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
4A — Wednesday, March 30, 2016

T

here is something I’ve been meaning 
to tell you for a while now, and I’m 
not sure how you’ll take it, so I’m just 

gonna come right out and 
say it. I know we’ve been 
practically inseparable all 
these years, so I hope you 
can understand that now 
just feels like the right time 
to finally call it quits once 
and for all.

Your loyalty is admirable. 

No, really. Your presence has 
outlasted even my closest 
friendships (though, to be 
fair, I think you may have 
had something to do with 
that).

I still remember when I met you in sixth 

grade. At the time, I thought you were just 
a passing acquaintance (after all, how many 
12-year-olds can say they have a friend like you?), 
but your company was so persistent, I couldn’t 
help but accept that we would be together for a 
long time. Now, I couldn’t imagine having grown 
up without you.

You’ve accompanied me through all the major 

milestones. Remember when I switched schools 
after freshman year and you followed me to my 
new one? We spent that first day together as I ate 
lunch alone, and you told me I would never make 
friends there. That was true for a while, because 
whenever people reached out, you assured me 
that they were just being nice and didn’t really 
want to hang out with me. I appreciated your 
pragmatism at that critical point in my life — I 
would have mistakenly believed that my friends 
genuinely liked me if it weren’t for you.

Senior year, I was so excited when we got 

into the same college, and even more so when I 
found out we would be rooming together. Our 
interests were so similar, we joined all of the 
same organizations, though you were a little less 
outgoing than I was. After every club meeting, no 
matter how well it went or how many friends I 
made, you would warn me that no one there was 
really interested in what I had to say, and I would 
believe you. I’m glad I stuck with it despite your 

advice, because most of the time, being involved 
gave me a nice little break from your company.

Oh, and when I got a boyfriend here, you were 

so jealous! I know it’s just because you missed 
spending time with me, but rest assured that 
every minute I spent without him, I spent with 
you. Sometimes I couldn’t even enjoy my time 
with him because I was thinking about you too 
often — that’s just how intertwined our lives are, 
I suppose. Funny how that works.

Now that he and I are no longer together, you 

and I have been closer than ever. You attend every 
party with me as my wingman, convincing me to 
drink excessively and hook up with strangers. 
In the morning, you follow me home as I walk 
from their place to mine. You shroud the sunrise 
and make the air piercing cold. You tell me that 
this week, the temperature won’t get above 50 
degrees. In a way, you make it less lonely to be 
alone.

And you know, it’s not often I can say a friend 

of mine really hits it off with my mom, but you’ve 
been there for her, too, just like you were for her 
mom. You’ve even started to work your charm 
on my brother. My dad still isn’t fond of you, and 
admittedly I’m kind of glad. I don’t think you 
guys would have gotten along very well anyway.

I guess what I’m trying to say is although 

you’ve been with me through thick and thin, 
it’s just not working anymore. To be completely 
honest, you’re kind of an asshole, and I think 
I would be just fine without you. I’ve come to 
realize that my friends really do care about me, 
and being actively involved here at the University 
makes me feel more fulfilled than you ever have. 
You only weighed me down, and I often think 
of what I could have accomplished if I weren’t 
spending so much time with you. I know you’ll 
be tempted to reach out, but I would really 
appreciate it if you didn’t contact me. Like, ever. 
I’ll probably be too busy to hang out anyway. 
After all, I have to make up for all those years I 
wasted with you somehow.

Love,
Lauren

—Lauren Schandevel can be reached 

at schandla@umich.edu.

W

hat are we meant to do on 
this campus? Why do we 
come to the University of 

Michigan? 
Why 

is this part of our 
lives — our late 
teens and early 
20s — glorified 
in 
movies 
and 

TV shows like 
“The 
Breakfast 

Club,” 
“Animal 

House” and “Blue 
Mountain State” 
and 
considered 

the “best time of 
our lives”?

When I imagine my future self 

assessing the time I have spent and will 
continue to spend in Ann Arbor, I will 
use, as a barometer of success, the level 
to which I experimented, tried new 
things, branched out. Because never 
again in our lives will we be at such a 
place, a place whose very foundation 
rests on the principle of education. 
Well, what does that look like? What 
does an education look like?

I suppose the opposite of using 

our time here to experiment might 
be to settle into a situation that feels 
comfortable, and then to ride that out 
for our entire tenures at Michigan. 
But I would argue that settling into 
such a comfortable situation does not 
promote or even aid our learning; 
instead, a comfortable environment 
inhibits it.

