The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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Wednesday, September 27, 2017— 3A

M AGIC MUSIC

JOSHUA HAN/Daily

The University Philharmonic Orchestra performs their first concert of the year at Hill 
Auditorium Monday. Their piece, Felix Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, envokes an 
image of the artist’s visit to the ruins of th ePalace of Holyrood in Edinburgh in 1829. 
The whole work progresses through a musical stroll around the stones, arches, and half 
walls of the palace. The pieces are marked by somber tones, a folky section, magical 
textures, and a triumphant ending.

University officials would have 
had tangible solutions, especially 
because they have spent many 
years on campus dealing with 
these issues.

“Hearing another person higher 

up than me who has been here 
endless years — I’m a freshman, 
I’ve only been on this campus for 
three weeks and if someone else 
asks me, ‘Well what should we do’ 
— how are you going to ask me?” 
Washington said. “I’ve only been 
in college for three weeks. You 
work here, you’ve been through 
college, you have a degree, you’re 
doing your job, you should know 
the facts, you should know what 
you should be telling us.”

After most of the protesters 

had filed out, the panel and forum 
began again as originally planned. 
History professor Martin Pernick 
opened the panel by discussing the 
topic of eugenics in a broad sense 
and what role Little played in it. 
Pernick made the argument that 
being in support of the idealistic 
form of eugenics was not cause 
enough to remove a person’s 
name from the building they were 
named after.

“Eugenics 
meant 
a 
lot 
of 

different things to a lot of different 
people,” Pernick said. “Charles 
Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, 
defined it as the use of science to 
improve human heredity. Who can 

argue with that? Using science to 
improve things.”

Pernick 
explained 
Little’s 

interpretation of eugenics was 
what merited a renaming of 
the building named after him. 
According to Pernick, the type of 
genetics Little supported was one 
that promoted the advancement 
of those who held power in society 
in the early 20th century, through 
any means necessary.

“The kind of eugenics that 

Little promoted included all of 
the American Eugenics Society’s 
most 
controversial 
methods: 

compulsory 
sterilization, 
ban 

on 
interracial 
sex, 
selective 

immigration and restrictions by 
ethnicity,” Pernick said.

After Pernick concluded his 

speech, panelist and LSA senior 
Joshua Hasler explained Little’s 
life story. Hasler discussed Little’s 
work promoting eugenics before, 
during and after serving as the 
University’s president from 1925 
to 1929. He noted Little’s close 
personal relationship with Charles 
Davenport, a man that Hasler 
described as the “godfather of 
American eugenics.” During his 
time at the University of Michigan, 
Little helped organize and was 
the president of the Third Race 
Betterment Conference held in 
Battle Creek, Michigan.

“And as president of both the 

conference, a member of the 
American Eugenics Society, and 
president of this University, he 
played a crucial role in bridging 
the gap between East Coast 

eugenicists 
and 
Midwestern 

eugenicists,” Hasler explained.

American 
Culture 
professor 

Alexandra 
Stern 
spoke 
after 

Hasler and focused the majority 
of her time discussing parallels 
between the current debate over 
renaming the C.C. Little Building 
to those debates which have been 
held on other college campuses 
concerning their own buildings’ 
past history. Stern specifically 
cited the University of Virginia’s 
decision to change the name of 
their medical research facility from 
that of a eugenicist, as something 
she believes the University of 
Michigan should emulate.

All of the panelists, along with 

several other professors, have 
submitted an official request to 
have the C.C. Little Building be 
renamed and have created an 
online petition to garner support 
for their proposal. As of Tuesday 
night, the petition has received 
485 signatures since it was created 
on Sept. 1. That total includes 
over fifty signatures by University 
professors and deans, many of 
whom expressed their views on the 
issue of renaming in the comments 
section of the petition.

Mika LaVaque-Manty, director 

of the Philosophy, Politics and 
Economics 
program, 
offered 

one of the most strongly worded 
comments in support of renaming 
the C.C. Little Building.

“It is to honor, not degrade, 

the past and the present of the 
University of Michigan to revisit 
its values and commitments. When 

a thoughtful examination, such as 
the one that informs this petition, 
concludes the past commitments 
are inconsistent with our real 
values, it’s necessary to make 
changes. We should teach and 
learn from the legacy of Little; 
our buildings should not bear his 
name,” LaVaque-Manty wrote.

The petition has also gained 

support from the student body 
leadership with signatures from 
Central 
Student 
Government 

Reps. Jacob Cutler and Hafsa Tout 
as well as CSG President Anushka 
Sarkar, all of whom are LSA 
seniors.

