The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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Tuesday, October 3, 2017 — 3

CLAIRE MEINGAST/Daily

Paul McCartney performs in Detroit Sunday evening.

SIR PAUL

Scholarship, which is a $5,000 
need-based scholarship given 
to 
undergraduate 
students 

and that can be can be divided 
between one or two recipients. 
This year, Ortega motioned for 
the award to be given to two 
students with the money split 
evenly among them.

SACUA 
member 
Dave 

Wright, 
an 
accounting 

professor in the Ross School 
of Business, brought up the 
introduction of a campaign 
to raise more money for the 
award, since the committee 
only grants the scholarship 
every four years.

“There are three years of 

students who aren’t eligible 
for that scholarship,” Wright 
said. “If we had more money in 
the pot we could be doing this 
every year.”

As 
further 
support 
for 

dividing the award between 
two 
students, 
Ortega 

mentioned splitting the money 
would have less of an impact on 
the winning students’ financial 
aid. This ushered in further 
discussion on amending the 
scholarship. SACUA member 
Ruth Carlos, a professor in the 
Medical School, believed the 
award should not negatively 
affect a student’s financial aid.

“We’re 
just 
substituting 

one grant for another grant,” 
Carlos said.

SACUA
From Page 1

as the company has found its 
way into retailers across the 
country. MONTA has even 
been featured on Buzzfeed, 
obtaining a spot on its “26 
Awesome 
Beauty 
Products 

You Didn’t Know You Could 
Get At Urban Outfitters.”

De Coster’s business is a 

solo operation; she manages 
all the marketing, branding, 
production and social media. 
She finds she needs separate 
calendars 
for 
school 
and 

MONTA to keep up with the 
volume of work.

“Balance is still something 

I’m trying to figure out, 
honestly,” de Coster said. “You 
have to make a lot of sacrifices 
and really love what you’re 
giving up some normal college 
experiences for.”

The business was born out 

of personal struggles in de 
Coster’s life. While in junior 
high, de Coster experienced 
medical issues that forced 
her to be more cautious about 
what she puts in her body. 
This, in conjunction with an 
extensive leg injury obtained 
four days into de Coster’s 
freshman year, provided the 
inspiration for MONTA.

Instead of sitting in her 

dorm 
room, 
however, 
de 

Coster 
used 
aromatherapy 

as an outlet for her negative 
emotions and created the first 
MONTA products.

“MONTA 
was 
born 
to 

express my longing for nature 
and to relay those emotions 
in 
another 
language,” 
de 

Coster said. “There is a faith 
component, as it expresses my 
relationship with God also; I 

can look outside and view his 
ultimate creativity.”

MONTA 
has 
partnered 

with other businesses to craft 
new, communal products. One 
such collaboration is with Los 
Angeles based fashion line 
Gracemade, where the two 
will create a rollerball entitled 
“Be Still.” De Coster will also 
be working with Alex Elle, 
writer and self-care advocate, 
and Tara Mackey, owner of 
The Organic Life.

Jasmine Rennie, creative 

director 
and 
owner 
of 

Gracemade, chose to work 
with de Coster due to a shared 
faith-driven background and 
mutual appreciation for each 
other’s brands.

“She just has a beautiful 

story; her whole concept of 
creating her scents was based 
on her own faith journey 
and things and places she 
experienced in her discovery 
of who God was in her life,” 
Rennie said. “She has a great 
mind and a great spirit about 
her and it shows throughout 
everything she does in her 
company.”

As MONTA begins to gain 

more traction, de Coster is 
planning to expand the size 
of her operations. She intends 
on taking advantage of the 
Business 
School’s 
student 

facilities, like the Zell Lurie 
Center for Entrepreneurship, 
to 
help 
her 
make 
this 

transition.

As her business begins to 

grow, so will her workload. 
Business 
sophomore 
Max 

Devooght, a friend of de 
Coster, believes de Coster’s 
work ethic is well suited for 
this change.

