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Wednesday, February 15, 2017 — 3A

since fleeing Syria more than six 
years ago. After members of her 
family were kidnapped and others 
received threats, her father’s side 
of the family decided to flee from 
Damascus, Syria to Jordan. Like 
so many others, their journey to 
the United States was a long and 
stressful one.

Daboul’s 
older 
brother 
was 

already attending medical school 
in the United States when the 
family fled to Jordan. Once settled 
in Jordan, her parents decided to 
visit their eldest son in the United 
States. Once they were there, her 
parents decided to apply for visas 
and request refugee status.

The 
process 
was 
supposed 

to take six months — Daboul’s 
parents ended up waiting in the 
United States for two years without 
permission to leave the country 
except for a two-week trip to see 
their children. Daboul, the eldest 
of the four children left behind in 
Jordan, took on the role of cooking, 
cleaning and, in a general sense, 
being the parent while waiting for 
the U.S. government to allow her 
parents to come back to Jordan and 
bring them to join the rest of the 
family in Michigan.

“There were so many times in 

Jordan I would call my brother 
and be like, it’s over — I was a really 
dramatic kid,” Daboul said. “The 
day we found out we were going to 
America, I was jumping on the bed 
the whole day because I finally was 
able to join my parents and brother.”

In 
2011, 
the 
Arab 
Spring 

saw the end of two long-term 
administrations, 
Tunisian 

President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali 
and Egyptian President Hosni 
Mubarak. Syria’s own protests 
developed into violence after the 
torture of 15 teenage boys who 
voiced support of the Arab Spring.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad 

continued an assault on his citizens, 
detaining hundreds and beginning 
the civil war known as the Syrian 
conflict. The Free Syrian Army and 
the terrorist movement ISIS were 
born out of the struggle against 
al-Assad, leading to more than 
450,000 killed and 50 percent of 
the country’s pre-war population 
displaced.

As of December 2016, there 

are 4,873,248 refugees from Syria 
worldwide.

Daboul considers her family 

lucky since they left so early in the 
revolution and were able to move 
to the United States relatively 
smoothly, leaving before ISIS even 
became a prominent threat in the 
country.

“To me, most Americans think 

the only issue is ISIS,” Daboul said. 
“It was mainly an opposition to the 
president and ISIS isn’t as big as the 
media makes it to be. I was in Syria 
five years ago and ISIS didn’t exist 
back then. It bothers me. This isn’t 
to say ISIS isn’t a big deal … but now 
everything people talk about is ISIS, 
which is a big deal and we need to 
get rid of it but you’re not talking 
about the other main issue at all 

anymore.”

Michigan’s population
Michigan has the second highest 

population of Syrian refugees, 
with most residing in Troy and 
Dearborn. The state has the highest 
Arab population in the United 
States, containing 2 percent of the 
state’s population in 2015.

Tawfik Azalem, director of the 

U.S. Committee for Refugees and 
Immigrants in Detroit, said the 
group mostly settles refugees in 
Wayne and Macomb Counties — 
areas with large Middle-Eastern, 
Iraqi and Chaldean populations.

“Michigan 
is 
a 
welcoming 

state and immigration is a really 
great opportunity to grow our 
state,” Azalem said. “I truly think 
diversity is power. Michigan and 
the specifically Detroit metro area 
is one of the largest Middle-Eastern 
populations in the country.” 

Patrick 
McLean, 
a 
Syrian 

American Rescue Network board 
member, explained many refugees 
settle in Michigan through the 
network of past Syrian immigrants 
— he referred to Dearborn as the 
“heart of Arab-American culture.”

On Jan. 25, Ann Arbor City 

Council passed a resolution to 
protect immigrants from federal 
investigation — however, the city 
did not declare itself as a “sanctuary 
city.” This was in response 
to 
President 
Donald 
Trump’s 

executive order on the same day 
against sanctuary spaces that could 
potentially lose federal funding.

The attempt at an immigration 

ban

On Jan. 27 — International 

Holocaust Remembrance Day — 
Trump signed an executive order 
calling for suspended immigration 
from 
seven 
Muslim-majority 

countries such as Somalia, Yemen 
and Syria.

Trump’s order in return faced 

exceeding amounts of backlash, 
with protests sparking across the 
country. However, some viewed 
the immigration halt as a means of 
protecting the nation.

“Without question, what the 

current president is doing with his 
executive order is really creating a 
culture of fear among the refugee 
population 
and 
the 
broader 

immigrant population,” McLean 
said. “It is not going to make us safer 
— it has the potential to make us less 
safe, because it will make refugees 
and immigrant much more reluctant 
to deal with law enforcement and 
the broader community. It’s terribly 
misguided.”

