W
e’re
all
familiar
with
the
perceived
dichotomy
between
humanities majors and majors
that are a little more “career-
oriented.” Humanities majors are
either criticized or lauded for being
heady, wandering souls unworried
about what kind of internship
they’re offered over the summer
or how much they will earn five
years after undergrad. They’re
never criticized or lauded for being
career-oriented or seeking prestige
like their supposed counterparts
in the engineering and business
schools. But, especially depending
on what kind of humanities major
one chooses, classes may be just
as difficult and the pressure just
as crushing to make that certain
connection, to get that certain job
— and priorities become just as
warped in the process.
As someone who, for their entire
time in college, has been declared
in some kind of humanities major
(excluding my brief but enthusiastic
anthropology stint), I’ve been asked
by relatives and family friends —
in a tone doubtful to the point of
admonishment — the question:
“What do you plan to do with that?”
So we have the classic scene
of the angsty college kid at some
family cookout, paper plate and
slimy plastic fork in hand, rolling
their eyes at adults who “just
don’t understand” the value of
my humanities major. Uncle John
probably doesn’t even get art.
My answer to that question
had, for a while, been that I would
become a college professor or
work at some imaginary literary
magazine as a fallback. By the start
of last winter, the second semester
of my sophomore year, I had settled
into a comparative literature major,
which lots of people describe
(somewhat inaccurately) as a “more
intense version” of an English
major. It requires students to work
in at least one language other than
their first language, and to write a
thesis during their senior year using
comparative analysis (potentially
across languages and cultures) to
draw broader conclusions about
some more general topic. I had
chosen English and French as my
two languages, even though, to
be frank, I wasn’t that amazing at
learning foreign languages — nor
did I enjoy the process.
On the outside, I think I seemed
sophisticated, even headier than my
friends who were English majors. I
got to read more aesthetic, literary
and cultural theory — Foucault,
Derrida, Butler — and liked to think
this surrounded me with a cloud of
mystery. I felt elusive, serious and
sparkling listing off the classes I’d
taken, the books I’d read and the
professors I knew. I rode with it
for a while, convincing myself I’d
write a thesis about humans and
machines in the digital age. I’d tie
gender in there somewhere and
become the Michel Foucault of my
generation.
This was a different kind of
career-orientedness, a different
kind of quest for prestige. For
me it looked like doing all
the
supplementary
readings,
going
to
office
hours
and
convincing myself I enjoyed the
readings because the ideas they
addressed were so cool — that
post-structuralism kind of felt
pertinent, albeit in that distant
and spacey way theory often does.
It looked like going to Berkeley for
my Ph.D., securing tenure at some
other Ivy or almost-Ivy before
I really stopped looking 19. The
muscles in my face and shoulders
growing ever-tenser, increasing
in density directly proportional
to the readings I did, it wasn’t
until that spring I realized how
serious I’d gotten.
Enter
the
New
England
Literature Program (NELP), a
program through the English
Department in which 40 students
and 13 instructors meander into
the woods of New Hampshire,
spending six weeks immersed
in literature, introspecting and
writing, pseudo-transcendentalist
style. It was with the sway of tall
New England trees in the wind
on Lake Winnipesaukee, with
Thoreau, Emerson, the poems
of Emily Dickinson and Wallace
Stevens that I finally relaxed my
trapezius muscles and rediscovered
how to just be.
Needless to say, coming back
to campus was weird. Now in my
junior year, I was taking more
French than ever, expected to read
and write at a higher level than
I ever had before. I found myself
stumbling through texts written
in French whose messages I knew
mattered so much to me, if only I
was smart enough to understand
them. I wanted to be able to read
and to write with just as much
nuance as I could in English, my
first language. When I step back
and think about it, it’s no wonder
the French was so difficult: Um, it’s
a foreign language.
Feeling defeated and, combined
with my job as Opinion editor here
at the Daily, I was intellectually
and emotionally overloaded with
difficult topics to digest. I walked
out of my French class one day
and realized the playful self I had
rediscovered at NELP felt so far
away, waving at me to come find
her again.
I tell this whole story to say the
myth that humanities students
are never career-oriented is just
that: a myth. You can exhaust
yourself in any path you choose
in life — faking it, hoping that at
some undeterminable point in
the future you’ll finally make it.
The stereotype of the humanities
student allows people to assume
we’re nurturing our souls above all
else — forget the career; forget the
salary; forget the reputation. This
was probably what people assumed
I was doing for most of college, even
though my mentality might not
have been all that different from a
finance concentration at Ross.
OK,
maybe
that’s
an
exaggeration, but you get my point.
It’s all about priorities — priorities,
priorities, priorities. I set mine in
line this past week, changing to an
English major and spending some
time taking care of a few plants I’d
been neglecting around my house.
I’m doing what I like, and so far it
feels good. Now I’m riding with
this plan for a while.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, September 26, 2016
— EMU NAACP member Kyla Fordham addressing University
of Michigan students at a speakout about recent racist graffiti at
Eastern Michigan University.