Sarkar 
said 
Little 
was 
a 

problematic 
figure 
in 
the 

University’s past and that he 
should not be honored with his 
name on a University building.

“C.C. Little is emblematic of 

what is incredibly wrong about 
this University’s history, including 
putting big tobacco and eugenicism 
on a pedestal, quite literally on 
one of the largest buildings on 
campus,” she said.

Sarkar voiced her support for 

the decision last week by LSA SG 
to pass a resolution supporting 
the renaming of the C.C. Little 
Building. She also outlined a plan 
for how CSG should approach the 
resolution.

“I think that the resolution 

should be passed in every school 
and 
college-specific 
student 

government and that it should 
then be passed in Central Student 
Government to show that all 
nineteen schools and colleges 

individually 
support 
it, 
and 

therefore the entire University 
supports it, which is why our 
assembly passed it,” she said.

Those who have proposed the 

renaming acknowledge that there 
are still large swaths of students 
who have not heard about Little’s 
past and his beliefs on race. 
According to Hasler, part of the 
blame for this lies in the hands of 
the University itself. Hasler noted 
last semester’s Stumbling Blocks 
exhibit, though it outlined failures 
in the University’s past, failed to 
mention anything about Little and 
his advocacy for eugenics.

“They 
didn’t 
engage 
with 

C.C. Little and I think that’s 
an intentional choice, perhaps 
because it adds to the political 
climate 
and 
makes 
things 

potentially divisive when you talk 
about renaming a building,” he 
said.

Hasler would like to see the 

University rename the C.C. Little 
Building by the end of this school 
year.

“I think it’s something that 

we as a student body deserve … 
especially since we are living in 
such divisive and decisive times, 
this really requires immediate 
action.”

After the panel concluded, some 

student activists felt their concerns 
had not been adequately addressed 
by the forum and that there was 
continued work to be done on the 
issue of renaming the C.C. Little 
Building.

“After going into the meeting, 

there 
was 
this 
façade 
that 

everyone is on the same page as us 
and moving forward we shouldn’t 
have any issues, but the fact that 
we have to go through to the 
president, to get to the regents, to 
get C.C. Little changed is going to 
be ridiculously hard for us because 
we can’t even get the president to 
listen to open racists on campus, 
so how are we going to get him 
to listen to white supremacy on 
campus?” Washington said.

LSA SG President Nicholas 

Fadanelli, 
an 
LSA 
senior, 

concluded the forum by expressing 
his support for future dialogue 
about renaming the C.C. Little 
Building.

“And I just hope that all these 

people that came out here tonight 
sign the petition and we keep 
having this conversation … because 
this is an important conversation 
to have, as much as possible,” 
Fadanelli said.

LSA 
Student 
Government 

released a statement after the 
protest that acknowledged the 
protesters’ efforts and implored 
the University to rename the 
building.

“We would not only like to 

thank the activists who, for years, 
have fought for the name to be 
changed, but also faculty members 
who have dedicated years of their 
careers to investing who C.C Little 
was,” it read. “We continue to urge 
the University to change the name 
of the C.C Little Building to further 
the University’s mission of making 
an inclusive campus for everyone.”

CC LITTLE
From Page 1A

years ago and we wanted to build 
a stronger interface between 
the biological and behavioral 
sciences,” he said. “We realized 
that one area of exciting new 
development is around the smart 
home, but what if we added 
biology to that? Sensors on 
the body that are recording all 
kinds of stuff. … So we thought 
about making a home lab. This 
way we can study these new 
possibilities.”

Collaboration 
is 
a 
big 

component of the HomeLab. 
It’s how it will run effectively, 
but it’s also how the lab was 
built. Jeannette Jackson, the 
managing 
director 
for 
the 

BioSocial Methods Collaborative, 
said students and faculty from 
the 
engineering, 
kinesiology, 

psychology 
and 
medical 

programs, among others, worked 
on putting all the pieces for the 
lab together.

According to Jackson, student 

involvement has been a big part 
of 
the 
HomeLab’s 
creation. 

Over 33 undergraduate students 
from all different disciplines 
have 
been 
involved 
in 
the 

HomeLab, including Engineering 
sophomore Cyrus Najarian, who 
has been working on the project 
since last August.

He said the teamwork and 

collaboration he’s experienced 
while working on the HomeLab 
have been very impactful and 
will make for a great research 
environment.