However, McLean found hope 

in the support he saw throughout 
the country. On Jan. 29, thousands 
crowded in the Detroit Metropolitan 
Airport, chanting “Let them in” and 
welcoming arrivals.

The ban received mixed reactions 

on campus. LSA senior Adam 
Mageed, president of the campus 
University Muslim Coalition, said 
in late January the policy ignores 
refugees whose lives could be in 
greater danger.

“I think that Americans are 

incredibly safe and take their safety 
for granted,” Mageed said. “Security 
at the cost of heavy discrimination 
isn’t security.”

Some on the conservative side 

disagreed, believing the ban to 
be vital for national security. LSA 
junior Enrique Zalamea, president 
of the University’s chapter of 
College Republicans, said in an 
earlier interview that it was the 
government’s 
duty 
to 
uphold 

security.

“I 
am 
a 
first-generation 

American, and I love this country, 
but I would rather have a more 
secure immigration process in order 
to reduce the risk of future terrorist 
threats,” Zalamea said. “It truly 
bewilders me to see so many people 
protesting what is essentially a vital 
step towards proving our national 
security.”

After the ban was announced, 

University President Mark Schlissel 
said he would not turn over 
students’ immigration information. 
Michigan Attorney General Bill 
Schuette, however, backed the 
order, insisting it was not a Muslim 
ban but “placing the security of 
Americans first.”

Gov. Rick Snyder, along with 31 

other governors, placed a temporary 
ban on the entry of Syrian refugees 
into the state following the terrorist 
attacks November 2015 in Paris. 
Snyder’s 
ban 
prompted 
many 

University faculty and staff to speak 
out against the governor’s actions. 
In an interview, that November, 
History Prof. Pamela Ballinger 
expressed her dismay with the 
states ban. 

“The 
growing 
chorus 
of 

governors who wish to block 
resettlement of Syrian refugees in 
their states is a worrisome, yet sadly 
predictable, response to the terror 
attacks in Paris,” Ballinger said. 
“These governors displace blame 
onto the literally displaced, victims 
forced to flee their homes as a result 
of the same extremist violence that 
shook Paris last week. Such a view 
ignores that the U.S. commitment to 
take Syrian refugees is already low, 
as well as the fact that the process of 
refugee vetting in the U.S. is a slow 
and careful one.”

On Feb. 9, the federal court 

rejected the appeal for Trump’s 
travel ban on the basis that there 
was no evidence of that anyone had 
committed terrorist acts from the 
seven countries. Despite Trump’s 
claims the court had no power on 
his order, the ban was disabled.

Yet 
uncertainty 
still 
reigns 

throughout 
the 
country 
— 

with 
refugees, 
immigrants, 

undocumented 
individuals 
and 

organizations 
unsure 
how 
to 

shape their futures based on the 
contentious political climate.

The 
U.S. 
Committee 
for 

Refugees and Immigrants is a 
national refugee program, federally 
funded, that addresses the needs 
of refugees worldwide, supporting 
a transition to the United States. 
USCRI 
attempts 
to 
provide 

refugees 
with 
transportation, 

housing and other necessities in the 
first 30 to 90 days they are in the 
country. Other programs include 
aid in employment and family 
counseling. They also must have a 
health screening within the first 30 
days of arrival.

REFUGEE
From Page 1A

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for 
global 
challenge-centered 

goals. Though other universities 
are also able to get involved, these 
three central participants have 
already applied this model to 
establish a global collaboratory in 
advanced manufacturing.

The University has been on the 

forefront of driverless technology 
nationally 
and 
internationally 

with the creation of Mcity, the 
simulated urban-suburban driving 
environment located on North 
Campus that prototypes and tests 
automated vehicles.

Carrie Morton, deputy director 

of the Mobility Transformation 
Center — established in 2013 as 
a partnership program within 
academia that expands to include 
industry 
and 
government 
— 

said Mcity is the MTC’s largest 
contribution to the University’s 
research 
interests. 
Morton 

highlighted 
its 
significance 

in terms of drawing partners 
and 
government 
involvement, 

especially 
through 
the 

Department of Transportation 
both statewide and nationwide.

“We have been able to grow 

our 
research 
portfolio 
well 

beyond 
the 
technology 
and 

we’re starting to get a better 
understanding of how humans 
interface with these technologies, 
which is really important when 
we try to understand consumer 
acceptance,” Morton said.