We do not learn in situations that 

are entirely familiar to us; we do not 
learn by surrounding ourselves with 
the same people and inhabiting the 
same spaces every day of the week. 
In these situations, we are not testing 
ourselves. We are not examining who 
we are, what we prefer, our tendencies, 
inclinations, fears, etc. Instead, we 
have settled, we have decided all of 
these things already, or, more likely, 
we have deemed them unworthy of 
further investigation.

Perhaps one reason why our various 

cultural media has deemed college as 
the best time of our lives is precisely 
that: Never again in our lives will a 
situation promote more readily this 
kind of free-flowing experimentation. 
From here, we will be expected to 

begin our career “paths,” and, in just 
a few years, perhaps, to settle down 
with a family, have kids and cease 
experimenting all together. And while 
I myself anticipate something like this 
in my own life — of course, allowing 
for nuance, personalization, etc. — 
what a tragedy it would be to have to 
settle down in this way before fully 
examining who I am, before having 
tried all that has been available to me 
in the years I have been alive.

I do not mean to deride comfort 

entirely — of course, there are 
moments for all of us when we 
want nothing more than to relax, to 
surround ourselves with our best 
friends in our most familiar spaces 
and turn off our minds. I support and 
see the value in this wholeheartedly. 
I just do not think this should be the 
predominant atmosphere that we try 
to carve out for ourselves.

Comfort is relative — in order 

for something to be comfortable, 
there also have to be moments of 
discomfort, 
of 
experimentation. 

Otherwise, 
what 
we 
deem 

comfortable 
eventually 
becomes 

overly familiar and normalized. In 
Charlotte Brontë’s famous novel, 
after returning to her stagnating 
routine at home when she had just 
spontaneously spent a day outside 
on a long walk, Jane Eyre describes, 
“an existence whose very privileges 
of security and ease I was becoming 
incapable of appreciating.” In order 
to appreciate moments of comfort 
and ease, we need to experiment, to 
challenge ourselves, to fully feel and 
acknowledge moments of discomfort.

Life on a college campus allows for 

exploration and experimentation in 
all of their forms: intellectual, social 
— as we are surrounded by tens of 
thousands of bright, engaging minds 
— or, finally, aesthetic, since we live 
in one of the most renowned-for-its-
beauty states in this country?

Throughout my time here, I have 

had plenty of conversations with 
friends where at least one of us is 
expressing visceral contempt for 
some aspect of this university. One of 
us might say, “I hate social life here.” 
Fortunately, though, this statement is 
relatively meaningless because there 

are so many different social lives 
here, all subject to our investigation.

This, I think, is the biggest lesson 

to be learned from studying at such a 
behemoth university as this one: We 
are meant to constantly dig deeper, 
to continue investigating, to find out 
who we are. We are not meant to 
know who we are just yet — I believe 
that is impossible this early on in 
life, since most of us have lived with 
our families for most of our lives. 
Without different experiences and 
experiments, we will never attain a 
full picture of ourselves. Why is it, do 
you think, that playwrights, novelists 
and screenwriters put some of the 
most iconic characters in literature 
through such immense challenges 
(think “Macbeth,” “Madame Bovary” 
or “Invisible Man”)? It is through 
fighting and learning from these 
challenging experiences that these 
characters learn about themselves?

I have learned more about myself 

through scrupulously investigating 
my complex, topsy-turvy relationship 
with this school during the last year 
and a half than in my entire life before 
I got to Ann Arbor. The best moments 
during this time have been those 
when I challenged myself: going into 
a room where I know nobody and 
striking up a conversation or taking 
a class about something I have never 
studied. Through my professors and 
my peers, I began to understand my 
mind and to expand it. I do all of this 
because I believe this is how I will 
measure and assess my time here. 
And, furthermore, I do this knowing 
very well that I have a comfortable 
place to return to, one where I will 
be able to anticipate everything, 
where there will be no disruptions 
to my routine.

Let us explore all that this place, 

this time in our lives, has to offer. 
Let us ask questions of ourselves 
— even ones that feel challenging 
— and attempt to answer them 
through all that this place contains 
and all the layered multitudes that 
we, ourselves, contain.

— Isaiah Zeavin-Moss can be 

reached at izeavinm@umich.edu.

An incitement to experiment

LAUREN 

SCHANDEVEL

Dear Depression

Since the 1973 decision of Roe v. 

Wade — the controversial Supreme 
Court case over abortion rights — 
women have had the right to choose 
what happens to their bodies in 
regard to unwanted pregnancies. 
However, legalizing abortion was 
not the only significant milestone 
this case promoted. This ruling 
revolutionized the health care 
system for women, paving the 
way for more accepting and less 
stigmatized 
views 
of 
women’s 

health and placing a continued 
emphasis on autonomy in such 
choices.

