The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, March 22, 2017 — 3A

conference in Washington D.C. on 
Feb. 14. 

Still, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D–

Mich.), the former chair of the 
Wayne State University Board of 
Governors, said in a statement that 
despite claims some education 
programs are duplicative, many 
students still rely on them.

“President Trump’s proposed 

budget 
would 
put 
education 

even further out of reach for 
families by cutting or eliminating 
vital 
programs 
students 
rely 

on to help fund their college 
education, 
including 
cutting 

federal work-study programs and 
ending Supplemental Education 
Opportunity Grants, which more 
than 52,000 students in Michigan 
received last year.” 

Low-income 
students 
are 

expected to be most affected. The 
Federal Supplemental Educational 
Opportunity Grant program, which 
provides need-based aid to 1.6 
million undergraduates a year, is 
slated to be eliminated.

LSA junior Enrique Zalamea, 

president 
of 
the 
University’s 

chapter of the College Republicans, 
said he does not see this as a loss, 
however, considering the criticism 
the program has received for being 
inefficient.

“A large portion of this budget 

cut comes from the reduction 
of the Supplemental Education 
Opportunity Grant; an outdated 
program that gives money directly 
to colleges as opposed to low-
income students.”

Additionally, 
the 
Trump 

administration plans to reduce the 
work-study program “significantly,” 
though it doesn’t detail how much it 
would be reduced. Currently, the 
program spends about $1 billion to 
provide more than 600,000 college 
students with jobs pertinent to their 
studies, according to the National 
Association 
for 
Financial 
Aid 

Administrators.

Though the work-study program 

has received bipartisan support 
for providing a job rather than a 
handout, it has been criticized for 
providing too much for the affluent 
and not enough for low-income 
families. The structure of the work-
study program allocates money 
toward colleges and universities 
that have been in the program for 
a longer time; historically, those 
colleges and universities are more 
expensive 
and 
have 
wealthier 

students.

Additionally, 
Zalamea 
said 

the work-study is not effective at 
creating opportunities for those 
who would not have otherwise had 
them.

“Another large portion of the 

cuts come from reducing the 
federal 
work-study 
program, 

which actually demonstrates a 
high participation rate from people 
who would have worked regardless 
of the program, or from wealthy 
students,” he said.

TRIO programs, which are 

geared toward low-income, first-
generation and disabled students, 
and GEAR UP face nearly $200 
million in funding cuts. The 
University has been criticized for 
its lack of socioeconomic diversity 
and Public Policy junior Rowan 
Conybeare, chair of the University’s 
chapter of College Democrats, said 
the University’s diversity will be 

further hindered without these 
programs.

“Low-income, 
first-generation 

and 
disabled 
students 
are 

unfortunately few and far between 
at UM,” Conybeare said. “Cuts to 
TRIO programs will only augment 
this issue.”

These cuts allow for the $1.4 

billion expansion in voucher 
and private school programs, a 
favorite cause of DeVos. The $1.4 
billion acts as a down payment 
to the eventual allocation of $20 
billion toward voucher programs. 
If enacted, the $20 billion would 
represent one-third of federal 
education spending.

Despite DeVos’s claims that 

school of choice will give students 
more 
academic 
opportunities, 

Conybeare argued draining money 
from the public-school system is 
counterintuitive to that goal.

“Many 
students 
use 
school 

of choice as a means to seek out 
better 
academic 
opportunities,” 

Conybeare said. “If the Department 
of Education focused instead on 
funding and fixing our public-
school system, there would be less 
of a need for the School of Choice 
program in the first place.”

However, Zalamea said school 

of choice will keep socioeconomic 
status from correlating with poor 
education.

“It’s sad to think that in the land of 

the free, your ZIP code determines 
your quality of education,” Zalamea 
said. “Undoubtedly, low-income 
families will benefit more from 
school choice than they will under 
our current, incredibly flawed 
public education system.”

TRUMP
From Page 1A

collaboration 
with 
R&B 

artist D.R.A.M., thrust the 
19-year-old artist into hip-
hop’s limelight after achieving 
quadruple-platinum 
status, 

while 
Desiigner’s 
surprise 

feature on Kanye West’s The 
Life of Pablo resulted in Def 
Jam signing the previously 
unknown rapper to a record 
deal. His hit single “Panda” also 
achieved 
quadruple-platinum 

status in the United States.

