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

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, March 25, 2016

W

hat good can it do to be foolish?

Each year on the weekend 

nearest 
to 
April 
Fools’ 

Day, 
hundreds 
of 

Ann 
Arborites 
and 

University of Michigan 
students 
share 
their 

interpretations of the 
answer to this question 
in the form of a gigantic, 
bizarre 
parade 
of 

puppets.

Mark 
Tucker, 
art 

director of the Lloyd 
Hall Scholars Program, 
a 
Michigan 
Learning 

Community 
that 

encourages 
students 

to pursue passions of art and writing, is 
the father of the project. Together with 
former LHSP student Shoshana Hurand, 
he founded the festivities in Ann Arbor 
in 2006 in hopes of bringing the Ann 
Arbor community together with a little 
foolishness.

Tucker (or as some of his students 

affectionately call him behind his back, 
Marky Mark) hatched the idea after 
traveling to Europe “to learn the fine art of 
cartapesta (papier-mâché) from esteemed 
float builders in Viareggio, Italy.” Full of life 
and color like Tucker himself, thousands of 
people annually flock the streets of Italy 
to partake in the crazy, human-powered 
celebration. Adding his own unique style, 
he used the Italian influences to create 
his own unreasonable but crowd-pleasing 
event. This year, FestiFools celebrates its 
10th anniversary. 

At last year’s event, I helped a friend 

perform with her giant piece. She had 
made a large, mustached Monopoly man 
— social commentaries are popular among 
the event’s puppets — that commented on 
the greed of our society. The man himself 
took three people to control — one person 
to hoist and balance the pole going through 
the puppet’s body and two others to animate 
each of his arms. In order to contribute 
chaos to the crowd, my friend also made 
several Monopoly game pieces — a tinfoil 
car, train and iron that she had convinced 

others to wear on their heads while they run 
around the puppet’s gesticulating arms. She 
also made a separate Monopoly man head, 
which she made another girl wear. Because 
the girl could not see through the mask, my 
job was to watch her and make sure she did 
not fall onto a small child.

Certainly, the event is a sort of chaos: 

children dressed as butterflies and monsters 
blowing bubbles; dragons and banners 
weaving and wrapping around participants; 
giant puppets including robots, historic 
figures such as Marie Antoinette, octopi and 
gigantic babies holding cell phones. There 
are even bands playing shiny instruments 
and the audience sitting, squealing, clapping 
on the curbside. 

Aside from the intriguing public art 

created by the participants, the implications 
go beyond the tangible fantastic — through 
the event’s creations and performances, 
the community hopefully is brought a 
little closer. According to the WonderFool 
Productions website, the group is “a 
nonprofit 
organization 
dedicated 
to 

engaging 
communities 
in 
dynamic, 

educational, collaborative and entertaining 
public art experiences.” The art is free and 
accessible to all, involving people of all ages.

As a relatively new Ann Arbor resident, it 

is difficult for me to try and determine how 
FestiFools has changed the community. 
Upon first glance, FestiFools might seem 
small and insignficant in our community, 
but FestiFools can do no harm. FestiFools 
makes art more accessible and enjoyable 
and it joins people of all different ages to 
create, celebrate and be uncomplicatedly 
foolish. Only positivity can come from that.

One thing you should know: When Mark 

Tucker throws an event, it always rains.

Bring 
a 
raincoat, 
but 
leave 
your 

inhibitions at home.

Stay foolish.
A FoolMoon (pre-FestiFools night parade 

and street party) takes place from dusk on 
Friday, April 1, until midnight on downtown 
Ann Arbor’s Main Street on Sunday, April 3, 
from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

—Payton Luokkala can be reached 

at payluokk@umich.edu

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan, Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, 

Minsoo Kim, Payton Luokkala, Kit Maher, Madeline Nowicki, 

Anna Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, Lauren Schandevel, 

Melissa Scholke, Kevin Sweitzer, Rebecca Tarnopol, Ashley Tjhung,

Stephanie Trierweiler, Hunter Zhao

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

I

t mystifies me how despite nearly 
24-hour coverage by every major media 
organization, there are still people 

surprised that Donald Trump is the front-
runner for the Republican nomination. 
Sure, there are plenty of Americans whom 
Trump’s bigotry and slogan of “Make 
America Great Again” speak to, but that’s 
nothing new in American politics. What’s 
new is the entertainment value. A candidate 
running on a platform of building a wall 
that Mexico will pay for, and banning an 
entire religion from entering the United 
States looks more like someone running to 
be a Saturday Night Live caricature than 
president of the United States.