Prior 
to 
this 
case, 
women 

who wanted to get an abortion 
often 
pursued 
very 
expensive 

and 
dangerous 
procedures 
by 

backstreet providers who were 
often not medically trained. One 
study estimates between 200,000 
and 1.2 million illegal abortions 
were completed per year from the 
1950s to 1960s. The same study 
cites abortions as the official cause 
of death for one-fifth of maternity-
related deaths in 1930. Though 
the legal status of abortions has 
changed since the 1930s, even 
now, decades after Roe v. Wade, 
advocates have to fight to keep the 
right of women’s safety a priority 
for lawmakers.

The Supreme Court has begun 

preparations to make a ruling on 
the legality of a Texas law passed 
in 
2013 
that 
places 
stringent 

regulations on abortion clinics. 
The ruling is expected to take place 
sometime in June. The Court’s 
decision could alter the ways in 
which abortion is viewed and 
carried out in not only Texas, but 
also in other states that choose to 
adopt this law. The law requires 
physicians 
to 
have 
admitting 

privileges, or the capability of 
placing and treating a patient in a 
hospital. The law would require 
such a hospital to be within 30 
miles of the clinic. The law would 

increase 
requirements 
for 
the 

buildings housing the clinics, such 
as expanding the width of hallways 
and adding showers and lockers in 
certain areas. Adhering to these 
requirements could end up costing 
millions of dollars. Such measures 
would assess clinics on similar 
standards to the ways in which 
surgical centers are assessed. These 
requirements would be enforced 
even if the clinic does not offer 
surgical abortions, instead inducing 
abortions by medication, making 
the requirements unnecessary and 
excessive.

Supporters of these regulations 

claim they will prevent unnecessary 
health risks to women who seek an 
abortion. However, continuation 
of this law could have detrimental 
effects 
for 
women 
seeking 

abortions in the coming years. 
Many advocates for this law are 
pro-life supporters who are simply 
aiming to severely limit the right a 
woman has to choose to terminate a 
pregnancy. Coercive action, which 
is often used to place increased 
pressure on women to not go 
through with an abortion, is already 
mandated by laws not only in Texas, 
but across the country. Women 
are consistently discouraged from 
making the personal choice to go 
through with an abortion. Fourteen 
states require women to attend 
two separate appointments, which 
often use unnecessary ultrasounds 
and other scare tactics to place 
doubt in the choice to terminate the 
pregnancy, before being authorized 
to receive an abortion. These 
appointments are often aimed to 
place doubt in the choice to end a 
pregnancy. 

Reports 
have 
indicated 
that 

sections of the Texas law that are 
already in place have decreased the 
number of clinics legally authorized 
to offer abortions from 41 to 19. If 
the law is upheld after the Supreme 
Court decision, the number of 

clinics open could drop to only 10 
statewide to service a population 
of 27,469,114. Such a dramatic 
decrease 
in 
the 
opportunities 

women have to get an abortion will 
likely have negative effects.

Those who are not willing or able 

to travel the increased distance to a 
state-approved abortion clinic may 
find more dangerous, black-market 
alternatives to end a pregnancy. 
Some in Southern Texas would 
potentially have to make a 150-mile 
journey to make it to the nearest 
abortion clinic. Without a ride to 
get to such a faraway place, enough 
money to stay or return to the area 
for two visits, and no insurance 
to cover the cost of the actual 
procedure, attaining the ability 
to exercise the right to have an 
abortion would be impossible.

In these areas where abortions 

are 
especially 
difficult 
to 

accomplish legally, many have 
taken to a medication prescribed 
for ulcers in order to induce a 
miscarriage. The drug, if taken 
properly, is still only 80-to-85-
percent effective and if too much 
is taken, can be fatal. This drug, 
called misoprostol, is actually one 
of the safer nonclinical methods 
used by those who desperately 
seek an abortion if traveling to a 
clinic is out of reach.

It is not unheard of for women 

to go to extreme measures in order 
to give themselves an abortion 
when their access is extremely 
limited. Even in the days after the 
legalization of abortion, women 
feel forced to resort to unsafe 
measures in order to act upon 
their rights to autonomy. If the 
government will not allow women 
to receive an abortion legally and 
in a safe facility in a reasonable 
way, they will find a way to give 
themselves abortions.

 

Caitlin Heenan can be reached 

at heenan@umich.edu.

Roe v. Wade didn’t solve it all

CAITLIN HEENAN | OP-ED

Throughout my time in college, I’ve learned 

that living independently is mainly an exercise in 
taking mental inventories. Each day, I find myself 
cataloging lists of how many pages of reading I 
have to do by tomorrow, how much money I 
spent the night before and how many hours of 
studying I can get in before my exam if I start 
being productive right that second. List-making 
became a subconscious part of my daily life, but 
as my time as a student comes to a close, I feel my 
lists starting to change. Instead of assignments 
and personal finances, I’ve turned inward, 
and considered how many relationships I have 
ruined while I was drunk, and if what surrounds 
me now is really all I have to show for four years.