Morton outlined much of the 

progress that has been made 
with 
regard 
to 
intelligence 

infrastructure, including a new 
traffic control center, the launching 
of TechLab — an initiative with 
the Center for Entrepreneurship 
where early-stage companies are 
launched at the MTC — and having 
open connected and automated 
vehicles. This fleet of two vehicles, 
professionally established as drive-
by-wire vehicles, hold the goal of 
creating a platform allowing MTC 
researchers to speed innovation 
and reduce the normal barriers of 
working on these technologies.

“We really have a wonderful 

glide path to be able to deploy what 
we learn in the real world very 
quickly,” Morton said.

Hu also initiated a student 

Scholars 
Program 
through 

MCubed — which stimulates 
innovative 
research 
and 

scholarship through distributing 
real-time 
seed 
funding 
to 

multidisciplinary, 
faculty-

headed 
research 
teams 
for 

undergraduates. 
$4000 
is 

allocated 
for 
each 
accepted 

undergraduate 
participant 
for 

summer work. The graduate level 
program is similar but allocates 
$8,000 per student to those 
involved.

“I’m 
very 
supportive 
of 

undergraduate 
research,” 
Hu 

said. 
“Everywhere 
I 
travel, 

people talk about their research 
experience, how undergraduate 
research really enabled them to 
be independent thinkers, define 
problems, solve problems, drawing 

a conclusion or writing a report.”

New Initiatives
Another program of Hu’s is 

the Exercise and Sport Science 
Initiative, which aims to optimize 
health and athletic performance, 
co-directed by Kinesiology Prof. 
Ron 
Zernicke. 
The 
initiative 

involves collaboration from the 
fields of data science and analytics, 
new 
sport 
technologies 
— 

including design and prototyping 
— and performance optimization.

Zernicke, 
who 
focuses 
on 

optimal 
performance, 
was 

appointed 
to 
co-direct 
the 

initiative 
with 
biomedical 

engineering Prof. Ellen Arruda 
last September. Zernicke said he 
has found Hu to be supportive 
of cross- and interdisciplinary 
research 
branching 
multiple 

sectors of the University in many 
ways.

Though a new program, the 

ESSI has conducted research 
that could hold implications not 
only for athletes, but also for the 
medical field, particularly through 
recording 
technology 
useful 

for critical care units in terms 
of monitoring individuals’ life 
sciences measurements, care input 
and nutrition.

Zernicke cited the ESSI as a way 

to solve social problems, establish 
a business venture and hold 
corporate partnerships, all within 
the multidisciplinary expertise of 
the University.

“One of the intriguing things 

is that Michigan has the health 
system here — including the sports 
medicine — it has the athletics, 
and it has all of these other 
multiple schools and colleges,” 
Zernicke said. “What I was most 
impressed with Jack was that he 
basically saw this as a way of really 
integrating the breadth and depth 
of Michigan to look at significant 
societal needs and maintaining 
health and wellness.”

DEI
In terms of the role the office 

plays in University President Mark 
Schlissel’s Diversity, Equity and 
Inclusion plan — a five-year plan 
aiming to create a more inclusive 
campus environment and promote 
a more diverse climate — Hu said 
he fully supports the University’s 
efforts.

“We support the president’s 

plan and I also truly believe 
diversity is very conducive to 
innovation,” 
Hu 
said. 
“From 

a 
company 
perspective, 
I 

understand exactly why there is 
interest in this, because for any 
company that provides services 
or products, their customers are 
diverse, so you must understand 
their needs and preferences. You 
want your product team and 
marketing team and everyone to 
understand what your customers 
want … a diverse team is very good 
for innovation. Because we are a 
research organization, I believe in 
that as well.”

Through service and research 

units, the Office of Research’s 
specific 
DEI 
plan 
aims 
to 

strengthen and expand the office’s 
educational offerings that promote 
the goals of the DEI, increase 
the diversity of its staff through 

targeted recruitment strategies 
and improve external outreach to 
corporate partners, governmental 
agencies and foundations.

Challenges
One challenge Hu said he has 

faced includes involving differing 
sciences in University research.

“We have been trying to 

promote the participation of the 
faculty and schools in the social 
sciences,” Hu said, specifying this 
particularly applies to Mcity.

Hu highlighted understanding 

consumer 
behavior 
and 

acceptance to autonomous cars, 
legal and ethical issues with 
autonomous driving and a need 
for increased business models 
in 
response 
to 
autonomous 

vehicles are all facets of social 
sciences that can contribute to the 
studies of technology’s impact on 
transportation and employment 
opportunities.

“If a lot of things are automated 

in manufacturing, service and 
transportation, then we don’t 
need that many drivers, we don’t 
need that many workers, so what 
do people do? This is a critical 
discussion I think the country as a 
whole needs to have.”