The media, however, began this race 

as if Trump was a serious candidate, and 
the effect has been like a snowball ever 
since. Trump gets more TV time, meaning 
more people see him, meaning the media 
feels the demand to focus on him. While 
The Huffington Post may add an editor’s 
note to all Trump articles reminding their 
readers he is a racist and xenophobe among 
other things, no serious organization 
has had the common decency to say they 
won’t be drawn into this madness. News 
organizations around the country long ago 
abandoned their need to cover what’s truly 
important for what will bring in revenue, 
but this is one of the first times this choice 
has serious repercussions.

It’s this legitimization of Trump’s bigotry 

by the media that has led voters to support 
him in droves, but there is a way to end this. 
It’s as simple as saying no.

This past weekend, I attended the 

American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s 
Policy Conference in Washington D.C. As a 
bipartisan organization, AIPAC invited all 
active presidential candidates to address 
the more than 18,000 delegates about their 
views on the American-Israel relationship. 
All but Sen. Bernie Sanders accepted the 
invitation. There was immediate outcry 

from the Jewish and pro-Israel communities 
that allowing Donald Trump to speak would 
legitimize his bigotry and send the message 
to the world that AIPAC condones these 
beliefs. AIPAC clarified their position, 
saying they weren’t endorsing Trump, but 
that given Trump has a significant chance 
of becoming president, it is important to 
build a relationship with him. Given how 
legitimized Trump has become, it’s tough to 
see the error in this.

Yet while AIPAC may have felt the need 

to hear from the likely nominee, I and many 
others did not. Most of the conference 
was a bastion where pro-Israel supporters 
from all walks of life came together for a 
common purpose. But when Trump took the 
stage, a community that had talked for two 
days about the need for peace applauded 
a candidate who has called for banning 
Muslims, the group so vital to a productive 
peace in the Middle East, from entering the 
United States.

So, I and hundreds of delegates in the 

arena stood up and quietly walked out. I 
joined a group of about 30 rabbis, students 
and activists in a protest titled Come 
Together Against Hate. While attendees 
inside the arena applauded Trump’s pander 
and bigotry, we joined together in a sports 
bar just outside to learn from the Jewish 
texts about the need to educate those who 
stray from the path of decency. We learned, 
we sung and we were respectful. 

While responding to Trump with loud 

protests may seem natural given his 
vitriolic behavior, so far it only empowers 
him. Stopping Trump doesn’t require 
posters, signs and screaming, it requires 
turning off your TV. It may be impossible 
to stop Trump’s road to the nomination 
now, but it isn’t too late to stop our national 
embarrassment.

—Jeremy Kaplan is a senior edi-

torial page editor

Saying no to Trump

I 

believe there’s a sense of 
achievability that comes with 
being on a college campus, 

especially one as prestigious as 
this university’s. We all came to 
Ann Arbor with the belief that 
our experiences here would be 
life-changing; that we would, in 
some way, make an impact on our 
surroundings and be remembered 
by the students following after us. 
Ever since freshman orientation, 
we’ve been told that we’re the 
“leaders and best” because we’ve 
been accepted into the University 
of Michigan, and therefore we 
will someday change the world. 
And despite the endless hours of 
stress that this institution will 
end up putting us through, there’s 
a sense of invincibility, a sense of 
invulnerability, that comes with 
being a University of Michigan 
student.

In many ways, this type of 

environment 
suits 
a 
college 

campus. It helps to foster ideas 
and creativity, and it encourages 
students to take the risks that 
will make them better workers 
and thinkers in the future. It’s 
this type of self-confidence that 
has inspired great thinkers and 
scholars for millennia. Accepting 
challenges that may or may not be 
out of one’s league has become a 
crucial part of the college process, 
and college campuses foster an 
environment that tells everyone 
they can and will succeed at 
whatever project they take on. 
Failure is a taboo word, never 
discussed and never accepted.

