I

n October 2015, I attended a 
talk featuring Piper Kerman, 
author 
of 
the 
memoir 

“Orange Is The New 
Black: My Year in a 
Women’s 
Prison,” 

which 
inspired 
the 

award-winning Netflix 
television 
show. 

Kerman devoted much 
of her time to talking 
about the importance 
of criminal justice 
reform, 
and 
the 

auditorium was full 
of people receptive to 
her message.

At the time, thanks to the work 

of advocates like Kerman, there 
was bipartisan acknowledgment 
that the criminal justice system 
was 
unfair, 
ineffective 
and 

inefficient. It was one of President 
Obama’s key objectives and one of 
his few agendas that didn’t receive 
pushback from Republicans in 
Congress. As such, it seemed 
like criminal justice reform was 
inevitable. In Trump’s America, 
though, it seems unimaginable.

It’s quite easy to see why the 

system needs to be reformed. The 
United States accounts for 4.4 
percent of the world’s population 
but accounts for 22 percent of the 
world’s prison population. With 
716 prisoners per 100,000 people, 
the United States has the highest 
prison population rate in the world. 
However, there is no evidence 
to suggest that this high rate of 
incarceration is due to high rates 
of crime. In fact, the International 
Crime Victims Survey shows 
that the United States has similar 
rates of criminal victimization as 
Western European countries.

Furthermore, 
the 
United 

States’ 
staggeringly 
high 

rates 
of 
incarceration 
have 

disproportionately 
affected 

young Black men with low levels 
of education. As of 2008, one 
in 10 young African-American 
men with high school diplomas 
were in jail or prison. For Black 
male high school drop-outs, the 
incarceration rate was 37 percent. 
Given how difficult it is for 
ex-offenders to gain employment 
and the disenfranchisement of 
ex-felons in many states, these 
high incarceration rates can have 
lasting negative impacts on the 
African-American 
community. 

Thus, 
mass 
incarceration 

perpetuates cycles of economic 
and racial inequality.

There are also very high fiscal 

costs to the criminal justice 
system. In the fiscal year of 2013 
alone, the budget request for the 
Federal Bureau of Prisons was $6.9 
billion and accounted for more 
than 25 percent of the Department 
of Justice’s budget.

This 
is 
hardly 
surprising 

given the United States’ abysmal 
recidivism rates. One study found 

that within five years 
of release, about 76 
percent 
of 
released 

prisoners 
were 

rearrested. Therefore, 
it’s hard to ignore 
that the U.S. criminal 
justice 
system 
has 

failed to reform the 
prisoners 
whom 
it 

incarcerates, allowed 
for unequal and unjust 
outcomes and, in the 

process, racked up a huge 

bill for U.S. taxpayers.

Due to increasing awareness 

of these concerns, the pendulum 
of public opinion has swayed 
toward 
supporting 
criminal 

justice reform. This push for reform 
was clear in October 2015, when 
bipartisan legislation was proposed 
in the Senate to reduce the length 
of mandatory minimum sentences 
and ban solitary confinement for 
juveniles, among many other reforms.

Unfortunately, 
and 
despite 

diverse and powerful support, 
the bill languished in the Senate. 
Though it was crafted by senators 
on both sides of party lines, 
Trump’s law-and-order campaign 
brought 
back 
the 
“tough-on-

crime” rhetoric that altered the 
conversation and the political 
dynamics. This change in tone 
permitted (and likely motivated) 
several prominent Republicans to 
vocally oppose the once-popular bill. 
Ultimately, Senate Majority Leader 
Mitch McConnell did not allow a 
vote on the proposal, deeming it too 
controversial and divisive.

If the failure of Congress to pass 

a bipartisan bill addressing mass 
incarceration dealt a blow to the 
goal of criminal justice reform, 
Trump’s appointment for attorney 
general delivered the knockout 
punch. The new attorney general, 
Jeff Sessions, was one of the 
Republican senators who opposed 
the bill and prevented its success. 
A look at his history on criminal 
justice paints a complicated picture 
that leans toward favoring harsh 
punishment over rehabilitation, 
which calls into question his 
commitment to promoting racial 
equality broadly and criminal 
justice reform specifically.