SpringFest’s 
announced 

headliners come on the heels 
of 
a 
hallmark 
partnership 

between MUSIC Matters and 
record label Universal Music 
Group. All three artists are 
signed to an imprint of UMG: 
Both 2 Chainz and Desiigner 
are signed to Def Jam and Lil 
Yachty is a recent addition to 
Capitol Records’ roster. UMG’s 
partnership 
with 
MUSIC 

Matters also marks the label’s 

first 
foray 
into 
newfound 

campus-centric 
initiatives, 

according 
to 
a 
statement 

released by MUSIC Matters.

Per the release, starting this 

year, UMG plans on hosting 
campus festivals nationwide, 
modeling 
them 
after 

SpringFest’s format. In the 
statement, LSA senior Austin 
Dixon, 
talent 
and 
concert 

chair of MUSIC Matters, notes 
the partnership has made it 
possible for the Crisler Center 
to host its first concert since 
2002.

“I think 2 Chainz, Lil Yachty, 

and Desiigner all bring an 
energy that will really excite 
the student body, so to be able 
to give that experience to our 
fellow classmates and peers is 
truly incredible,” Dixon said.

Unlike past events, MUSIC 

Matter’s 
latest 
SpringFest 

concert also marks a notable 
shift from its usual venue of 
choice. Unlike Hill Auditorium, 
which has a seating capacity of 
3,500, the Crisler Center boasts 
an ability to host up to 12,707 

people; additionally, this year’s 
SpringFest concert will be the 
Crisler Center’s first student-
produced concert since 1994. In 
the statement, MUSIC Matters’ 
president Max Fisher, an LSA 
senior, said the audacious acts 
and change in scale illustrates 
the organization’s intent to 
build 
on 
its 
long-standing 

ambition.

“SpringFest is an incredible 

vehicle that unites campus 
through one event, combining 
the passion and energy of 
Michigan students with the 
academic and entrepreneurial 
spirit of the University,” the 
statement reads. “We are all 
ecstatic about the growth and 
magnitude of our festival year 
after year.” 

Tickets to the performance 

will start at $19.99 for students 
with valid UM IDs and $29.99 
for the public. Tickets will be 
available both online on the 
official MUSIC Matters website 
and at the Michigan Union Ticket 
Office beginning Thursday at 12 
p.m. and 10 a.m., respectively. 

SPRINGFEST
From Page 1A

and astronomy and the faculty 
lead of ART 2.0, acknowledged 
concerns about the validity of 
data, specifically noting the 
possibility of biased student 
evaluations. However, he feels 
University data will be more 
objective than other sources 
online.

“There are always concerns 

when dealing with quantitative 
data,” he wrote. “Some faculty 
are concerned about potential 
biases in the student evaluations 
of teaching that could put 
certain faculty members at risk. 
Previous research has indicated 
that such biases are moderate 
at Michigan, and the common 
alternative, RateMyProfessor, 
is likely to be more biased than 
our own data, so the previous 
Provost 
decided 
that, 
on 

balance, the benefits of sharing 
(student evaluations) broadly 
outweigh this particular risk. 
But this is a concern that we 
need to study more closely 
and have more conversations 
around as we go forward.”

Evrard wrote he believes 

the expansion of ART will 
ultimately be beneficial for 
faculty members in that it may 
eventually 
allow 
professors 

the opportunity to include 
teaching 
statements 
and 

accomplishments in profiles on 
these pages.

“Instructors 
now 
know 

that there is a page for each 
of them that describes their 
teaching 
history 
at 
the 

university,” he wrote. “Making 
this 
information 
public 
is 

consistent with the open nature 
of our public institution, and 
I do hope that these pages 
will grow to contain more 
information 
about 
faculty’s 

teaching 
philosophies 
and 

accomplishments. … Also, some 
faculty are very innovative in 
their teaching - perhaps by 
inventing new courses to fill 
an emerging need - and these 
pages offer a potential means to 
highlight such innovations.”

Evrard hopes, in addition 

to other benefits for students 
registering for classes, ART 
will encourage students to fill 
out course evaluations more 
thoughtfully.

