3-News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, November 2, 2016 — 3A
JEREMY MITNICK/Daily
Ann Arbor resident Brie Clark, with the nonprofit organization Animal Equality, puts a Virtual Reality viewer on Engineering freshman Dylan Carleton on the
Diag on Tuesday.
ANIM AL EQUALIT Y
walked by and picked that up
for him, and it was like nothing
special happened; this may seem
to be usual here, but it was rarely
seen in some societies.”
He said his parents favor
Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton and often ask
him about what the supporters
for both candidates are like.
“People from other countries
pay a whole lot attention to what
the U.S. president says, and the
president’s speech and action can
fluctuate the global economic
and political environment a lot,”
Cheng said. “I think the success
in this country counts on both a
great education system and the
diversity of foreign workers.”
Engineering sophomore Tony
Li is originally from Beijing, but
has lived in Calgary, Alberta,
Canada, since the age of 7. During
his senior year of high school, he
said, he decided to take a leap and
attend school in the United States
because of the University of
Michigan’s “stellar” engineering
program.
“My family moved to Canada
from China when I was 7, and
I’ve lived there until I came here
for university,” Li said. “The
Canadian schools are OK schools,
but just not engineering-wise.”
Li said he feels bad for students
who can vote, most of whom are
voting in their first presidential
election.
“It’s not a desirable choice,”
He said.
Thrust
into
the
political
atmosphere on campus during
this year’s presidential primaries
as a freshman, Li said he was
especially shocked to see Trump
emerge
as
the
Republican
nominee as opposed to someone
more appealing such as Sen.
Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) or Ohio
Gov. John Kasich.
After
watching
the
2015
Canadian
federal
elections,
Li said, he expected a more
moderate
candidate
than
Trump to emerge, similar to the
newly elected Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau of the
Liberal Party or former Prime
Minister Stephen Harper of the
Conservative Party.
He said he initially wanted
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) to win
because he generally agrees with
Sander’s
democratic
socialist
policies since they are similar to
the Canadian political system,
but added he felt Sanders never
really had a chance.
“I definitely care who wins,
I’m here (in America) quite a bit,”
he joked.
When he goes back home to
Canada for breaks, he said, his
friends will often poke fun at
the U.S. presidential election;
however, they intently keep up to
date with the race.
“They’re still following the
politics,” Li said. “America is a
superpower and people do care
about who’s going to lead and
have that supreme power.”
Li added that he senses
political tension among students
on campus, particularly when
he sees people having polarized
political arguments.
“They all bring in their
personal viewpoints, but I don’t
think they’re taking anything
from the other side,” Li said.
While he is interested in the
outcome, Li said he probably
won’t bother to watch the
election results live.
“It’s pretty much decided from
the polls; Trump does not have
a chance,” Li said. “I’ll definitely
check online once in a while that
evening.”
While Li and Cheng are
experiencing the presidential
election up close as a byproduct
of attending college in the United
States, Jori Korpershoek, said he
is currently studying abroad at
the University semester partially
because he wanted to experience
the
U.S.
election
firsthand.
Korpershoek
attends
Leiden
University College in The Hague,
Netherlands.
He said he wants to have a
greater understanding of why
there is a surge of the alternative
right-wing movement happening
in
the
United
States
with
Trump’s nomination, especially
considering that candidates in
the past, like 2012 GOP nominee
Mitt Romney have been more
moderate.
“If you have a two-party
system,
you
would
expect
the candidates presented to
the people to be relatively
mainstream,” Korpershoek said.
“I didn’t think Trump would win
the primary.”
Korpershoek said he finds
conservative
philosophy
intriguing, but added that he
doesn’t think Trump embodies
those principles.
“I think there’s something
admirable
about
pure
conservatism
and
I
think
Trump has very few of those
qualities,” Korpershoek said.
“I think what I’ve been trying
to understand is, on the one
hand, trying to sympathize
with people who are voting for
politicians like Trump, while at
the same time also trying to find
that balance between economic
anxiety or if everybody is just
like racist.”
Currently, Korpershoek said
people in the Netherlands are
talking more about the U.S.
election than the forthcoming
Dutch election in 2017.
“It’s pretty intriguing how
there’s
a
relatively
sizable
percentage
of
people
who
follow the American election
intensely,” Korpershoek said. “I
couldn’t recognize other German
politicians, for example, but I
could tell you who Marco Rubio
is and what John McCain looks
like.”
For the most part, Korpershoek
said he doesn’t sense a lot of
tension on campus, but rather
a general nervousness on both
sides of the political spectrum.