“
NOTABLE QUOTABLE
...we’ll encourage one another
because y’all are right next door to
us. It doesnt take an organization
to change things, it starts in your
classrooms and it starts with
yourselves. ”
A different kind of quest for prestige
REGAN DETWILER | OP ED
FROM THE DAILY
Housing must be more affordable
A
s the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor grow in population
and develop each year, demand for off-campus housing increases.
Developers encourage a higher concentration of wealth in the
downtown Ann Arbor area by building luxury high-rise apartments, and
even with increased housing availability provided by these high-rises, prices
in other areas around campus remain astronomical. Ann Arbor’s municipal
code allows rental companies and landlords the autonomy to overcharge
residents for the quality of their properties because of a lack of regulation
around pricing. The municipal code’s lack of specificity regarding when new
tenants can sign leases also induces a race to secure off-campus housing
each fall. Developers must build more affordable apartment complexes
for the average in-state student and the average Ann Arbor resident.
Additionally, the city of Ann Arbor needs to tighten rent regulations and
increase enforcement of such regulations to combat these issues.
Though newly built high-
rises change the city landscape
of Ann Arbor dramatically, time
has shown demand for such
housing matches supply, as these
buildings continue to be filled
each year. In an ideal world,
luxury apartments concentrated
in the center of the city, close to
campus, would lower housing
prices in areas closer to South
Campus and Kerrytown. But
according to a recent study
prepared for the Washtenaw
County Office of Community
and
Economic
Development,
this may not be the case. Instead
of decreased prices for housing
options a little further off
campus, UM students are seeing
rent prices that stay at the same
high rates in surrounding areas.
Furthermore,
wealthier
students
and
city
residents
are the ones living in these
luxury
high-rise
apartments,
which could possibly result in
an increased wealth disparity
within Ann Arbor. And according
to the Washtenaw County OCED,
wealth
disparities
are
also
increasing between Ann Arbor
and Ypsilanti. While Ann Arbor’s
economy may continue to grow
because of new development
and businesses moving in, the
study suggests Ypsilanti’s will
only worsen over time. These
disparities
are
especially
damaging to students at the
University,
as
they
attempt
to balance living in a location
suitable for getting to classes
and maintaining affordability
with rising tuition prices.
All
options
need
to
be
explored to fix Ann Arbor’s
housing affordability issue. In
particular, City Council should
look at options for altering the
city’s housing code pertaining
to how and where development
companies build luxury high-
rise apartments. City Council
also needs to address ways
in which it can change the
housing code to improve the
leasing process.
High housing demand south
of campus and near Kerrytown
causes residents and students
to pay relatively high rent
for
what
they’re
getting.
Landlords can charge upward
of $850 per month per tenant
for what may be mediocre to
subpar properties.
Beyond paying high prices,
the logistical timeline to find
a lease has become a rat race.
The city’s leasing laws allow
rental companies and landlords
to
lease
their
properties
according to a schedule that
creates a housing frenzy for
students at the start of each
fall semester. According to the
city’s housing code, leasers may
not start showing properties to
prospective renters until 70 days
after the current tenant’s lease
has begun. Because of growing
pressure
to
find
housing,
however, prospective tenants
are incentivized to find homes
on their own and secure under-
the-table promise for the next
year’s lease before the 70 days
have passed.
These
transactions
can,
and often do, occur under the
table, but leasers themselves
sometimes ignore municipal
code and officially sign leases
to new tenants before the
70 days have passed. In an
interview with The Michigan
Daily in Oct. 2015, Ann Arbor
property manager Jon Keller
said rental companies and
landlords do this because the
penalty fee is negligible — and
sometimes not enforced.
Whether it’s done under the
table or illegally, Ann Arbor’s
current municipal code leaves
students scrambling for next
year’s housing each fall, during
a time when they’re trying to
settle into campus life and into
their current houses. Many
students also don’t know who
they’ll want to live with a year
down the line, when their lease
will actually begin. Ann Arbor’s
municipal code should place
tighter controls on the leasing
process, and these controls
should be better enforced for the
sake of students and Ann Arbor
residents alike.
Luxury high-rise apartment
complexes keep popping up
and will continue to unless
tighter regulations stop them.
While there is demand for such
housing, the increased supply
and concentration of luxury
living spaces in the center of
the city is only contributing
to increased wealth disparity
within Ann Arbor and between
Ann
Arbor
and
Ypsilanti.
What’s more, the city’s current
municipal code too often leaves
residents and students in off-
campus housing with no other
option but to sign leases before
they’re ready and to pay more
for rent than properties are
worth. City Council needs
to move to alter the housing
code and tighten enforcement
to combat these issues, which
would
benefit
residents
of
Ypsilanti,
Ann
Arbor
and
students at the University.
The left’s hypocrisy on political discourse
MAX RYSZTAK | COLUMN
R
ecently, Hillary Clinton
referred to some of Donald
Trump’s
supporters
as “deplorables” in a rare and
surprising gaffe for a political
veteran like Clinton. This section
from her fundraising speech is
just one example of many where
left-leaning
political
candidates
diminish
people themselves and
not their ideas:
You know, to just be
grossly generalistic, you
could put half of Trump’s
supporters into what I call
the ‘basket of deplorables.’
