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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Tuesday, October 25, 2016 — 3A
deadline on Oct. 11, 90 percent
of
respondents
said
they
registered to vote. Various
groups on campus have worked
to register voters throughout
the semester, including the
University’s
chapters
of
College Democrats and College
Republicans — college students
typically
register
at
lower
rates.
The survey also asked if
state and federal congressional
races are as important as the
presidential election, to which
79
percent
of
respondents
answered “definitely yes” or
“probably yes.”
LSA
junior
Enrique
Zalamea, president of College
Republicans,
wrote
in
an
email that his organization
has been working to promote
conservative candidates up and
down the ballot to encourage
student voting.
“Since
September,
we’ve
been actively volunteering in
campaigns for congressmen
and
state
representatives,”
Zalamea
wrote.
“We
continuously
encourage
everyone to do the same and
to make the effort to vote for
your Republican congressional
candidates regardless of your
opinion on our presidential
candidate.”
LSA junior Collin Kelly,
chair of College Democrats,
also stressed the importance
of congressional races, saying
having a Republican Congress
with a Democratic executive
has been a barrier to passing
legislation
these
past
few
years.
“Congressional
races
are
more difficult to get excited for
and are not covered nearly as
thoroughly as the presidential
election, but if we want to
actually see the progressive
change
Secretary
Clinton
is advocating, it’s essential
Democrats take back the House
and Senate,” Kelly said.
The lack of change among
students comes among recent
incidents in both the Trump
and
Clinton
campaigns
—
including a leaked tape of
Trump making references to
touching women without their
consent and hacked emails from
the Clinton campaign featuring
controversial statements about
various voting demographics —
stems to indicate they have not
heavily impacted support on
campus.
In
questions
about
the
incidents
specifically,
47
percent of respondents reported
that scandals associated with
Clinton impacted their views
and 46 percent of respondents
reported
that
scandals
associated
with
Trump
changed their views.
Kelly said he found Trump’s
leaked comments about women,
compounded by accusations
from multiple women that
allege he sexually assaulted
them made after the tape’s
release, are more noteworthy
than Clinton’s email hack. He
called the WikiLeaks situation
a “non-scandal” that points to
momentary carelessness rather
than incompetence or danger,
saying this could be why
student support for Clinton
remained unchanged. Zalamea
did not respond to a question
about Clinton and Trump’s
comments.
“(Students) knew who the
candidates were and what they
stood for before these came
out, and all the news recently
has simply confirmed that,”
Kelly said.
POLL
From Page 1A
said. “So it’s really important
for us to show support for
them; it’s important that we
have a physical presence and
we’re doing the most we can to
outreach to all of our res staff
and all of our residents.”
Business graduate student
Zelin Wang, a residential staff
coordinator, said the event
was organized last week in a
University Housing meeting
with the goal of being timely,
active
and
engaging
for
residence hall staff to connect
with residents.
“We’re
responding
to
a
lot of the events on campus
that
have
been
happening
recently with the flyering,”
Wang said. “Also, a lot of the
political
climate
nationally
is also making a lot of our
residents feel unwelcome and
not necessarily accepted here.
With any larger organization
like University Housing it can
be easy to get bogged down or
not necessarily know how to
meet the demands in a timely
fashion, and for this event we
really wanted to act as swiftly
as possible.”
LSA
junior
Kate
Vogel,
residential staff coordinator at
Martha Cook Residence Hall,
said she felt the event went
well and hopes her residents
feel a safe sense of community.
“First and foremost, we are
here for our residents,” Vogel
said. “We as representatives
of Housing wanted to find a
way that would let all of our
residents in all of the dorms
on campus to know that we are
here to support them and all
of the different identities and
diversity within our campus in
light of recent campus events.”
“In times like this, it’s so
important not to stay silent
and to come together,” Vogel
said.
Event organizers said they
were not sure if there would be
similar marches in the future.
MARCH
From Page 1A
Kolb said the report also
highlighted
the
broader
issues
of
environmental
injustice that led to the crisis,
including
the
purposeful
refusal to involve residents in
making government decisions
regarding
environmental
policy laws.
E. Hill De Loney, executive
director of the Flint Odyssey
House
Health
Awareness
Center,
echoed
Kolb’s
sentiments,
saying
the
government
still
is
failing
to work with the people of
Flint in resolving the water
crisis. Hill De Loney said
despite complaints of tainted
water from many of the city’s
residents, 60 percent of whom
are Black, state officials did
not listen until a white person
spoke up.
“When we talk about what
has happened in Flint, racism
as it relates to the water
crisis in Flint is the elephant
in the room,” Hill De Loney
said. “However, it is also the
elephant in America.”
