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Tuesday, December 13, 2016 — 3

of think about Brightmoor from 
a different perspective,” he said. 
“Some see it as blight, others see 
it as an opportunity.”

The BMS project as a whole, 

which began through a donation 
platform on crowd funding site 
Patronicity, met its goal of $25,000 
on July 10, 2015 and subsequently 
received an additional $25,000 
from the Michigan Economic 
Development 
Corporation. 

According to its website, the 
money raised from the donation 
drive was used to renovate 
the vacant building on Detroit 
Community Schools’ campus, buy 
tools and materials — bringing 
together community resources 

to support skill-building and 
entrepreneurship — and build 
the infrastructure to make BMS 
sustainable over time.

The money also funds other 

projects spawned from BMS, 
which 
include 
a 
gardening 

collective 
that 
gives 
fresh 

vegetables 
to 
residents 
in 

the 
neighborhood 
and 
an 

organization where a group builds 
large tricycles for the purpose of 
transporting clean water.

Franzino said after her class 

visited BMS and was able to talk to 
the project’s key stakeholders and 
former students of the program, 
they were better equipped for 
what the client was looking for in 
terms of branding.

“We had to figure out what the 

Brightmoor Maker Space was 
all about and what their goals 
were,” Franzino said. “One of the 

biggest challenges in designing 
for the Brightmoor Maker Space 
is thinking outside of the box 
because a lot of the initial ideas 
were very literal, like tools and 
things like that, so trying to 
reimagine what a maker space is 
and what it does and for them, it’s 
kind of all about community.”

Smotrich wrote in an article 

on the Art & Design website that 
through these meetings with 
BMS staff and with Tobier and 
Eddy, she and her classmates 
were given the opportunity to see 
what working with clients would 
be like, and how an organization 
like BMS can affect students in 
the area.

“Stamps students were able to 

develop a fuller understanding 
of the goals for the maker space 
and make a strong connection to 
Detroit Community High School 

students and their creative work,” 
she said.

After reading the BMS mission 

statement, Franzino said she and 
her class got to work on designing, 
and 
received 
critiques 
along 

the way from BMS alumni and 
mentors. Though her logo design 
received positive feedback from 

Tobier at the end of the course, 
she was surprised to have won.

“I wasn’t really expecting it 

and I wasn’t really sure they were 
going to end up choosing one of 
our designs so I was pretty happy 
to be selected,” she said.

Franzino said she saw BMS as 

a valuable resource in Brightmoor 

due to its ability to provide 
students with design skills not 
often offered in school.

“I think probably the most 

important thing is that it gives 
the kids an education that they’re 
not getting in the public school 
system,” she said.

SCHOOLS
From Page 1

which were ultimately rolled into a 
campus-wide strategy this summer.

Just before the release of the 

plan in October 2016, fliers posted 
around campus demeaned the 
humanity of Black, Muslim and 
LGBTQ people, inciting protests 
by hundreds of students calling 
for an administrative response. 
Many students later criticized the 
release of the plan as a reactionary 
approach to calming racial tensions 
on campus. Students also pointed 
to issues with the long-term nature 
of the DEI, which is benchmarked 
to five years from now, chanting 
slogans like “Why wait for 2025, 
will I even be alive?” in demands 
for more immediate action from 
Schlissel.

At a panel on campus safety and 

racism sponsored by the Sexual 
Assault Prevention and Awareness 
Center Thursday, Dec. 8, LSA senior 
Sabrina Bilimoria, who also is an 
Michigan in Color editor at the Daily, 
criticized the DEI plan for asking for 
more mental and emotional labor 
from marginalized students.

“The DEI initiatives are bullshit,” 

Bilimoria said to applause from panel 
attendees. “... Very little is done on 
an institutional level. There’s such a 
lack of understanding from Schlissel 
and many, many administrators as 
to a common way to talk to students 
without tokenizing them and asking 
minority students to do all the 
work.”

In an interview, Katrina Wade-

Golden, assistant vice provost and 
director of implementation for the 
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 
Strategic Plan, agreed campus 
racial tensions during the semester 
affected the perception of the plan’s 
rollout, though she noted the plan 
was not released in response to 
protests.

“We were not reacting to any 

particular kind of incident, and we 
really wanted to be proactive,” she 
said.

E. 
Royster 
Harper, 
the 

University’s 
vice 
president 
for 

student life, said the University 
administration’s commitment to 
improving campus diversity has 
existed since 1988 with the The 
Michigan 
Mandate, 
launched 

by 
then-University 
President 

James Duderstadt, which focused 
on 
recruitment 
of 
prospective 

students. The initiative largely 
succeeded 
in 
significantly 

raising 
underrepresented 

minority enrollment and faculty 
appointments — though a number 
of initiatives also aimed at creating 
an inclusive campus climate. Black 
enrollment has been decreasing 
substantially on the University 
campus. 
According 
to 
the 

University Ten Year Enrollment 
by Ethnicity report, in 2006, 7.2 
percent of University enrollment 
was Black. However, over the past 
nine years, Black enrollment has 
been decreasing, as in 2015, Blacks 
only accounted for 4.8 percent of 
enrollment.

