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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