She
said
many
citizens
of Flint did not want an
emergency manager, yet one
was appointed and residents
were subsequently excluded
from important talks by city
officials on how to handle the
crisis.
“There wasn’t too much trust
in the first place but when that
happened, I cannot tell you
how deeply mistrust became a
cancer in our community,” Hill
De Loney said. “We don’t trust
anything they tell us.”
Nayyirah Shariff, co-founder
of the Flint Democracy Defense
League, reemphasized that the
people of Flint distrust the local
officials tasked with fixing
the crisis. She said citizens of
foreign countries were even
calling family members in Flint
and warning them not to drink
the water.
“Those
of
you
who
understand intimate partner
violence, this really feels like
a violent relationship, because
the state is responsible for
poisoning us, and now the state
is in charge of our recovery,”
Shariff said.
Kent Key, director of the
Office of Community Scholars
and Partnerships at Michigan
State University’s College of
Human Medicine and another
panelist, connected his work
in
vetting
the
numerous
researchers entering Flint to
the University of Michigan
community in his talk. He
has created the Healthy Flint
Research Coordinating Center,
which was funded by both the
University of Michigan and
Michigan State University as
a way to encourage an ethical
and respectable community, as
well as academic partnerships.
“One thing is to really start
some
dialogue,
start
some
conversations,” Key said. “The
racial climate in this country is
something I have never seen in
my lifetime before.”
JA ZZ IT UP
FLINT
From Page 1A
an internet-based white nationalist
movement.
LSA freshman Kori Thomas first
noticed the posters at around 11 a.m.
on Friday and tweeted out photos to
show other students the fliers being
displayed on campus.
“At first, when I saw those fliers,
I was shocked,” Thomas said. “I
thought that we were done with
those after last month’s incident. I
wanted to get the photos out there
for others to see. After that though, I
was just mad.”
In
total,
seven
fliers
were
discovered and posted to social
media, including one that was
previously posted around campus
last month.
Following the initial discovery
of anti-Black fliers on campus in
September, students held protests
around the school, drawing more
than 400 students and calling for the
University to take more immediate
action to resolve issues of campus
climate. Administrators released a
statement condemning the posters
soon after, and University President
Mark Schlissel hosted a forum six
days later to further discuss the
impact the posters had on students.
In response to Thomas’s tweet of
the posters on Friday, dozens of alt-
right supporters and sympathizers
responded
directly
with
racial
epithets and insults. Some responses
also targeted Schlissel with anti-
Semitic language.
Earlier this month, the University
launched a campus-wide Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion initiative
that aims to increase diverse
representation on campus through
institutional
initiatives
and
discussion. In an interview with The
Michigan Daily in October, Schlissel
noted the importance of campus
engagement to resolve issues of
people hanging up offensive posters.
“Regarding the episodes of the
posters, on multiple occasions,
we’ve got no eyewitnesses, we don’t
have video, so (finding the people
responsible) will be very difficult,”
Schlissel said. “But in a sense, this
is something that students can
help us with as well. In that you all,
collectively, are the eyes and ears of
the campus. And if this is offensive,
as it is to almost everybody, if not
everybody, then keep your eyes
open. If you see someone putting
something up and you look at its
content, now you are an eyewitness
to something that is offensive to a
large faction of our community, and
you should speak up.”
LSA sophomore Carly Marten
said she also noticed an anti-Islamic
poster that characterized the New
Year’s assaults in Cologne, Germany
as a “brutal mass rape” on the
concrete pillar at the corner of State
Street and North University Avenue
Friday morning.
“When I saw the poster at North
University and State Street, I was
so upset and mad,” Marten said.
“So I took a photo, sent it to some
on-campus activists I knew and then
tore it down.”
Only minutes later, Marten,
who
is
a
supporter
of
the
#BlackLivesMatter movement, saw
another poster that contained an
infographic titled “What does the
alt-right want?” on a concrete pillar
outside of the Chemistry Building.
Immediately she photographed it
and contacted local BLM activists.
“When I saw the posters, some
guys kind of heckled me outside the
Chemistry Building,” she said. “My
emotional reaction was just shocked
and angry, even though I am not a
member of the attacked group.”
Following the initial reporting
of the flyering, The Michigan
Daily
reached
out
to
several
Students4Justice
campaign
members, who declined to comment.
After being informed of the
incident by the Daily, LSA senior
David Schafer, president of Central
Student Government, wrote in
an email interview that the fliers
were contrary to the values of the
University.