In response to these disquieting inventories, 

and driven by the accumulative shame I’ve felt 
when my roommates filled me in on a previous 
night’s belligerent behavior, I started going to 
local Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 
only previous exposure I’d had to AA was from 
reading David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” 
which coincidentally I read during a five-month 
stretch when I lived at home, at the request of 
my parents, in response to a litany of underage 
drinking tickets. During those five months, I 
attended treatment and was “sober” in the sense 
that I didn’t drink while in my hometown, but 
drank to excess whenever I came to Ann Arbor 
to visit my now-ex-girlfriend.

After attending a few meetings, I was 

surprised at how exactly spot-on Wallace was 
when he wrote about AA. All the clichés are 
there: free coffee in little Styrofoam cups, chain 
smokers and old blue-collar guys who have been 
sober for 10-plus years but still keep coming to 
meetings. Wallace calls these gentlemen “the 
crocodiles” on account of their weathered and 
scaly faces from years of hitting the bottle and 
subsequent years of smoking cigarettes outside of 
AA meetings. The first time I went to a meeting, 
I was met with pithy nuggets of wisdom that 
scared me when I realized how closely they hit 
home — “It’s the ants that make us drink, not the 
elephants.”

I haven’t experienced any great tragedy 

like some of my more experienced AA fellows, 
and I don’t have any felonies that mandate my 
attendance to meetings, but I go nonetheless. 
Most of the time, I feel like I don’t belong, and I 
know it’s because I have a stockpile of excuses 
and rationalizations for not accepting my 
drinking as alcoholism.

In the spirit of making lists, here are some 

of the most popular: I work a shit job on top of 
a brutal class schedule, it’s my senior year and 
I should be having fun, and other people drink 
way more than me and are fine. I can’t escape this 
feeling that sobriety is somehow wrong for me. 

The classic AA big-book response to this sort of 
backsliding is that a lifetime without drinking is 
such an overwhelming thought that it will defeat 
even the most dedicated seeker of sobriety. This 
fear is what inspired the central tenet of AA, that 
sobriety is maintained one day at a time. But even 
this outlook, which in many ways is the be-all 
and end-all of AA, doesn’t make the thought of 
sobriety any less terrifying.

Each day I add to my list of sober days feels 

more like a brick than an accomplishment, 
and I feel these bricks stacking up precariously 
higher with each passing day. I’m tempted to 
just take a drink and throw it all away, because 
it makes rational sense that the collapse of 30 
bricks would be much less damaging than the 
collapse of 90 or 365. This pseudo-rationality is 
how I’ve gone about my entire college career. I’ve 
tried to justify my destructive relationship with 
alcohol by saying to myself that I’m just a normal 
college binge drinker, that every party needs a 
drunk wild card, or more severely, that I have 
an emptiness inside me that prevents me from 
feeling happiness without alcohol.

At one of my first meetings, a true crocodile 

approached me at the night’s end and asked me 
when my “Sober Birthday” was — an AA term 
for the date of your last drink. He could tell I 
was new to AA because most, if not all, newly 
sober people at an AA meeting have a familiar 
expression of quiet, doe-eyed apprehension and 
shame. Embarrassed, I told him that it was only 
a few days ago. To my surprise, he smiled and 
explained that it was great, as an old AA veteran, 
to be able to pay forward the help that he received 
back when he was only three days sober. He gave 
me his phone number and told me to call him 
“before the drink, not after.” After the first week 
of attending meetings, I had a new inventory of 
names and faces that shared a common hope 
with me — names and faces that were willing to 
share their wisdom and experiences in a meeting 
or over the phone with a near stranger.

They say in AA that in order to be successful 

and attain sobriety, you have to concede to 
your innermost self that you’ve lost control. I’m 
struggling to take this vital first step; I think 
the current driving force behind my sobriety is 
an abject fear of feeling like a hypocrite, rather 
than a genuine desire to adopt a new way of living 
and shed an old way of dying. Sobriety won’t 
miraculously bring me happiness, and I know I 
may have to try and fail before being successful, 
but I’ll keep attending meetings, and I’ll wait. I’ll 
wait until my stack of bricks assembles into a real 
foundation or collapses on itself. 

— Jacob Decker is an LSA senior.

Finding sobriety

JACOB DECKER | OP-ED

ISAIAH 

ZEAVIN-MOSS

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

