The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, March 29, 2017 — 3A

will go unnoticed.”

Surrounded by the glow of 

candles, speakers mourned those 
lost in the airstrikes, while also 
emphasizing the importance of 
remembering the humanity of 
those killed, rather than statistics 
portraying the immense number 
of lives lost. Speeches touched on 
highly personal topics, such as 
an Iraqi speaker’s mother loving 
purple but always wearing black 
because of constant mourning, 
or 
another 
student’s 
brother 

lamenting that to die in Syria 
means “to be forgotten.”

Alhassan 
further 
stressed 

coming together as a community 
to mourn the faces behind the 
death tolls.

“When we see things like 

this, 200 deaths in Iraq and 
Syria, when we hear about this 
very often, you know this many 
deaths, this many deaths, it just 
continuously adds up and at 
some point it all just becomes a 
number,” he said. “So if we’re not 
doing things like this, we’re just 
going to keep reading about it and 
seeing about it as a number. But 
when we all come out together 
we start to understand it, there’s 
a more realistic reason behind 

doing it.”

Engineering senior Nusayba 

Tabbah, whose family is from 
Syria, noted the proliferation of 
human deaths in the media has 
led people to become numb to the 
tragedy, even those personally 
affected.

“I feel like I’ve constantly been 

coming to these vigils — it’s kind 
of gotten to be pretty routine,” she 
said. “I feel like it’s actually kind 
of slowed down this semester, not 
because any of the tragedies have 
lessened but because it’s become 
so normal, which is really sad. 
Even 
as 
Syrian-Americans, 

whose families has been directly 
affected by the conflict, it’s easy 
for us to become numb to it.”

LSA 
sophomore 
Courtney 

Caulkins, an organizer with the 
Michigan 
Refugee 
Assistance 

Program, said she attended the 
vigil to support her friend Alyiah 
Al-Bonijim, one of the event’s 
organizers, and to stay aware of 
U.S. military actions in countries 
overseas. 

“I think that the conflict right 

now in Iraq and Syria is really 
connected 
with 
the 
refugee 

crisis, from both places right now, 
and we should be holding our 
government accountable for the 
actions that are taking place very 
far away and ensuring we aren’t 
being blinded by the distance,” 
Caulkins said.

VIGIL
From Page 1A

GEO and the University 

Human Resources department 
have 
been 
negotiating 
a 

new three-year contract for 
graduate-student 
employees 

since last September, as the 
current contract expires at 
the end of April. GEO brings 
proposals 
crafted 
by 
the 

graduate-student community 
to bargaining sessions that 
typically occur once a week.

Chief among the proposals 

that 
GEO 
members 

emphasize, which include pay 
raises, expanded health-care 
benefits and protection for 
international students, is the 
establishment of unionized 
positions 
for 
graduate-

student staff assistants doing 
diversity work on behalf of the 
University’s Diversity, Equity 
and Inclusion plan. Rackham 
student 
Rachel 
Miller 

said 
the 
human-resources 

department has refused to 
discuss the issue during the 
bargaining process, arguing 
it is not a mandatory subject 
for the contract, but DEI 
administrators then informed 
GEO the proposal was under 
the 
purview 
of 
contract 

negotiators.

“They also won’t talk about 

it with us anywhere else 
because they say we’re talking 
about bargaining, so we’re 
getting stonewalled all over 
the place,” Miller said.

Social Work student Vidhya 

Aravind 
currently 
works 

part time on the University 
Library’s 
implementation 

team for the DEI initiative 
and said such positions are 
demanding 
and 
require 

expertise, 
justifying 

compensation on par with 
other graduate positions.

“I think it’s important to 

recognize that diversity labor 
is labor,” she said.” It takes 
a lot of effort, a lot of time, 
a lot of energy and a lot of 
expertise.”

Aravind 
went 
on 
to 

compare her work on the 
library team to her experience 
volunteering with the School 
of Information’s DEI unit, 
which she described as a mess.

“Some DEI units have that 

expertise, some DEI units 
have demonstrated that they 
don’t,” Aravind said. “Some 
units are taking in student 
input and have these GSSA 
positions already, which is 
amazing, but we want that 
across the spectrum of the 
academic DEI plan, because 
we think it’s important that 
marginalized students have 
better platforms for input 
than they currently do. We 
understand that marginalized 
students have the expertise 
the University needs for DEI 
to succeed, and marginalized 
students have needs which 
the University is equipped to 
cover.” 