Despite the mandate, statewide 

attacks 
on 
affirmative 
action 

eventually culminated in 2006 
with Proposition 2, a statewide 
ban 
on 
the 
consideration 
of 

race in admissions to Michigan 
universities 
the 
U.S. 
Supreme 

Court upheld in 2014, aligned with 
drops 
in 
minority 
enrollment. 

Duderstadt 
also 
criticized 
his 

successor, Lee Bollinger, for doing 
away with funding and resources 
allocated toward the mandate, 
which eventually faded out of 
existence. During her tenure as the 
University’s president, starting in 
the early 2000s, Mary Sue Coleman 
also launched initiatives to increase 
minority enrollment.

Student demands about the DEI 

plan tend to focus on boosting the 
proportion of minority students in 
the student body — a figure that 
has hovered consistently around 13 
percent for the last five years.

Harper said those levels may 

never rise significantly without 
affirmative action, noting that 
recruitment 
efforts 
in 
the 

DEI represent something of a 
workaround. Programs such as 
Wolverine Pathways and HAIL 
Scholars — both outlined in the 
DEI plan — instead aim to funnel 
marginalized students toward the 
University with primary education 
pipelines and scholarships.

“Why would anyone expect the 

numbers to be the same without 
affirmative action?” Harper said. 
“But you start thinking about 
different strategies for getting 
that done. Students have to be 
willing to get in some of those 

elementary schools, they have to 
vote for education and be part of 
organizations giving back. There’s 
a notion that you can be finished 
with this work, and that’s just not 
true.” 

The University may take a 

step further in its approach to 
maintaining 
campus 
inclusion 

when 
compared 
to 
peer 

institutions with active diversity 
plans including the University of 
California-Berkeley, the University 
of Maryland and Brown University 
— amid these institutions, the 
University’s 
combination 
of 

multifaceted, unit-specific goals 
with broader, overarching goals 
stands out.

For instance, schools such as 

Duke University, University of 
North Carolina-Chapel Hill and 
UC-Berkeley that already promote 
unit-specific strategic plans lack 
the umbrella structure of the 
DEI promoted by the University’s 
executive 
leadership, 
but 
do 

indicate needs for it. UNC’s 2014 
diversity 
report, 
for 
example, 

includes 
recommendations 
for 

a 
“coordinated 
institutional 

strategy,” while Duke calls for 
a 
“university-wide 
statement 

affirming our commitment to 
diversity.”

The parts of the DEI plan 

receiving 
the 
most 
publicity, 

however, are already in place at 
other institutions. From 2007 
to 2012, Ohio State University 
successfully 
implemented 
a 

diversity scholars network and met 
goals of hiring more female and 

underrepresented minority faculty. 
A number of schools already 
appoint chief diversity officers, 
as outlined in the University’s 
plan as well. Brown University’s 
plan released this February — the 
model perhaps most comparable 
to the DEI — devotes $165 
million to initiatives including a 
postdoctorate to faculty pipeline an 
improved summer bridge program 
and a first-generation student 
center, similar to pushes in the DEI 
plan.

Tabbaye Chavous, director of the 

National Center on Institutional 
Diversity 
at 
the 
University, 

acknowledged individual elements 
of the DEI were not unique 
compared to other institutions. 
He pointed to a semester rife with 
racial tension on campus as a 
possible reason for the spotlight on 
the DEI.

“A lot of the work and efforts 

are not necessarily new ideas, but 
might be new in cooperation,” 
she said. “Michigan is a place 
where 
when 
these 
things 

happen, attention is drawn to it, 
because we’re a place that’s been 
working on diversity issues and 
we’ve stated our commitment 
to those values. This seeming 
contradiction does feel striking, 
but this DEI plan is one thing … 
that will position us to move on 
these efforts in new ways.” 

Wade-Golden 
also 
hailed 

efforts increasing faculty and 
staff diversity and emphasized 
the DEI would not go the way of 
the Michigan Mandate with its 

measures of accountability and 
focus on equity and inclusion. 
In particular, she noted that 
contributions 
to 
DEI-specific 

goals will be taken into account 
in faculty performance reviews 
and recommendations for tenure, 
and deans must submit annual 
reports on college-specific DEI 
initiatives.

“The 
mandate 
was 

groundbreaking and really before 
its time, actually,” she said. 
“Now, we definitely have top 
administrative support in terms of 
the president and the provost. I’m 
sure you’ve seen the commitment 
allocated in $85 million, and our 
robust accountability structure 
really sets us apart from anything 
happening nationally.”

A campus climate survey to 

be distributed next semester 
will establish baseline metrics 
to assess the DEI’s success, and 
Chavous said the plan’s efficacy 
will ultimately hinge on the 
University’s ability to balance 
short-term needs of students and 
long-term institutional goals.