“Everybody’s sitting there 

and enjoying themselves on 
gameday and she’s building 
a business,” Devooght said. 
“Her business is literally an 
extension of herself; I didn’t 
know it was possible to be that 
connected to a business.”

MONTA has not only been an 

outlet for de Coster’s emotions, 
but for her artistic side as well. 
She sees her products as a unique 
blend of business and creativity 
and feels it will not be easy for 
anyone else to replicate.

“I consider MONTA half 

business, half art,” de Coster 
said. “There is no one else that 
has the same design eye or 
personal experiences as I do, so I 
like to refer to the products as my 
sensory diary and no one else 
can write my diary for me.”

MONTA
From Page 1

facility to an outside source. It put 
out a Request for Proposal — known 
in the city as an RFP — looking for 
a company to contract the compost 
management. WeCare Organics, 
which was then based in New York 
but since merged with Arkansas-
based Denali Water Solutions, 
answered that call. In February of 
2011, it took over the contract and 
has been managing Ann Arbor’s 
compost since then.

This summer, that contract 

was up and Ann Arbor once again 
put out an RFP for a composting 
contractor. WeCare submitted a 
request to renew their contract, but 
this time, the Holland, Mich.-based 
Cocoa Corporation also turned in a 
proposal.

It did not receive an interview or 

site visit from the city. 

According to Cocoa Corporation 

CEO Adam Brent, his company felt 
its case was persuasive. Not only did 
he think it was the best company for 
the job, but he also claimed WeCare 
was grossly mismanaging the site.

“From my perspective, there 

is mismanagement going on at 
the facility, and then the contract 
was awarded to a company who is 
certainly going to continue what I 
believe is business as usual, which is 
‘we get paid for the tipping (service 
of accepting unsorted compost 
material), and we’ll just pile it up 
and leave it out back like everyone 
else is doing and maybe one day 
it’ll turn into compost,’” Brent 
said. “The city of Ann Arbor has 
an excellent compost facility … and 
the resource is being, in my opinion, 
squandered.” 

Brent and his CFO Richard 

Hornstein based their allegations 
on the fact that WeCare was not 
grinding large material or moving 
enough of their compost off the 
facility. Grinding is an important 
part of composting because it breaks 
down large woody materials so 
they can help along the composting 
process.

Grinding and moving compost 

is a big part of Cocoa Corporation’s 
business model — it sells most of 
the compost it accumulates to local 
farmers as soil fertilizer — and 
it claims it was part of WeCare’s 
original contract, too.

“The requirement is, in the 

contract with the city of Ann 
Arbor, is that the compost facility 
is supposed to grind all the 
woody material and remove all 
the contaminants,” Brent said. 

“If you go to the site, none of that 
is taking place. In the RFP, we 
requested through the Freedom 
of Information Act after we had 
been denied the contract their 
contract … it lists that they have 
two grinders. Grinders would be 
what breaks down the material. 
They don’t have two grinders 
there and the one grinder they do 
have has been broken two years, 
according to the employee that we 
spoke to back in August. So they’re 
not following through on their 
initial contract.”

Brent 
and 
Hornstein 
also 

expressed 
frustration 
that 

WeCare doesn’t seem to be giving 
back as much revenue to the city 
as its company would, if given the 
chance.

“We asked for the financial 

information from the city but 
they wouldn’t give it to us,” Brent 
said. “We don’t know how much 
WeCare has repatriated back to the 
city based on the tipping and the 
sale. That would be an interesting 
thing to compare because their 
original RFP said they were going 
to give back $36,000 a year. I’d like 
to know if they did that.”

For Brent, the most infuriating 

part of the whole debacle surfaced 
when he found out whom WeCare 
had listed as references on its 
proposal submission. One of its 
references was Christina Gomes, 
the Ann Arbor solid waste and 
recycling coordinator. To Brent, 
this seemed like a clear conflict of 
interest.