During Sessions’ confirmation 

hearing, Rep. Cedric Richmond 
(D–Calif.) said, “Sen. Sessions has 
advanced an agenda that will do 
great harm to African-American 
citizens 
and 
communities.” 

Additionally, civil rights leader 
Sen. John Lewis (D–Ga.) said, 
“Those who are committed to 
equal justice in our society wonder 
whether Sen. Sessions’ calls for 
law and order will mean today 

what it meant in Alabama when I 
was coming up back then.”

How valid are those fears, and 

can we really assume that criminal 
justice reform will be prevented 
at a national level for the next 
four to eight years? That’s a hard 
question to answer at this point 
in the administration, but a look 
at the new White House website 
might be the best indication we 
have right now. The website does 
not show criminal justice reform 
as one of the top issues but does 
cite “Standing Up For Our Law 
Enforcement Community” as a 
pressing concern.

Though this is surely a noble 

goal, it is simply not a sufficient 
response to the problems plaguing 
the criminal justice system. In fact, 
unquestioning and unconditional 
support of law enforcement can be 
dangerous when police are abusing 
their power. Federal investigations 
have been essential in exposing 
the systemic violation of the law 
and racial discrimination by police 
departments, such as in Ferguson 
and Chicago.

Under the heading of “Standing 

Up For Our Law Enforcement 
Community,” the White House 
website states, “Our country needs 
more law enforcement, more 
community engagement, and more 
effective policing.” If correctly 
implemented, 
these 
changes 

could certainly help improve 
our criminal justice system. But 
they won’t mean anything in the 
absence of comprehensive reform. 
This means that there must be 
substantial changes to sentencing 
laws and reentry programming. 
It also means that police and 
prisons need to continue to be held 
accountable for discrimination 
and unjustified use of force.

These 
goals 
may 
seem 

impossible, or at least impractical, 
in the new administration, but 
it’s important to remember that 
change does not need to happen at 
a federal level to make a difference. 
State legislation has, can and will 
make a huge difference in the 
battle for criminal justice reform. 
In Michigan, for example, a 19-bill 
package was re-introduced that 
would reform the state’s parole 
and probation systems.

It’s time for us to push our state 

legislators to pick up where our 
national legislators left off. Our 
administration may have changed 
since last October when I went 
to see Piper Kerman talk and 
criminal justice reform was all but 
certain. However, we as a nation 
have not changed, and we can 
work to enact change ourselves.

A

fter the election, like 
many 
of 
my 
fellow 

students, I had mixed 

feelings. However, unlike many 
of my friends, I felt a small 
sense of relief. I knew that 
this was going to be a time of 
incredible upheaval and chaos 
in our country; however, I was 
to be exempt from that chaos as I 
was planning on studying abroad 
for the first five months of the 
Donald Trump administration. 
For weeks, I bragged that I 
wasn’t going to have to deal 
with the “peaceful exchange 
of power” because I would be 
nearly 4,000 miles away.

For my first few weeks in 

Paris, I tried my best not to 
think about Trump. Every 
time my host mother brought 
up something he had said on 
TV I would quickly change the 
subject. I would casually scroll 
through my Facebook feed, 
stopping on the occasional cat 
video and not much else. I was 
under the impression that I had 
escaped (for the time being) 
and attempted to focus on my 
life abroad.

What I didn’t realize was 

just how small this world 
has become. With the advent 
of nearly ubiquitous access 
to social media, there is no 
such thing as “escaping to 
another country” anymore. I 
thought back to all the people 
who threatened to move to 
Canada after Trump’s election, 

hoping they had realized by 
now that running away is the 
opposite of a solution. While 
his policies may not directly 
affect me while I’m a resident 
of France, that doesn’t mean I 
don’t hear about them or feel 
the emotional blowback from 
knowing that his policies are 
affecting many people I love.