Right? The racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic,
Islamophobic
—
you
name
it.
And
unfortunately there are people like
that. And he has lifted them up. He
has given voice to their websites that
used to only have 11,000 people — now
11 million. He tweets and retweets
their offensive hateful mean-spirited
rhetoric. Now, some of those folks —
they are irredeemable, but thankfully
they are not America.
While Clinton went on to refer to
the other half of Trump supporters
as people who understandably
felt betrayed and unheard by the
government, there is an important
point to be made about Clinton’s
prepared remarks.
By referring to Trump supporters
as
“racist,
sexist,
homophobic,
xenophobic, Islamophobic,” Clinton
knowingly uses Trump’s policies
to generalize a large proportion
of American people in hopes of
attaching labels to policy preferences.
But if we actually look at Trump’s
— and more broadly, Republican —
policies, there is little justification
for the labels Clinton uses in her
recent statement.
Take, for example, the debate
on immigration, one of Trump’s
policy trademarks.
I’m a Republican and I disagree
with Donald Trump on this issue
— I think that he is wrong on the
actual policy. I don’t think a wall is
the entire solution to the problem,
and I don’t think you can (or should)
deport countless illegal aliens. But I
don’t think his policy is racist in and
of itself. Advocating for a wall, in
hopes of cracking down on illegal
immigration and drug flow so that
those who attempt to come legally
are not overshadowed by illegal
migration is not racist, it’s simply
a different proposal than most on
this campus would favor. You may
disagree with it, but you don’t have
to call those who agree with Trump
racists. They’re merely people who
care about this country and have
different ideas than
you do.
There are certainly
extremists within the
Trump movement —
and on all sides of the
political
spectrum
— who deserve to be
called what they are.
But all Republicans are
not inherently racist,
sexist or Islamophobic.
This
practice
of
fighting against the person holding
an idea, and not the idea itself, is
the height of hypocrisy in modern
political discourse.
Democrats
often
claim
to
be champions of diversity in
all aspects of society, except
for the diversity of opinion,
where on campus they spread
false enthusiasm for political
discussions. Barely able to handle
moderate speakers on campus and
fueling hate toward those who
disagree, many left-leaning college
students and faculty represent the
epitome of hypocrisy as they seek
to suppress the diversity of ideas
and discourse.
Many students have never
been exposed to conservative
policies on a larger level than
what they watch on TV or read
online. In my opinion, students
fail to recognize that a large
proportion of Americans have
fundamental
disagreements
with the left-leaning preferences
dominant on this campus — in
effect delegitimizing what little
intellectual
diversity
currently
exists in Ann Arbor.
Since many of my peers don’t
fully
recognize
that
people
hold a wide variety of opinions
and the extent to which people
disagree with them, they treat
most conservative policy ideas as
inherently radical and illegitimate.
Since many liberal students seem
to find any opinion that isn’t the
same as their own not credible,
they
attempt
to
completely
eliminate it from the discussion.
In fact, that’s the hardest
thing about being conservative
on
this
campus.
The
mere
mention of disagreement brings
on
an
onslaught
of
name-
calling that often highlights my
“oppressiveness.” Apparently, my
“heteronormativity” and my “white
privilege” make any and all of my
opinions invalid. I’m not told that my
beliefs are wrong. I’m told I — as a
person — am fundamentally corrupt.
For example, I’ve been told
many times that my political
views are wrong when it comes
to helping minority groups escape
poverty, simply because I’m white.
I guess if my limited experiences
prevent me from having an
opinion, no leftist who has yet to
move past their on-campus, part-
time job, can tell me how “large
corporations are destroying our
national economy.”
We can never have too much
debate or too much discourse,
and we can never limit people’s
right to have an opinion based
on experiences they have or
have not been through. Political
and policy discussions need to
be focused on the issue, and not
the people holding the belief. We
don’t need to call people racists
for wanting stronger protection
and a wall on our southern
border. We don’t need to silence
discussion because individuals
don’t have equal or shared
backgrounds. Both sides of the
political spectrum would serve
themselves well if they fought
ideas and not individuals and
allow all debate.
Experiences should serve to
build opinions, not restrict them.
A range of backgrounds, different
cultures and identities and unique
beliefs form individuals with
different ideas. Any experience, no
matter how influential or trivial,
can build an opinion — and all
opinions should be heard.
True discourse on this campus
would
improve
if
we
could
recognize that there are always
going to be people who will
disagree with us no matter what
they believe, and they should be
able to voice their concerns so we
can achieve greater diversity.
MAX
RYSZTAK
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.
SHOHAM GEVA
Editor in Chief
CLAIRE BRYAN
and REGAN DETWILER
Editorial Page Editors
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.
Carolyn Ayaub
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
Kevin Sweitzer
Rebecca Tarnopol
Ashley Tjhung
Stephanie Trierweiler
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
Max Rysztak can be reached at
mrysztak@umich.edu.
Regan Detwiler is a co-editorial
page editor of The Michigan Daily.