On 
other 
issues, 
GEO 

members still feel that the 
University has not agreed to 

do enough to help.

Referring 
to 
a 
Detroit 

News op-ed written by the 
presidents of several Michigan 
universities, 
including 

University 
President 
Mark 

Schlissel on the subject of 
international 
students 
and 

faculty, 
which 
asserted 

support 
for 
international 

students and faculty, Miller 
said GEO is calling for “actual 
protections (for international 
students), not just language.” 
A proposal by GEO to create 
work-hour caps on GSIs in 
support of students on visas 
with work quotas was met 
by hesitation and concern 
from faculty members on the 
Senate Advisory Committee 
on University Affairs earlier 
this month.

In an interview last week, 

Schlissel said he could not 
comment on negotiations, but 
pushed GSIs to reframe their 
work week as a critical portion 
of their learning experiences in 
academia.

“The union perceives it as 

work for pay, but it’s actually 
more of a training,” he said.

In regard to salary rates, 

GEO President John Ware, a 
Rackham student, explained the 
raise offered by the University 
did not keep up with Ann 
Arbor’s cost of living.

“The cost of living is up more 

than 6 percent this year over 
last year in Ann Arbor, and 
we’ve been offered a 2.5-percent 
raise,” he said.

University 
spokeswoman 

Kim Broekhuizen wrote in an 

email statement that the current 
proposal on the table offers 
wage increases every year, in 
addition to increased leave time 
for parental accommodation 
and bereavement, as well as 
additional 
protections 
for 

international graduate-student 
instructors to comply with 
work restrictions required to 
maintain their visa status.

“We appreciate the Graduate 

Employee 
Organization’s 

commitment to not disrupting 
activities in these buildings 
during this planned activity,” 
she wrote. “Talks continue and 
we are hopeful about having a 
new contract in place soon.”

Toward the end of the sit-

in, demonstrators congregated 
in 
the 
entrance 
of 
the 

Administration Building, taking 
turns to share their reasons 
for being there — including 
needs for greater child-care 
subsidies, health-care subsidies 
and higher wages. After each 
speaker, the crowd cheered and 
clapped, while employees in the 
building squeezed past to get to 
the elevator or a nearby office.

“I’m here even though I’m 

leaving soon because I care 
about future generations of 
(graduate) students on this 
campus, and because I did a 
lot of work in DEI, never being 
compensated 
or 
recognized 

for it, which derailed my own 
progress and success,” said a 
Rackham student who asked 
to stay anonymous. “But I 
think that future generation 
should have it better than I 
had.”

SIT-IN
From Page 1A

registration date,” Katz said. 
“I would have to change my 
schedule multiple times before 
registration. I felt like every 
time I registered, I essentially 
wasted time by not having 
information to go off of, like 
looking into classes I might 
have statistically no chance of 
getting into.”

The team compiled statistics 

and data from last semester’s 
registration period for winter 
2017, 
mostly 
mined 
from 

University data, indicating how 
quickly every course, section 
and lab at the University 
filled up. Katz said they found 
trends 
and 
patterns 
from 

year to year for registration 
depending on the date and time 
you register using primarily 
the University’s Application 
Program Interface portal.

“In order to collect the data 

that’s powering our model, 
I actually started building 
this in November, and I built 
the system to capture all that 
data through the University’s 
programmatic 
(interface),” 

Katz said. “The big thing was 
getting it while the registration 
process was happening.”

Engineering 
junior 

Tyler Ringler said he uses 

ClassAI because he has a late 
registration date and hasn’t 
been able to get into two to 
three classes per semester he 
originally wanted. He said 
he typically has to redo his 
schedule several times before 
finding one that works.

“It is a very useful tool 

when it comes to scheduling,” 
Ringler said. “It was very easy 
to sign up and even easier to 
add my classes. It took me less 
than three minutes to sign up 
and add all of my classes onto 
the app. This is the same time 
it would take me to search 
for my class, find the class 
number, and then change tabs 
and backpack it in Wolverine 
Access.”

While 
not 
wanting 
to 

reveal all the factors of their 
algorithm, 
Katz 
said 
they 

do 
take 
professor 
ratings 

and teacher-evaluation from 
course evaluation scores to 
help shape their predictions.

“It’s not just one kind of 

piece of information we’re 
looking at,” Katz said. “We 
want a comprehensive view to 
be accurate.”