My 
attitude 
completely 

changed the day of the Women’s 
March on Paris. I woke up late 
the day after the inauguration 
and lazily checked my Facebook 
feed. I saw that one of my new 
friends from my program in 
Paris had posted that he would 
be 
attending 
the 
Women’s 

March. I checked out the 
Facebook event and after about 
30 seconds of deliberating if 
I would rather stay in bed, I 
decided to go. I quickly found 
out that nearly every student 
from my study abroad program 
was also going.

A 
group 
of 
my 
fellow 

students and I met up and 
watched as thousands upon 
thousands of people slowly 
gathered in Human Rights 
Square 
in 
the 
shadow 
of 

the Eiffel Tower. Being the 
unorganized 
international 

students that we are, none of us 
remembered to bring signs, but 
we spent a great deal of time 
admiring the signs around us 
in both French and English. 
We quickly realized that many 
of the people around us were 
American, not French. I had no 
idea there were this many of us 
in Paris.

The march finally began 

and, as I’m sure many others 
who 
participated 
in 
the 

marches around the world did, 
I felt an overwhelming sense of 
solidarity — a feeling that I’m not 
sure I had felt in my time abroad 
thus far. While our program 
requires that we speak French 
at all times, we all slowly slipped 
into English, feeling that this 
protest constituted a reasonable 
exception to the rule. All around 
us, bands played, people danced 
and crowds shouted chants in 
both French and English.

What the march made me 

realize is that politics is a 
global issue, not just a national 
one. It is now estimated that 
the march reached millions 
of women in the United States 
and across the globe, making it 
the biggest peaceful protest in 
American history. Personally, 
I have never been a part of 
an event that massive in my 
entire life. Before the march, 
I didn’t want anything to do 
with American politics; they 
had exhausted me while I was 
back home and all I wanted was 
an escape. After the march, I 
was so incredibly grateful to 
have the chance to stand up for 
what I believe in while abroad. 
It gave me hope, it made me 
feel like I still have a place in 
the debate, it made me want 
to get involved again. Most 
importantly, it woke me up.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4— Thursday, January 26, 2017

Thinking, not doing

AUSTIN XU | OP-ED

I

’m an engineer. You know, 
one of those elitist hermits 
who resides on North 

Campus and only occasionally 
takes 
the 
Bursley-Baits 

bus down to chastise those 
unfortunate 
non-engineers 

on 
Central 
Campus? 
Yep. 

Even worse, I’m an electrical 
engineer. You know … from the 
EECS department? I’m one of 
those snobs.

I believe that being an 

engineer is just as difficult as 
any major in “LS and Play.” 
There may be differences in 
workload, 
scheduling 
and 

campuses, but at the end of the 
day, a college education is about 
learning. Yet I feel “learning” 
has become somewhat lost 
in the day-to-day clutter of 
college lives. For me to fully 
encompass college, I strive to 
understand the how and why 
behind concepts, not just how 
to solve problems. After all, 
learning is just the beginning of 
my journey; an in-depth grasp 
of the underlying ideas enables 
me to innovate with a full 
comprehension of the problem 
at hand. With club meetings, 
research, work, term papers 
and weekly homework sets, 
“learning” has been overtaken 
by what I call “doing.”

My 
mother 
has 
always 

told me that education is 
the one thing that cannot be 
taken from me. Wherever I 
go, whatever I do, a higher 
education is invaluable. And 
it’s not because I can memorize 
an entire chart of Laplace 
transformations, 
recite 

Maxwell’s equations or tell the 
difference between dynamic 
and static polymorphism. No, 
these explicit things — or any 
of the numerous equations and 
facts I’ve crammed into my 
head — are not going to land 
me a job or even advance my 
academic career.

You may stop me here and 

ask, “Don’t you need to know 
those things to do well?” We’ve 
arrived at my point. How I 

define academic success isn’t 
through a number out of four 
or even 4.4 (I’m looking at you, 
Ross), but rather by how much 
I have thought, am thinking 
and will think. Because at 
the end of the day, education 
comes down to teaching a set of 
critical thinking skills.

