equity & Inclusion plan, we hope that this
history will help to inform our contemporary
perspectives.
Stay tuned for more.
Angela D. Dillard is LSA’s associate dean for
undergraduate education. She is also the Earl Lewis
Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican & African
Studies and a professor in the Residential College.
History of the R&E requirement
ANGELA DILLARD | OP-ED
W
ith surprisingly no obligations to
fulfill, no deadlines to meet and
no meetings to attend, I laced up
my running shoes. After
almost four Ann Arbor
winters, 45-degree days
in January are still anom-
alies to me, but they’re
anomalies
I
take
full
advantage of.
I jogged around the cen-
ter of campus and rounded
my way south through a
large section of student
neighborhoods. I origi-
nally told myself it’d be an
easy jog — a short distance
at a gentle pace. But I figured I could do a lit-
tle bit more.
I kept pushing onward. One more lap
around the law buildings seemed feasible.
Once I reached the last stoplight on my street,
my over-ambitious mind told my tired limbs
to work a little harder. It didn’t matter that
I hadn’t jogged in more than a month or that
I’d been running for 45 minutes already. I
probably wasn’t going to be able to squeeze in
another run for a while.
I sprinted, ignoring the warning signals my
body was sending.
Darting around pedestrians on the side-
walk, my foot landed in a patch of fresh,
slippery mud. I tumbled forward, slamming
onto the concrete driveway of the house
next to my apartment. My hands — out-
stretched to break my fall — were scraped
and caked in layers of dirt and blood. Lying
on my back like an overturned turtle, I con-
ducted an injury inventory.
“OK, so that was probably a bit too much at
once,” I muttered bitterly as I hobbled along
the last 30 or so feet to my apartment.
That’s not the first time I’ve uttered that
phrase, and the tendency to overexert myself
crossed my mind countless times over the
past few semesters. Overexertion, for me and
many other college students, is a matter of
hindsight. This realization hit as I collapsed
on the couch at the end of the day, after get-
ting little to no sleep the prior night. It accom-
panied migraines and an empty stomach after
realizing I forgot to eat until 8 p.m. or when
two cups of coffee and a bowl of cereal were
the only things sustaining me throughout the
day. Additionally, it recently hit when a rela-
tively mild case of bronchitis lingered for an
entire month.
College cultivates an environment of over-
exertion, and its effects are as diverse as
the students experiencing this atmosphere.
As a student population, we’re continually
reminded that “busy” is always somehow
“better.” Our success is constantly measured
according to how hard we push ourselves and
whether we’re pushing ourselves enough.
For some, this equates to dividing time out-
side of class between numerous jobs, stu-
dent organizations, internships and clubs.
As these expectations increase, overexertion
and exhaustion can plague students regard-
less of their course load. In this balancing act,
something is always sacrificed — whether it
be one’s social life, their grades or their physi-
cal well-being.
For students of lower socioeconomic sta-
tus, overexertion is an almost-certainty, and
large amounts of money and the ability to
even complete a degree are often at stake. For
example, students often take heavy course
loads of roughly 15 to 18 credits for a vari-
ety of reasons: completing a double major,
switching a major or merely trying to gradu-
ate within four years. However, students from
low-income households frequently do so out
of financial necessity. Students coming from
school districts located in low-income areas
often are limited in their ability to accrue AP
or IB credits that could count toward their
degrees, placing them at a disadvantage in
comparison to their peers. Taking more cred-
its each semester lessens the time one needs
to complete his or her degree, and decreases
the immense financial burden placed upon
these students.
MELISSA
SCHOLKE
Falling before the finish line
Recognizing that taking fewer
than 15 credits prolongs both the
duration and financial impact of
one’s college education, the U.S.
Department of Education recently
proposed an initiative to restore
access to Pell Grants throughout
the year, which would enable stu-
dents from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds to take courses dur-
ing the summer. Additionally, the
Department of Education advo-
cated instituting an annual $300
bonus for students receiving Pell
Grant funds who take at least 15
credits per semester. The Depart-
ment of Education claims that the
credit incentive would aid an esti-
mated 2.3 million students and
encourage students to complete
their degree at a faster rate. This is
all occurring in the midst of “15 to
Finish” campaign that encourages
students to take larger course loads
in order to succeed.
While these initiatives are well-
intentioned and done with an
awareness of how difficult it can
be completing a degree in a timely
manner, incentivizing and encour-
aging students to assume heavier
course loads places even more stress
on a population of students who
are already overworked and strug-
gling with time constraints. Cur-
rently the maximum annual award
a low-income student can receive
from a Pell Grant is $5,775. Even if
a student receives additional aid or
scholarships, it’s likely individuals
from lower socioeconomic back-
grounds will need to work to cover
any remaining tuition costs and
basic living expenses. The struggle
to balance long work shifts with
a larger course load may inhibit
degree completion rates as well.
The
efforts
and
incentives
are good first steps on a path to
improve federal student funding
and aid students in obtaining an
education in the most efficient
manner possible. However, these
initiatives must be navigated care-
fully, recognizing the pressures
placed upon student populations as
they try to balance myriad expec-
tations. If enacted, these propos-
als should aid students while still
acknowledging that pushing over-
burdened students to move too
fast may cause them to fall before
they finish.
Melissa Scholke can be reached
at melikaye@umich.edu.
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