“I kind of expected things to
be tense, but I feel more of an
apathy in most people I meet,
rather than anger,” Korpershoek
said.
INTERNATIONAL
From Page 1A
States — compared to 94 percent
of Protestants.
She told the crowd she hopes
these numbers bring light to
issues with voter registration
and negative perceptions and
spark more involvement from the
Muslim community.
“We don’t want to do research
just for the sake of doing
research, we want to do research
that empowers the community,”
Buageila said.
In her remarks, she focused on
how to increase voter turnout in
not only the Muslim American
community,
but
also
in
all
minority communities. Noting
Islamophobia and the erosion of
civil liberties is a main concern
for Muslims, she emphasized
that this should be a concern
for all Americans, calling it an
extension of the United States’
legacy of slavery and imperialism.
Buageila
concentrated
on
increasing
Muslim-American
civil participation particularly
through short-term strategies,
long-term strategies and “Get
Out and Vote” tactics. In practice,
these strategies include educating
the
Muslim
community,
volunteering to work at the polls
on Election Day and increasing
mosque
attendance.
Despite
some negative perceptions of
mosques, Buageila said polls
show
that
frequent
mosque
attendance is linked to greater
civic engagement.
Khan,
a
lecturer
in
the
department of Near East and
Asian Studies at Wayne State
University,
continued
the
conversation
by
connecting
Islamophobia
to
other
anti-
progressive campaigns during
American demographic shifts.
He
said
rapidly
shifting
demographics in the U.S., like the
first year with a non-Protestant
religious majority in 2010, has led
to an unprecedented moral panic
regarding the direction of the
country.
Although
the
religious
majority has changed, Khan also
acknowledged the prominence of
Islamophobia and questioned the
real root of its increase, saying
it does not solely come from the
federal level.
“Washington has proven to
be paradoxically fairly impotent
when it comes to fairly moving
the needle on anything,” Khan
said.
To instead locate the source
of Islamophobia at the local
level, Khan researched six topics
of
law:
voter
identification,
immigration,
abortion
rights,
same-sex marriage, right to work
and anti-Sharia law.
Through this research, he said
he found restrictive legislation
is overwhelmingly driven by
Republicans, though only 13
percent
of
total
Republican
lawmakers in the country work
to pass such legislation. Khan
said 80 percent of this small
group
supports
voter-access
laws, adding they display a desire
to disenfranchise and restrict
people from their rights as
Americans to engage in civil and
political matters.
Based on his findings, Khan
said it is important for Muslims
to increase their self-awareness
and education on these areas
of law, as well as to take part
in more political engagement.
For the broader community,
Khan urged people to develop
a contextual understanding of
the Muslim community, as well
as identify and integrate how
wider
legislative
and
policy
concerns will impact the Muslim
community.
“It is all connected, it is all
related, it is all integrated,” Khan
said.
LSA sophomore Mary Najjar,
who attended the event for her
Arab-American studies class, and
said she thought many Muslim
Americans feel conflicted about
their political participation.
“I
thought
that
it
was
interesting, I guess you almost
kind of understand it, but, like,
the Muslim community thought
that there wasn’t anyone there to
represent them so there was no
point in voting because nobody
is there for their interest,” Najjar
said. “It is kind of a paradox
where you have to vote to get
their attention so they focus
more on your issues, but also
if they’re not focusing on your
issues you wouldn’t want to get
involved.”
LECTURE
From Page 1A
photography, investigative
reporting
and
public
service
for
University
undergraduates.
“If
you’re
financially
successful in life, those
resources should go back
to society,” Lipsey said in a
video interview at the Daily
in 2009. “Certainly the
institution that educated
you and allowed you to
mature deserves support
for the young people that
are coming in.”
After graduating from
the
University,
Lipsey
served in the Air Force
during the Korean War
as editor of the Offutt, a
Nebraska-based newspaper
Air Pulse at Strategic Air
Command Headquarters.
He
then
joined
the
weekly Sun Newspapers in
his hometown of Omaha in
1953, where he eventually
became
the
paper’s
publisher and owner. In
1969, Lipsey sold the paper
to Warren Buffett, but
continued
as
publisher.
During his tenure at Sun
Newspapers, the paper won
a Pulitzer Prize for local
investigative reporting in
1973.
In 1983, Lipsey became
publisher of The Buffalo
News in New York at the
request of Buffett, who
also owned the paper. He
remained in that position
until his retirement in
2012.