“In 
the 
collaborative, 
we 

obviously work as a team, but 
working 
on 
the 
HomeLab 

specifically really took that to the 
extreme,” Najarian said. “There’s 
always something that we were 
collaborating on other people 
for. I was working on multiple 
different things at the same time 
… and we were always trying 
to synthesize all of our own 
perspectives and experiences to 
getting things as close to perfect 
as possible.”

Thanks to this collaboration, 

the lab was finished less than a 
year after construction began 
last November.

“This is a new space for 

research that facilitates what 
we’re calling collaborative team 
science,” Jackson said. “(People) 
aren’t working on one little slice. 
When you work with us, you 
work with everything we’ve got 
going on.”

And the HomeLab already 

has a lot going on. The lab will 
be used to study mobility and 
cognition in older adults, and a 
research project from outside 
the University has already been 
lined up with Procter & Gamble 
to study adult incontinence.

Gonzalez thinks the HomeLab 

will bring more data to these 
projects than researchers would 
otherwise be able to collect.

“The (current) state of the 

art for that work is that you just 
ask people in a survey, ‘Do you 
have trouble washing dishes?’,” 
Gonzalez said. “And they say 
yes or no or rate on a five-point 
scale. But what our facility 
allows someone to do is actually 

observe people in a controlled 
environment like at a kitchen 
sink.”

Many 
future 
projects 
are 

planned. Gonzalez emphasized 
the 
lab’s 
compliance 
with 

Americans with Disabilities Act 
standards, so disability research 
would be a possibility. He’d also 
like to see intergenerational 
experiments in the lab.

“We’ve had lots of inquiries 

about mother-child interaction 
studies, and right now they 
just do those in a classroom in 
East Hall where Psychology is 
located,” he said. “It would be 
much more natural to run those 
studies in the HomeLab where 
there’s a bathroom, a playroom, 
maybe a sibling involved. You just 
get higher-quality data.”

However, 
running 

experiments in the home is 
not 
always 
straightforward. 

Psychology 
professor 
Jacqui 

Smith, who will do studies 
in the HomeLab on health in 
elderly populations, said the 
one-of-a-kind nature of the lab 
is exciting, but will require some 
extra thought when it comes to 
designing projects.

“We need to be really creative 

in the way that we design studies 
to be able to do this, and of 
course we need to get funding 
to actually do it,” Smith said. “I 
think this is very unique and my 
colleagues that I’ve spoken to at 
a recent international conference 
in San Francisco, everyone was 
really excited about this idea … 
I hope we can encourage people 
from many different disciplines 
to write this into their studies.” 

HOME
From Page 1A

‘M’ on the Diag for 21 hours 
to emphasize the difficulty 
of being a Black student at 
the University — an action 
supported by over 100 students, 
faculty and staff who lent their 
support, water and presence 
throughout the day. Greene 
took after the #TakeAKnee 
movement many professional 
athletes are participating in 
to protest racial injustice and 
police brutality.

In 
the 
email, 
Dumbeck 

provided a link to a video of 
Red 
Skelton, 
an 
American 

entertainer, 
performing 
a 

monologue on the meaning of 
the Pledge of Allegiance. She 
drew upon personal beliefs 
and implied Dana’s actions 
disrespected her religion.

“Although I can understand 

Dana’s feelings I feel that he 
must be reminded that it is not 
through ‘man’ that ‘man was 
create (sic) equal,’ but through 
GOD,” she wrote. “And it is a 
testimonial to GOD that we live 
as he would want us to, for we 
only answer to him in the end.”

Dumbeck did not respond to 

the Daily for comment.

Social 
Work 
student 

Lawrielle West responded to 
the email thread, calling on 
Dumbeck to apologize for the 
harm she caused within the 
community and educate herself 
on the difference between one’s 
original intent and the actual 
impact it can have on a group of 
people.

“Intent versus impact is a 

thing, meaning that regardless 
of how you meant something, 
it can still negatively impact 
someone,” she wrote. “And 
that’s what this email did. 
Honestly, I personally don’t 
need an apology because I’m 
interested in you educating 
yourself, and spreading what 
you have learned from this in 
your 
community. 
However, 

an apology is needed to the 
public in an effort to start the 
process of restorative justice 
in a case where a staff member 

crossed the lines and triggered 
some students in the SSW and 
others.”

Dumbeck responded to West, 

writing she did not mean to 
offend anyone, yet continued to 
express a belief in her right to 
hold her own opinions.