But Icarus flew too close to 

the sun, and likewise, Michigan 
students sometimes overstep their 
bounds. This happens all over the 
campus, when students decide 
to talk about topics they don’t 
necessarily understand, arguing 

for or against certain positions 
and then taking action based on 
those discussions. Especially in 
the case of social justice, students 
feel that because they took a 
sociology course or attended a 
protest that they are qualified to 
speak on behalf of a marginalized 
group they may not be a part of.

In some ways, this can be a 

positive thing; at least people are 
aware of and discussing issues that 
really are important to the world. 
But on the negative side, what type 
of information is being spread? 

Is this information truly helpful 
to the marginalized group, or is 
it actually working to silence and 
oppress these individuals more?

I recently attended a discussion 

about anxiety and depression 
where the facilitators had not been 
trained to talk about the specific 
topic at hand. As a result, one 
of the facilitators inadvertently 
insulted a participant for the 
decisions they made with their 
body. 
In 
their 
defense, 
the 

facilitators were very receptive to 
the criticism they received from 
the attendees. In my opinion, the 
organization, who does do great 
things on campus and of which I 
am a proud member, should have 

been more sensitive and hired 
trained professionals to host this 
dialogue.

This type of insensitivity is 

also 
prevalent 
in 
discussions 

regarding 
sexual 
assault 
on 

campus. I recently heard someone 
running 
for 
Central 
Student 

Government talk about this topic 
using heteronormative pronouns, 
with 
“her” 
referring 
to 
the 

survivor and “him” referring to 
the perpetrator. Using this type 
of language demonstrates a lack 
of awareness, as people within the 
LGBTQ community face sexual 
violence at a distressing rate and 
is detrimental as it takes away the 
voices of the people within this 
community, discouraging them 
from seeking help.

Here at the University, we are 

told that we can do anything. 
On this campus, people have 
found the inspiration to become 
doctors, writers, movie stars and 
politicians. 
This 
environment 

has cultivated some of the best 
learners and thinkers of our 
time. As students here, we are 
constantly being told that nothing 
is out of reach and that our work 
will someday change the world. 
But we are never told that in some 
situations it’s not our place to 
speak out, that it’s OK to be quiet. 
Though it may be hard, sometimes 
admitting you don’t know enough 
about an issue to act on it is the most 
impactful thing a person could do. 
I will freely admit there are a lot 
of issues I would not be confident 
to speak out on, knowing that 
my well-intentioned words could 
accidentally harm someone. In this 
type of situation, the best course of 
action is to educate oneself before 
moving forward.

 
—Elena Hubbell is an LSA freshman 

When not to speak out

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

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should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and 

University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

PAYTON 
LUOKKALA

W

ith the new $112 million 
renovation 
to 
the 

West Quad Residence 

Hall, 
pretty 
much 
everything 

has changed. Additional study 
spaces, improved plumbing and 
better Wi-Fi and computing have 
brought this residence hall into the 
21st century. While many things 
have been improved, a lot of the 
same aspects of the 1939 building 
remain in place, including the 
original names of every house in 
the building.

There are nine houses in West 

Quad, and most of them are pretty 
meaningful and are not a problem. 
For example, houses like Michigan 
House and Chicago House are 
named after places, Allen House 
and Rumsey House are named 
after the founders of Ann Arbor 
and other houses are named after 
famous professors.

However, there is one distinct 

house 
that 
is 
different 
than 

the rest. On the north side of 
West Quad, on the fourth floor 
lies 
Winchell 
House, 
named 

after a professor from the late 
1800s. Alexander Winchell was 
a professor of engineering and 
physics between 1853 and 1872 and 
of geology between 1878 and 1891. 