Lipsey is survived by
his wife, Judith; daughter,
Janet; son, Daniel; and two
grandchildren.
LIPSEY
From Page 1A
the city’s strategy would be
sufficient
to
mitigate
the
public health risks posed by
the plume.
Vince Caruso, a founding
member of a coalition of
county-wide
officials
to
combat the plume Allen’s Creek
Watershed Group, said he is not
confident the MDEQ will be
able to adequately control the
contamination even with new
legal action, pointing to the
agency’s handling of the Flint
water crisis. He added that he
believed the only way forward
would be to petition for an
Environmental
Protection
Agency superfund to bring
federal intervention.
“I think we have good
evidence the DEQ is not up to
this effort,” Caruso said. “I
think we need to move and I
think the EPA has technology,
they have scientists, they have
large numbers of staff that
can come in, they have the
Department of Justice … they
will go after the responsible
party, and they’ve done that
before.”
CITY COUNCIL
From Page 2A
viewed the day as a success.
CSG
Communications
Director Joe Shea, a Public
Policy
senior,
echoed
Shunnar,
saying
it
was
important for students to
know what their elected
officials are working on.
“We’re
very
passionate
about making sure we are
a resource for students, so
the best way to do that is
solicit feedback by any way
possible,” he said.
The organization’s goal,
Shunnar said, was to have
students fill the board of
suggestions
with
their
opinions
on
recent
CSG
initiatives and future events
they would like to see hosted
by the assembly.
“If
that
board
of
suggestions gets filled and
we’re able to see something
consistent on that board, that
will help us progress and do
something students really
want,” Shunnar said.
LSA freshman Brittany
Jullie,
who
signed
the
banner, said she was glad to
see the initiative.
“I think it’s a really good
idea that people can raise
suggestions with what they
want to see happen,” she
said.
Shunnar noted that the
board also made it clear
students weren’t completely
familiar
with
assembly
initiatives,
because
many
students expressed concerns
about problems the body is
already working to fix.
“It’s nice that we’re able to
be a little more transparent
with
what
things
we’re
doing, because it’s different
to send out an email than to
talk to students,” Shunnar
said. “We’re getting a lot of
kids.”
She said she hopes to host
another event similar to
Diag Day, perhaps in another
location, in the future.
“I think we may have
one on North Campus, so
just to change the scenery,
obviously just getting a lot of
student impact is important,”
she said.
DIAG
From Page 1A
Eagle Scout, he said he was
curious about understanding his
surroundings through his map-
making skills.
“I think it’s definitely the boy-
scout effect,” he said. “I did a lot
with maps and compasses as a
kid, so as part of that I’ve really
always enjoyed looking at maps
to understand what was going
on.”
Hill and his collaborators use
open-source data, information
that is freely available to the
public, to create their maps.
They combine different aspects
of raw data to create intricate
visualizations
of
certain
phenomena.
Some
examples
include “Detroit’s Digital Divide,”
“Liquor, Parks and Homicide,”
and
“Detroit
Neighborhood
Coffee Shop Density.”
“A
lot
of
the
ideas
for
maps come from community
conversations where people will
have questions about something,
and I’ll make a map for it,”
Hill said. “I follow a lot of the
conversations in urban planning
and public health within the
city, so I look for how research
and data from other cities can be
applied to Detroit.”
LSA senior Kyle Monagle,
one of the approximately 30
students in attendance for Hill’s
presentation, said he was there to
satisfy a requirement for a class
in the Department of American
Culture.
“We’ve been talking a lot about
gentrification
and
pertinent
problems the city is dealing
with,”
Monagle
said.
“I’m
planning on living and working
in Detroit after graduation, so I
want to learn more about the city,
which is why this talk sounded
really interesting to me.”
In his presentation, “Giving
Data Empathy,” Hill discussed
the different ways maps make
sense of social, political and
economic phenomena. He noted,
however, that statistics without
context aren’t going to motivate
lawmakers, voters or residents to
enact change.
Hill said he believes it is
necessary to help consumers
relate to data on a more personal
level. Through Detroitography,
he hopes to empower Detroiters
by giving them the tools to
understand and tell the story of
their neighborhoods themselves.
He noted that as part of the
project, he organizes mapping
workshops
in
libraries
and
community
centers
to
help
Detroit residents improve their
data literacy, saying he believes
the repair and preservation of
any city must be grounded in the
people living there.
“I am always looking for ways
to collaborate with other people
in the area,” Hill said. “For me,
this project made sense because it
is a way to keep the conversations
about change in the city going.”
MAPS
From Page 1A