“First let me say that I did 

not insult or diminish what 
Dana is doing by any means. 
That is not what I said or what I 
meant,” she wrote. “My opinion 
was expressed just as the 
emails opinion was expressed 
when sent out to all. The video 
I felt was something that all 
‘Americans’ would benefit from 
hearing, or so I felt. I did not put 
race into my thoughts at all. I 
only meant that we as ‘humans’ 
can do better when we look into 
ourselves and for what purpose 
do we serve. To each his/ her 
own.”

West explained the group 

of students showed up outside 
of Dumbeck’s office at 10 a.m. 
to begin the sit-in, but she had 
already left the building. After 
sitting in the hallway for a 
brief period, different faculty 
members told the group they 
had to move due to fire code and 
then called DPSS to assess the 
situation at hand. The students 
later moved to a larger space 
outside the dean’s office, after a 
DPSS officer advised they would 
be better seen there.

In an email interview, Lisa 

Raycraft, 
communications 

manager for the School of Social 
Work, affirmed an associate 
dean called DPSS because the 
protestors 
were 
blocking 
a 

narrow hallway.

“Space 
was 
available 
for 

students 
to 
continue 
their 

protest at either end of the hall, 
where the area is open. Students 
continued to sit and block the 
hallway. DPSS was called to 
assist with opening the hall so 
safety codes could be met,” she 
said.

However, 
Raycraft 
stated 

the School of Social Work 
recognized 
the 
protesters’ 

concerns 
as 
legitimate 
and 

various 
faculty 
and 
staff 

members discussed the matter 
over the course of the event. 

She said she could not comment 
on Dumbeck’s email, as it is a 
personal matter.

“The School of Social Work 

respects peaceful gatherings 
and the right of demonstrators 
to express their views,” she 
wrote. “The students today 
engaged in a peaceful protest 
in the SSW building sharing 
their concerns. SSW faculty 
and staff engaged with students 
throughout the sit-in.”

West 
expressed 

disappointment 
in 
how 

the School of Social Work 
responded to the protest — 
especially in the context that 
most of the students there had 
studied community organizing 
in classes within the building.

“My 
major 
is 
literally 

community organizing, so this 
is what I do,” she said. “When 
they tell me to move, I’m like, 
‘You tell me not to move, in my 
textbook it tells me not to move.’ 
”

She questioned where most of 

her classmates were during the 
six-hour sit-in, as they missed 
an opportunity to truly engage 
in their field of study.

“I’m Team 96, meaning that 

we’re the 96th class of School 
of Social Work, so everybody in 
my class is usually graduating 
this December or in April,” 
she said. “I’ll be graduating in 
April. I see some of us here, but 
like, that’s 400 people. So I’m 
like, OK, maybe 50 graduated 
already from one year. Maybe 
50 percent, like I said, are in 
field or in class. Where are the 
rest of the people? We’re all 
social workers, what does social 
work mean?”

Brendon Holloway, recent 

graduate of the MSW program, 
expressed the importance of 
ensuring that the voices of 
students of color remain in the 
center of discussion. He shared 
an email, signed by the MSW 
program as a whole, in which 
they expressed disappointment 
in Dumbeck for using such 
insensitive language towards 
such a diverse group of students.

SIT-IN
From Page 1A

the 
non-affiliated 
interfaith 

organization Interfaith Youth 
Core to gather information 
on religious and worldview 
perspectives of the student 
body.

The survey, also known as the 

Values, Interfaith Engagement 
and Worldview Survey, designed 
by the IYC, aims to empirically 
assess students’ perceptions of 
religious diversity on college 
campuses as well as students’ 
engagement 
with 
their 

corresponding worldviews.

According to Tout, the survey 

would provide CSG and the 
administration with a better 
understanding of the campus 
climate 
and 
perspectives 

throughout 
the 
University 

to help guide public policy 
construction.

“I 
think 
knowing 
and 

understanding on the whole 
what 
students 
perspectives 

are will be beneficial to us 
as student leaders in central 
student government and even 
more to the administration and 
it ultimately does play a part in 
policy formation,” Tout said.

Addressing concerns about 

student participation in the 

survey among the assembly, 
Tout stated that the survey 
would be conducted externally 
by 
the 
IYC, 
along 
with 

coordination by the Center for 
Campus Involvement’s Kelly 
Dunlop, who has signed on 
as 
the 
official 
institutional 

representative.

If 
passed, 
the 
survey 

would be conducted during 
the 
spring 
2018 
semester, 

followed by a comprehensive 
report by CSG’s Research and 
Polling Commission for use by 
University administration and 
student governing bodies.

A vote for the resolution will 

be held next week.

CSG
From Page 1A

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