“Again, we are confronted with
the presence of racist and white
supremacist flyers on our campus,”
Schafer wrote. “This is a perversion
of the fundamental values on which
this university rests. Let us all
stand tall — and stand in solidarity
with the targeted communities.
Our commitment to truly serving
as allies requires us to back up our
words with concrete actions.”
FLIERS
From Page 1A
The University of Michigan’s
Residential College hosted a
discussion on issues of criminal
justice, incarceration and drug
addiction Monday evening.
The event featured married
couple Graham MacIndoe and
Susan Stellin, authors of a recent
memoir titled “Chancers: Addition,
Prison, Recovery, Love” which
focuses on MacIndoe’s decade-long
struggle with heroin addiction, his
experiences in New York City and
Homeland Security-run prisons and
Stellin’s efforts in navigating the
complex criminal justice system.
Stellin began the discussion by
reading a passage from the book that
describes the night in 2006 when
MacIndoe was arrested in Brooklyn
for misdemeanor drug possession.
For more than a day, Stellin had to
travel between numerous New York
City jails to obtain information on
MacIndoe’s whereabouts and the
nature of his arrest.
MacIndoe talked about the
humiliation of being strip-searched
in a Brooklyn jail and his anxiety that
night about how the arrest would
impact his future. He went on to
describe the physically and mentally
taxing time he spent at Rikers Island,
a New York City prison complex
notorious for abuse of prisoners by
guards, unsanitary and overcrowded
conditions and the large amount
of people held there without being
convicted for a crime, as detailed in a
2014 article in The New York Times.
However, MacIndoe was a
citizen of the United Kingdom at the
time his of arrest, which captured
the attention of the Department
of Homeland Security and led to
his transfer from Rikers Island to
a Homeland Security detention
center in rural Pennsylvania. While
MacIndoe described life at Rikers as
bleak and difficult, his experience as
an inmate in Pennsylvania was to be
much tougher.
“They whisked me to
immigration detention, which, as
Susan said, was so dehumanizing
and devastating to me,” MacIndoe
said. “I used to lie in my bunk at the
Homeland Security detention center
and fantasize about being back at
Rikers because as rough and tough
and crazy as Rikers was, I had a job
and I could go out in the yard and I
got good meals, but in immigration
detention I got none of that.”
For Stellin, one of the most
difficult parts of MacIndoe’s
detention was the lack of
transparency about his legal
status. She said a large number of
legal documents she and a lawyer
assembled for him were never
delivered and money that was
put in his commissary account
“mysteriously disappeared.”
“What really horrified me was
how quickly all of this happened and
how little contact he was allowed to
have,” Stellin said.
MacIndoe said he was lucky he
had friends and family who supported
him in his legal case and battles with
addiction after being released. Many
at Rikers Island and in the American
criminal justice system do not have
this type of support, he said.
“The thing is that many of them
are stuck in there for long, long
periods but they can’t afford bail, and
bail is not that much sometimes, but
people live in poverty and can’t pay
it,” MacIndoe said. “We shouldn’t
be spending our money on keeping
people locked up at Rikers Island
because they can’t afford a 500-dollar
bail for weeks, months or years on
end.”
Ypsilanti Township resident Amy
Atwell, who attended the event, said
the detailed account of MacIndoe’s
struggles with drug addiction, his
subsequent arrest and Stellin’s efforts
just in locating where MacIndoe was
sent in the city showed strength of
character.
“What struck me initially was
how brave both the addict, Graham,
and his spouse were, because she is
the support to a person who is dealing
with an illness that does not go away,”
Atwell said.
LSA sophomore Chanelle Miles
said MacIndoe and Stellin’s account
resonated with her on a personal
level, as she has seen people she
knows locked up or dealing with the
stigma of having a criminal record
upon release.
“The one and most important
thing is that even though he was on
Rikers Island and it seems so far away
from here, it touches so close to home
as I am African American, I come
from a community that is urban and
I come from a community where the
majority of my friends and my family
members know people who have
been incarcerated,” Miles said. “He
went through his different trials and
tribulations, but even through his
trials and tribulations, I could see my
friends and I could see my uncle and
their stories.”
KEVIN ZHENG/Daily
Music, Theatre, & Dance sophomore Peter Goggin (left) and Music, Theatre, & Dance junior Tristan Cappel play saxophone at Edgefest, a music festival hosted throughout downtown Ann Arbor, in front of the University of Michigan Museum
of Art Monday.
“State officials did
not listen until
a white person
spoke up.”
TYLER COADY
Daily Staff Reporter
Residential College holds talk on drug addiction
Authors discuss recent memoir on struggle with heroin use, imprisonment