“The experiences of students 

are unique relative to faculty 
and staff in that you’re here for a 
much shorter time,” she said. “It 
really is a more immediate issue 
for students than faculty and 
administrators who are used to 
the long haul. If we can balance 
that, if Michigan can be a model of 
a positive way to work effectively 
on these issues, I think we can 
affect the broader society.”

DEI
From Page 1

infected in the system.

“None of the available drugs 

are effective at getting rid of the 
cells,” she wrote. “Our approach 
inhibits an HIV protein that makes 
the infected cells resistant to the 
immune system. We expect that 
our drug would help the immune 
system find and kill the infected 
cells.”

Collins, 
who 
has 
been 

researching HIV/AIDS for many 
years, wrote she screened these 
particular 
bacteria 
for 
about 

five years in collaboration with 
University microbiologist David 
Sherman and the Life Sciences 
Institute’s Center for Chemical 
Genomics.

After many years dedicated to 

the research of Nef — the protein 
responsible for concealing the 
virus — Collins wrote this the 
work looks promising, though she 
acknowledged there is still a lot of 
work to do.

“So far, the drugs look very 

potent and non-toxic in tissue 
culture cells - so they are as 

promising as they could be at 
this stage,” she wrote. “However, 
more work needs to be done to 
understand the full potential of our 
compounds.”

Epidemiology 
Prof. 
Powel 

Kazanjian, chief of the University’s 
division of infectious diseases, 
wrote in an email interview that 
Collins’ research — despite being 
in the developmental stage — 
holds some promise to address 
shortcomings of currently available 
drugs, namely their inability to 
fully eliminate the virus from the 
body.

“It is at a very early stage, but 

it has the potential to make an 
important 
impact,” 
he 
wrote. 

“Right now we have drugs that 
suppress viral replication and need 
to be given for a lifetime. A cure for 
HIV would avoid the lifelong use of 
drugs.”

According 
to 
a 
blog 
post 

published by the University of 
Michigan Health System’s Health 
Lab, Collins and her team began 
with 10 compounds and have been 
able to focus in on three that hold 
the greatest potential for inhibiting 
Nef.

Currently, the work is funded 

by 
the 
University’s 
medical 

research institute and the National 
Institutes of Health. Collins wrote 
that limited funding is one of the 
primary challenges facing the 
research’s ability to move forward 
quickly and eventually reach the 
stage of clinical testing in human 
patients.

“We have a limited amount 

of funds to try all the things that 
we would like to try to enhance 
production of the compound by 
the bacteria,” she wrote. “NIH 
funding is generally not adequate 
for developing drugs and drug 
companies often don’t become 
interested unless a lot of work has 
already been done to show the drug 
will be effective.”

Despite challenges of funding 

and understanding of the disease, 
Collins wrote she hopes to continue 
to research the mechanisms that 
viruses use to evade and resist the 
body’s immune system, not just in 
HIV/AIDS but other dangerous 
viruses as well.

“In 5-10 years, I expect that 

we will continue to be focused on 
what viruses do to resist immune 
detection and eradication so that 
we can refine our approaches 
to eliminate a wide variety of 
persistent viruses,” she wrote.

CURE
From Page 1

“We can’t let that happen again.”

During the public comment 

portion of the meeting, multiple 
other 
A2 
Safe 
Transport 

members demanded the council 
take immediate action by hiring 
crossing guards and creating 
“school zones” with appropriate 
signage.

Last year, prior to Tang’s death, 

the city’s Pedestrian Safety and 
Task Force committee introduced 
“Vision Zero” to the council, a 
report brought to council for 
review that presented to goal of 

completely eliminating deaths 
and injuries of pedestrians.

However, when the “Vision 

Zero” initiative was brought up 
again during Monday evening’s 
session, 
City 
Administrator 

Howard Lazarus urged caution 
on such absolute goals.

“There are formal Vision Zero 

programs, so, if that’s the desire of 
the council to have a Vision Zero 
program, just realize what that 
means,” Lazarus said.

Councilmember 
Sumi 

Kailasapathy (D–Ward 1) agreed 
with A2 Safe Transport members 
that the city’s resources would be 
better spent specifically in the areas 
of greatest concern, like school 
zones.

“I also realize that not every 

crosswalk will be updated within the 
first year, but how I would go about 
prioritizing something like safety is 
starting from the most vulnerable,” 
she said. “So for me I feel like 
children are the most vulnerable and 
that’s where we start.”

Along 
with 
the 
immediate 

action suggested by the group, 
A2 Safe Transport members also 
touted a longer term measure — 
increasing driver compliance with 
the crosswalk law via increased 
police 
enforcement. 
The 
law 

currently states a driver must stop 
for a pedestrian in the crosswalk or 
waiting to cross. 

SAFETY
From Page 1

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