“An additional area of impact 

is the Student Evaluations of 
Teaching (SETs) themselves,” 
he wrote. “As students realize 
that their collective feedback 
on teaching will be shared with 
other students, we anticipate 
higher 
response 
rates 
and 

increasingly 
thoughtful 

responses 
to 
SET 
survey 

questions. 
This 
is 
where 

coordination 
with 
student 

government is essential.”

Wojan 
emphasized 
the 

importance of student feedback 
concerning ART to optimize its 
usefulness to students, not only 
in surveys, but also throughout 
the design process.

“It’s 
important 
for 
me 

to remember that I have to 
design things not just in my 
own head but something that’s 
representative of what the 
end users are asking for,” he 
said. “So (student input) is a 
good way of keeping us honest 
making sure that we have the 
right ideas about what people 
are asking for.”

LSA senior Noah Betman, 

CSG chief of staff, acted as a 
liaison between CSG and DIG 
throughout the development 
of ART, which he said was a 
productive experience. 

“I felt like my voice has been 

heard in the room, so it’s not 
just a token student voice kind 
of situation,” he said. “I’ve been 
able to provide a lot of good 
input, and the product that is 
being released … is something 
that students will appreciate 
and that will find beneficial.”

Betman said he feels ART 

will be a useful tool for students 
in the future, in terms of 
giving them information about 
workload and past students’ 
experiences.

“Having that out there when 

creating your own schedule 
and making sure that the 
balance in the best way for you 
understanding that you know if 
a course has a heavier workload 
than another course matters a 
lot to students,” he said.

Wojan said DIG will continue 

improving and adding features, 
and mentioned the possibility 
of allowing students to craft 
personal profiles on ART or see 
grade distributions.

“Moving 
forward 
we’re 

trying 
to 
do 
even 
more 

with 
ART, 
we’re 
trying 

to get students even more 
personalized 
and 
engaging 

experience on the platform,” 
he said. “Our goal for ART 
is to have some new really 
useful 
functionality 
each 

term. And so you know we’re 
excited about that and it keeps 
us on our toes because you 
know we’re always designing 
something new and exciting 
that’s going to be going out you 
can see right away.”

ACADEMICS
From Page 1A

capsule. 
Forty 
students 
are 

working on M-BARC, while 
about 100 are coordinating and 
conducting interviews.

“(The 
time 
capsule 
will) 

showcase how far the University 
has come in the past 200 years,” 
Sethi said. “(It will) leave a lasting 
legacy of who we, members 
of the University of Michigan 
community, are now for 100 years 
down the road.”

M-BARC 
project 
lead 

Hashmita Koka, a Rackham 
student in aerospace engineering, 
said the time capsule will store 
1,000 interviews from students, 
faculty and alumni etched onto 
silicon wafers. Koka was also one 
of the first students to work on 
the project when it began.

Koka said she believes once 

all the interviews are completed, 
many different people with ties 
to the University from around 
the world will be interconnected 
through the time capsule.

“I think one of the big things 

is bringing so many people, like 
alumni from all over the world,” 
Koka said. “In a hundred years, 
we’ll have people from all over 
the world that might have some 
kind of connection to it.”

Sethi said her favorite part 

about 
collecting 
interviews 

is listening to people’s stories 
and their memories from the 
University.

“It is so interesting to go 

through life thinking one thing 
but have that be completely 
changed when I am hearing 
these interviews,” she said. “I 
have had Michigan alumni — the 
oldest being 97 — email me to ask 
to be interviewed. They have told 
me stories about being the first 
female in the marching band to 
the panty raids that used to occur 
back in the day.”

In addition to M-BARC, 

the Department of American 
Culture offered a class this 
semester designed to generate 
material for the time capsule. 
LSA senior Julia Smith, who 
is enrolled in the class, said 
her project aims to create a 
narrative of collective identity 
from narratives of individual 
student experience.

“The best way to describe 

my 
particular 
project 
for 

the time capsule is to call 
it a collective diary,” Smith 
said. “The project depends on 
student submissions, in which 
each student writes about their 
typical day at Michigan and 
then splits this day into sections 
based on the progression of a 
regular day.”

Smith said her final project 

will be a book putting all of 
the days together in a format 
that allows a “typical” day at 
Michigan to be read in multiple 
ways, or to piece together parts 
of different students’ days to 
make a complete day.