LSA senior Adedolapo Adeniji, 

an 
Undergraduate 
Research 

Opportunity 
Program 
social 

sciences peer advisor, said she has 
been involved with UROP since 
her freshman year.

“I’ve found myself utilizing a lot 

of the skills that I learn through 
research in class,” Adeniji said. “I 
think people undervalue the role 
research can play in your everyday 
college life.”

Adeniji said the issue is not 

the University’s lack of focus on 
social science research, but rather, 
a negative stigma attached to 
research that is not based on data 
science and mathematics.

“I think there’s a common 

misconception 
that 
research 

is a hard science,” Adeniji said. 
“That research is math. That 
research is only for people who 
are pre-med, or that research is 
chemistry or physics ... and that’s 
a misconception I had when I 
came into college when UROP was 
introduced to me.”

Both Morton and Zernicke 

expressed interest in further 
collaboration with the social 
sciences as well.

“There’s such a strain on the 

talent pipeline right now,” Morton 
said. “The heart of what we’re 
doing that is so unique is providing 
this real-world data about how 
these technologies are used and 
how they’re deployed, and so 
getting further engagement with 
the social sciences will be really 
important for us in the next year to 
continue to get a glimpse into the 
future.”

One initiative that Morton 

said 
has 
improved 
the 

multidisciplinary 
dialogue 

between Mcity and law students 
was the University Law School’s 
creation of two new courses 
focused on studying multifaceted 
issues within the MTC.

VP
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the executive board.

 “First, I agree with them 

constitutionally,” 
Snow 

said. “And second, whether 
or not you like it, I want to 
understand, 
your 
thought 

process to take our money 
from us. Because that is what 
you’re doing.”

 The executive branch of 

Central Student Government 
has expressed its reservations 
for the proposed resolution 
because of its exclusivity 
and its lack of precise details 
regarding the time, location, 
size and mediation of the 
discussion lunches. 

 However Devin Jones, an 

LSA senior who identified 
as 
a 
Palestinian 
student, 

noted the privateness of the 
proposed lunches were due 
to the sensitivity of the topic.

 “These are people who 

identify as pro-Israel, and 
then on the other side you 
have people who identify as 
pro-Palestinian...the reason 
it is closed is something that 
could be debated,” Jones said. 
“I personally do not believe 
in CSG coming in and sitting 
in on meetings, because the 
meetings 
are 
discussing 

personal 
things 
that 
you 

have to be a part of the 

communities to understand.”

 After the vote, some CSG 

representatives 
expressed 

disheartenment at how much 
the vote in support of the 
Israel 
Palestine 
dialogue 

lunch resolution had changed 
since last week, when the 
resolution 
was 
supported 

widely by the body. 

 CSG representative Sheema 

Rehman, an LSA senior, also 
announced to the body that 
general lack of attention to 
the needs of the student body 
is a problem which should be 
addressed within CSG. 

 She mentioned the student 

sit-in 
last 
week 
saying 

she 
believed 
it 
is 
CSG’s 

responsibility to be present 
at such events when students 
are protesting to have their 
voices heard on key issues.

“On 
Thursday, 
Students 

for Justice held a sit in at 
the Michigan Union from 
5-2AM 
showing 
student 

frustration at the lack of the 
University’s 
response 
and 

calling CSG and members 
of 
the 
administration 
to 

listen to student concerns,” 
she said “But what was even 
more disheartening was the 
fact that we had very little 
representatives 
show 
up 

at any point- and this was 
a seven hour time period. 
Student’s aren’t asking for you 
to do much accept listen.”

CSG
From Page 1A

in response to his thoughts 
regarding a Trump presidency, 
and he said one sonnet was printed 
on orange paper — to emulate the 
color of the president’s skin.

“Are you not the color of this 

country’s current threat advisory, 
and the poms-poms of a school 
whose mascot is a clementine?” 
Hayes 
read. 
“Light 
as 
a 

featherweight monarch, viceroy, 
goldfish.” 

Aside from the compilation of 

sonnets, Hayes also read longer 
poems from his 2015 work “How 
to Be Drawn.” In “American 
Sonnet for Wanda C.” he mused 
on the ways femininity is both 
portrayed and stereotyped.

“Who I know knows why all 

those lush-boned worn-out girls 
are whooping at where the moon 
should be, an eyelid clamped 
on its lightness,” Hayes read. 
“Nobody sees her without the 
hoops firing in her

ears because nobody sees. 

Tattooed across her chest she 
claims is bring me to where my 
blood runs and I want that to be 
here where I am her son, pent in 
blackness and turning the night’s 
calm loose and letting the same 
blood fire through me.”

POET
From Page 1A

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