Katz said this kind of solution 

to 
students’ 
registration 

troubles 
is 
unprecedented 

and hopes that after their first 
time doing this for the fall 
2017 semester based off winter 
2017 data they’ll be able to get 
an accurate display of data for 

both fall and winter semesters.

“So 
far 
based 
on 
our 

tests, 
we 
feel 
confident,” 

Katz said. “Really what it 
comes down to is increasing 
information, 
because 
right 

now there’s no information 
about any of this. After this 
registration process, we’ll have 
a good understanding of both 
(semesters). But right now, we 
apply some of our intuition.”

Katz said ClassAI also could 

save 
many 
students 
from 

stress, as he himself has spent 
hours trying to figure out his 
chances of getting into a class 
by hand, but now the app does 
all the work for him.

“If you’re an anxious person 

like me, you’ll just sit there 
and check that number of 
seats,” Katz said. “Our system 
basically does that work so you 
don’t get to the point where 
you computing the slope of 
enrollment. 
Usually 
those 

things you equate in your head 

aren’t to exact precision.”

Ringler said that though he 

still uses the same amount of 
time to backpack, the app has 
given him a better indication 
of whether he has a chance 
to get into a certain class 
he likes. For Ringler, this is 
“invaluable,” because now he 
can search for alternatives 
sooner than minutes before 
he registers.

“I don’t know if it has 

limited the time I’ve spent 
backpacking, because most of 
the time I spend backpacking 
revolves around getting the 
classes and teachers I want 
to work out,” Ringler said 
“However, it certainly made 
the process easier because I 
have the data in front of me 
that shows if I should consider 
an alternative schedule or 
not. Because of this, I am 
considering my alternatives 
now rather than 10 minutes 
before my registration period, 
which is invaluable.”

Katz said there he hears 

some skepticism on the app’s 
accuracy, but reiterated it is 
meant to only be supplemental 
in helping students to be more 
informed.

“We’re not anti-Wolverine 

Access,” Katz said. “But we’re 
offering an alternative for 
backpacking. The time saved 
can really help students relax 
or spend more time studying.”

APP
From Page 1A

we hope it’s going to tell us 
something about the present,” 
Thompson said. “In this case, 
I think what we’re hoping 
that history will tell us is 
it will give us some sense, 
some explanation for how did 
we end up the world’s most 
punitive nation.”

Karen Smyte, president of 

Children’s Literacy Network 
— a group that goes into 
several southeast Michigan 
prisons and records parents 
and 
grandparents 
reading 

bedtime 
stories 
to 
their 

children — came to the event 
because of the relevancy it 
has to her work and what she 
has witnessed within prisons.

“I 
see 
it 
as 
related 

to 
the 
United 
States’s 

history of slavery,” Smyte 
said. 
“The 
justice 
system 

is 
terribly 
broken 
and 

this 
mass 
incarceration 

is 
disproportionately 

impacting poor people (and) 
communities of color.” 

Thompson 
argued 
mass 

incarceration in the United 
States 
did 
not 
happen 

overnight; 
a 
number 
of 

factors contributed to the 

situation, such as the Attica 
Prison 
Uprising 
and 
the 

criminalization of all-Black 
spaces after the Civil War.

“And overnight, the South 

goes from penitentiaries and 
prisons that were all-white 
to 
all-Black,” 
Thompson 

said. “Again, not because 
white folks stop committing 
crimes and Black folks lose 
their 
minds, 
but 
because 

there were policy decisions 
made, and as a result of those 
policies decisions, … we get 
forced labor, we get removal 
of voting privileges and we 
get stability to white power 
essentially in the South.”

Thompson 
continued 

the 
discussion 
on 
prison 

conditions, 
exploring 
the 

circumstances Attica Prison 
inmates 
faced 
before 
the 

rebellion. Each inmate was 
allocated $0.63 of food and 
one square of toilet paper each 
day, among other inhumane 
treatments.

“What’s really remarkable 

is 
that 
these 
men 
still 

somehow had faith in the 
system,” Thompson said. “So 
they wrote letters … they 
wrote letters to state senators, 
they wrote letters to every 
person in power they could 
imagine, saying, ‘Would you 
please help us, we want to do 

this in a democratic process 
… can you please just improve 
the food or let us practice our 
religion?’ ”

On Sept. 9, 1971, the inmates 

broke out of their cells and 
set up a tent city in one of the 
yards farthest from the front 
gate, commencing a four-day 
period of negotiations. The 
state of New York accepted 28 
of the 32 demands, and on the 
fifth day, troopers and state 
police stormed the prison 
after dropping tear gas on 
the inmates, resulting in 39 
deaths and 128 others shot 
severely. The prisoners did 
not have access to guns.