“The end goal is to represent 

as 
many 
student 
voices 

as possible, and to get the 
campus community thinking 

about individual identity and 
the ways in which it is both 
recognized 
and 
dismissed 

by 
our 
collective 
identity 

as 
University 
of 
Michigan 

students,” she said.

Koka said the time capsule 

will have a tracking system 
installed on it to monitor its 
location. After 100 years, Koka 
said, there is no formal plan yet 
in place to send it back to Earth.

“We’re 
going 
to 
have 

electronics to be able to 
communicate with it and 
maneuver it to get to the 
right orbit,” Koka said. “The 
tracking 
system 
is 
really 

important because we want 
to track it for a hundred 
years. The hope is that if we 
keep tracking it, a team of 
students a hundred years 
from now will design a 
mission to retrieve it.”

In 
addition 
to 
the 

interviews and humanities 
project, the capsule will host 
a DNA experiment testing the 
effects of radiation in space.

“We’re basically encoding 

the University of Michigan’s 
admission 
statement 
into 

synthetic DNA,” Koka said. 
“We want to test the viability 
of DNA as a storage method 
in space, because we want to 
study the effects of radiation 
in space.”

Sethi 
said 
this 
is 

unprecedented work and will 
push the limits of science.

CAPSULE
From Page 1A

several 
publications 
including 

The Wall Street Journal, the Los 
Angeles Times, and The New 
Yorker.

Kotlowitz 
described 
the 

importance of studying U.S. cities 
in order to understand American 
society as a whole, discussing 
specifically his study of Chicago 
and the growing inequalities 
within it.

“If you’re willing to look for 

the fissures in the American 
landscape, you’re going to find 
them within the confines of that 
city,” Kotlowitz said. “For me, 
what’s notable about Chicago, and 
now very many other cities, is that 
it’s very much a tale of two cities.”

In 
Chicago, 
certain 

neighborhoods 
have 
grown 

“miraculously” 
according 
to 

Kotlowitz, while the south and 
west sides have not grown at all, 
and instead have gotten worse.

Desmond agreed inequality in 

U.S. cities and around the world 
was striking.

“What concerns me (about 

cities) is how unlivable they’re 
becoming,” Desmond said. “So 

in New York and San Francisco 
and Boston, for example, rent 
costs more than the average 
household income. So the cities 
where the best jobs are, and the 
most opportunities are, are out 
of reach even for the middle class 
now.”

Esi Hutchful, a Public Policy 

graduate student, later echoed 
Desmond’s 
concern 
for 
the 

affordability of cities, as well as 
his call for an increase in existing 
policies 
that 
address 
these 

problems. When asked which 
policies she believed required 
more 
attention, 
she 
brought 

up the need to address racial 
residential segregation in the 
United States.

“We’ve seen in the literature 

and from decades of advocacy that 
residential racial segregation is a 
persistent problem that has never 
been truly dismantled; as we talk 
about better housing policy, we 
should not adopt a supposedly 
race-blind lens or only talk about 
race-blind economic integration,” 
Hutchful wrote in an email.

Afton Branche, a Public Policy 

graduate student, said she felt 
it was important to seriously 
consider more policies of rent 
control and rent ceilings in the 
private market.

However, in the transition 

from identifying a problem to 
calling for a solution, Desmond 
and Kotlowitz both emphasized 
the 
need 
to 
humanize 
the 

marginalized 
communities 

portrayed 
in 
their 
works, 

thus 
showing 
their 
readers 

perspectives with which they 
may be unfamiliar.

“One of the things you have 

to be careful about, especially 
writing about people who are 
really at the bottom, who are 
really marginalized, is not just 
writing 
about 
them 
because 

you want to teach a lesson, but 
rather to write about them with 
a sense of discovery,” Kotlowitz 
said, praising Desmond’s book 
for telling the stories of people in 
dire situations while capturing 
the complexities and nuances of 
their lives.

Desmond agreed humanizing 

the people portrayed in their 
works was essential. He stressed 
that portraying real people was 
an enormous responsibility. He 
mentioned how he was often 
concerned the stories he told would 
be interpreted as moral failings 
on the part of their subjects, 

CRISIS
From Page 1A

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