It’s easy to get caught up in 

“doing things.” But what does 
this mean? Time and time 
again, I have heard people 
say, “Oh, it won’t be bad after 
I memorize these equations,” 
or “I’ll just pack my cheat 
sheet with these equations.” 
Number crunching. Plug and 
chug. Is that the point of our 
education? When we step into 
the workforce, we have all 
the resources available to us. 
There’s no need to memorize 
the formulas off the top of 
your head. In the real world, 
job performance is ultimately 
measured by how much you 
think. Once again: thinking. 
I’m 
a 
firm 
believer 
that 

understanding course material, 
making sure you know how the 
equations are derived, how the 
certain relationships are formed 
or why a certain concept is the 
way it is serves a far greater 
purpose than memorizing.

And it’s not just me who 

thinks that way. Eric Mazur, 
a 
professor 
at 
Harvard 

University, felt the same way 
after testing his introductory-
level 
students 
conceptually. 

In his article on assumptions 
in education, Mazur describes 
the outcomes from traditional 
lecture and from an alternative 
approach where students are 
required to read the material 
before coming to a discussion-
based 
class 
facilitated 
by 

iClickers. He found in the 
alternative approach students 
were able to better internalize 
the material, which led to 
improved performance on both 
conceptual 
and 
traditional 

problems. While this article 
was 
published 
more 
than 

eight years ago, the message 
is timeless: A fundamental 
understanding 
of 
concepts 

enables students to generalize 
their approach to any given 

problem while honing their 
critical thinking skills. 

Rote 
memorization 
will 

only get you so far. It might 
get you a college degree, but 
it doesn’t advance you as a 
person. It doesn’t develop the 
critical analysis skills that are 
necessary to do any job, let alone 
an engineering job. It robs you 
of your time at an institution 
of higher learning. Having an 
in-depth understanding of the 
material presented in class 
certainly helps. Sure, you may 
never use 90 percent of the 
class material, but having that 
baseline knowledge to build 
off of serves as the foundation 
of 
comprehending 
high-level 

problems in the “real world.” 
By 
knowing 
the 
underlying 

theory and relationships of the 
final product or solution, as an 
engineer I can easily identify 
problems I may encounter, 
outline 
different 
routes 
to 

take and then decide between 
trade-offs. 

As someone who used the 

brute force of memorization 
to get through high school, it 
is probably hypocritical of me 
to comment on learning. But 
the more time I spend here at 
the University of Michigan, the 
more success I find in diving 
deeply into the course material, 
picking the brains of professors 
and exploring the world through 
research. I’ll only be in such an 
academic environment once, an 
environment where people are 
obsessed with learning. It makes 
me want to learn. Think. Question. 
Examine. This translates not only 
in class but also to projects where 
I can “get my hands dirty” and 
build something.

My mother was right, but her 

words need a bit of tweaking. 
The critical thinking gained 
through higher education is 
the one thing that cannot be 
taken from me. From today to 
the day I take my last steps on 
campus, to the day I take my 
last steps at my workplace, I 
hope to be learning, exploring 
and, of course, thinking. 

REBECCA LERNER

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

EMMA KINERY

Editor in Chief

ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY 

and REBECCA TARNOPOL 

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
Megan Burns

Samantha Goldstein

Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan

Max Lubell

Alexis Megdanoff
Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy 

Jason Rowland

Ali Safawi

Kevin Sweitzer

Rebecca Tarnopol

Ashley Tjhung

Stephanie Trierweiler

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Austin Xu is a sophomore in the 

College of Engineering.

Women’s march abroad

TYREE COWELL | STUDY ABROAD SERIES

Criminal injustice

MARY KATE WINN | COLUMN

Mary Kate Winn can be reached at 

winnm@umich.edu.

Tyree Cowell is a junior in LSA 

studying abroad in Paris, France.

MARY KATE 

WINN

TYREE COWELL

AUSTIN XU

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Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 
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—Women’s march on Washington national co -chair, Linda 

Sarsourin an op-ed for Women’s Media Center.

“

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

Women are intersectional human beings 

who live multi-issued lives. When we 
are protected, when we are respected, 
when we are able to thrive and given 
the same opportunities as our male 
counterparts... — our nation will rise.”