Like the namesakes of many 

other buildings on this campus and 
across the country, Winchell’s views 
on race are concerning. Winchell 
was a part of the “scientific racism” 
community, which, in short, tried 
to find biological proof of white 
supremacy. In 1878, he published 
a famous paper titled “Proof of 
Negro Inferiority,” which to him 
was proof that African and African-
American people were biologically 
inferior because of random physical 
features. In his paper, he performs 
many types of pseudo-scientific 
methods to prove this difference. 
This is truly a sickening read, with 
Winchell 
making 
comparisons 

between 
Black 
people 
and 

orangutans, and “proving” through 
body measurements the idea of their 
inferiority. This disgusting paper 
now circulates on white supremacy 
websites and is cited by some as 
justification for their racism. Later, 
in the 1930s when West Quad was 
built, someone decided to name 

a house after him, and the name 
stuck. Seventy-six years went by, 
and nobody noticed the obvious 
problem with naming a house after 
a racist person.

Across the nation, schools like 

Yale, Georgetown and Princeton 
have 
had 
large-scale 
student 

protests 
over 
the 
naming 
of 

buildings. Though there have been 
some successes, many complaints 
from students have been ignored. 
In Mississippi, students at the 
University of Mississippi pushed 
to change the name of Vardaman 
Hall, which ironically housed the 
Institute for Racial Reconciliation. 
Rather than changing the name, 
the university decided to put up 
markers and signs to embrace 
Vardaman’s 
past, 
rather 
than 

moving on from it. Last month, The 

Michigan Daily reported on a talk by 
Lawrence Ross, which highlighted, 
among other things, the struggle 
and failure of students at Clemson 
University to rename a building 
that is named after a former slave-
holding governor. The issue of 
building names is at the forefront of 
campus-climate issues today.

In January, I brought this matter 

to the University of Michigan’s 
attention and met with Marilyn 
De LaRoche, who is the director 
of University Housing. To the 
University’s credit, those I have 
talked to in University Housing 
have been more than helpful, and 
have assured me that they are 
investigating and trying to change 
the name. Unfortunately, issues 
like this, and the naming of any 
University-owned 
building, 
fall 

under the jurisdiction of the Board 

of Regents, a group that may be 
resistant to progress on this matter. 
On January 22, Regent Andrea 
Newman (R–Ann Arbor) tweeted 
that she thought the issue of 
building names was “an interesting 
discussion, but also a part of our 
history.” This tweet was responded 
to in agreement by Regent Mark 
Bernstein (D–Ann Arbor). Progress 
is hard to come by on an issue like 
this; however, progress is needed, 
and it is unacceptable to name 
spaces in buildings after people 
with such flawed views on race. We, 
as a community, need to move on 
from our racist past and embrace a 
more accepting future.

While some may argue that 

retaining 
building 
names 
on 

campus is a good way to remember 
our past as a university, I challenge 
them to think of the greater impacts 
of the name above that of simply 
the words on the door. Having 
memorials to our racist past is a step 
in the wrong direction. We must ask 
the question of whether or not the 
impact of this racially charged name 
is more harmful than letting go of 
the history of his name. In this case, 
and in many other cases, moving 
forward from our racist past is more 
important than remembering the 
man himself. 

I urge the University community 

to speak up. The name of Winchell 
House needs to be changed. We 
can’t set a tone of inclusivity and 
acceptance on campus if we have 
memorials to racists. Many argue 
that the names of buildings are a 
way to remember our history, but 
I’d like to provide another way 
that they can be beneficial. We as a 
community can use this as a chance 
to open up a community-wide 
conversation about the history of 
racism. We can and should talk 
about how much progress we’ve 
made, but how much further we 
have to go. Many buildings across 
this country are named after racist 
people, and in many cases, we may 
not even know it. By becoming 
aware of their history and the 
history of their namesakes, we 
can work together to make this 
campus a more inclusive place.

—Kevin Sweitzer is an LSA freshman 

Change Winchell House

 “Though it may be 

hard, sometimes 

admitting you don’t 

know enough about an 

issue to act on it is the 

most impactful thing a 

person can do.”

JEREMY KAPLAN | OP-ED

Foolish for a cause

KEVIN SWEITZER | OP-ED

ELENA HUBBELL | OP-ED

 “We can’t set a tone 

of inclusivity and 

acceptance on campus 

if we have memorials 

to racists.”