The events following the 

massacre spanned numerous 
actions carried out by the 
state of New York to cover up 
the events that unfolded in 
the prison, Thompson said — 
events that, before her work, 
were unknown. Within the 
prison, 
the 
inmates 
were 

tortured and not given any 
access to medical help.

“These men were stripped, 

they were lined up, they 
were meant to run gauntlets, 
they were thrown into cells 
(that had) nothing in them,” 
Thompson said. “They were 
tortured for days and hours 
and weeks, (with) guards 
urinating 
into 
their 
open 

wounds.”

Mary Heinen, co-founder 

of the Prison Creative Arts 
Project 
and 
a 
formerly 

incarcerated individual, said 
the story of Attica is one 
known within prisons, but 
hopes the book can shed light 
on what goes on within the 
confines of a prison to the rest 
of society.

“The history of this is told 

among members of the inmate 
nation to each other and other 
atrocities as well that have 
happened across the United 
States,” Heinen said. “One of 
the most terrible things that’s 
happened in my lifetime is 
the criminalization of people 
that are mentally ill and drug-
dependent, which is a lot of 
what I saw.”

These events were also 

covered 
up 
by 
the 
state 

of New York, giving most 
Americans only the narrative 
of how prisoners caused the 
deaths and were at fault for 
the massacre. Since then, 
Thompson said, no one has 
been held accountable for the 
actions at Attica.

“Not one member of law 

enforcement is indicted and 
serves time,” Thompson said. 
“Nobody in law enforcement 
was ever held accountable for 
what happened at Attica.”

ATTICA
From Page 1A

It is a very 

useful tool when 

it comes to 
scheduling

on how to renovate the Union, 
a project that will begin in 
May of next year, keeping the 
building open for the entirety 
of the bicentennial.

“The 
Union 
needs 
more 

vibrancy 
on 
the 
lower 

levels 
because 
when 
you 

walk in it’s very quiet and 
compartmentalized 
and 
it 

almost feels like you’re walking 
into a library, and that’s not 
how the Union was originally 
designed to be,” Comstock said.

Featured 
renovations 
will 

include the creation of an 
indoor courtyard enclosed by a 
glass roof, two new movement 
studios aimed at providing a 
space for the many dance groups 
that practice in Mason Hall, 
among others, and increasing 
the efficiency of fourth-floor 
space utilized by Counseling 
and Psychological Services in 
order to provide more private 
space for conversation.

The assembly voted on six 

resolutions, passing resolutions 
to increase the number of 
recycling bins around campus, 
to preserve the billiards room 
in the Union, to collaborate 
with the University in finding 
ways to fund the Leadership 
Engagement 
Scholarship, 
to 

allocate funds to UM Social 
Media to aid in the creation of a 
mosaic piece for graduation, as 
well as a resolution to encourage 
University Housing to include 

voter registration in Welcome 

Week 
programming. 
With 

this 
resolution, 
Residential 

Advisers will receive training 
in order to provide freshman 
students 
with 
necessary 

information 
and 
resources 

regarding registration.

CSG President David Schafer, 

an LSA senior, discussed several 
initiatives CSG has worked on 
throughout the year, including 
the 
recent 
establishment 
of 

the 
Student 
Fee 
Advisory 

Committee, 
which 
met 
for 

the first time on Monday. He 
also spoke of the impact of the 
bystander-intervention training 
program, which has held nine 
sessions throughout the year, 
training more than 300 students 
from more than 200 student 
organizations across campus.

Schafer 
and 
CSG 
Vice 

President Micah Griggs, an LSA 
senior, expressed their gratitude 
to the assembly, and spoke of 
their experiences within CSG as 
their terms come to an end.

“We’ve shared countless long 

nights together,” Griggs said. 
“Because of all of you we are 
closer to making our campus 
better for all students. … Serving 
as your vice president has been 
the greatest honor of my life that 
I will always remember.”

Schafer 
said 
similar 

sentiments 
and 
encouraged 

the members of the assembly 
who will continue in CSG to 
remember the impact they have 
on the student body.

“Never doubt the potential of 

CSG to enact positive and lasting 
change on this campus.”

CSG
From Page 1A