“The thing that upset me 

the most was that Ms. Gomes 
was listed as a reference on the 
WeCare RFP,” Brent said. “She’s 
one of the three people to make 
the decision as to who’s going to 
get the contract.”

Neither Gomes nor the city 

of Ann Arbor responded to 
requests for comment, but city 
communications director Robert 
Keller forwarded a memo sent by 
the city to Brent and Hornstein 
when the pair asked why they had 
not received consideration for the 
contract. 

In 
the 
memo 
written 
by 

Craig Hupy, public services area 
administrator, the city denied all 
the allegations Cocoa Corporation 
had brought against WeCare.

In response to the claim 

that WeCare was violating its 
contract with the city, Hupy 
wrote that Cocoa Corporation had 
misunderstood the contract and 
that the actual document does not 
require any tonnage quantities of 
waste removal be met. The city 
also denied WeCare has created 

a potential landfill problem at the 
facility.

“Cocoa’s 
accusations 
and 

assertions are incorrect, and also 
show a lack of understanding of 
municipal compost operations,” 
the memo read.

The memo goes on to explain 

why it decided not to interview 
Cocoa Corporation after receiving 
its proposal submission.

“Cocoa’s priority was third 

party waste, which did not fit 
within the program goals the City 
was looking to accomplish with 
the RFP. … Furthermore, Cocoa 
presented 
extremely 
limited 

previous experience in compost 
management, 
its 
experience 

being only at a single facility that 
processes compostable materials 
in large part from a limited, and 
consisted category of sources… 
and only since 2015,” Hupy wrote.

There was no mention in the 

memo of the potential conflict of 
interest raised by Gomes being a 
reference of WeCare and a member 
of the selection committee.

Mike 
Nicholson, 
WeCare’s 

senior 
vice 
president 
and 

development manager, also said he 
did not want to comment directly 
on the allegations made against 
his company. However, he said he 
felt the company was following 
all the rules it were supposed to 
follow.

“At this point in time, we are 

in procurement with the city as 
our client, and we are following 
what we believe to be the rules 
of 
procurement,” 
Nicholson 

said. “We’re kind of keeping our 
comments to ourselves at this 
point in time.”

In Nicholson’s eyes, WeCare, 

which is a founding member of the 
Composting Council of Michigan, 
is doing a great job in Ann Arbor. 
He said the company feels it’s been 
quite successful in its six years 
working with the city. 

“We’ve been very successful,” 

Nicholson said. “We view the 
city as a partner, and we have 
provided leadership in the state. 
… We are now providing services 
for the University of Michigan, for 
their zero-waste program for all 
their athletic facilities. And most 
importantly, we helped the city 
implement their residential food 
waste recycling program.”

That occurred about three 

years after WeCare took over the 
compost contract, Nicholson said, 
and it’s the reason Ann Arbor 
residents and students like Sheedy 
can compost at their homes.

WASTE
From Page 1

term effects.

“A subpopulation of the sample 

will be followed over time,” Veliz 
said. “So we’ll be able to see how 
are these diagnosed concussions 
influencing outcomes as these 
adolescents age into adulthood. So 
again, we’ll have two groups, those 
who were concussed versus those 
who weren’t, and we’ll be able to 
ask are there differences? Are they 
drastic?”

He also mentioned the role that 

sports play in this study.

“There 
are 
quite 
a 
few 

adolescents who participate in 
sports; I’m not saying that sports 
is the leading cause of concussion, 
but there is a strong association 
between participating in sports and 
having a head injury,” he explained. 
“We also have to understand that 75 
percent of children and adolescents 
participate in sports at a competitive 
level.”

Nursing 
sophomore 
Lucy 

Sandell, 
a 
member 
of 
the 

University’s Women’s Club Soccer, 
claimed this information didn’t 
come as a surprise to her.

“I 
definitely 
believe 
that; 

especially with sports,” Sandell 
said. “I’ve had three concussions 
throughout my life, all from playing 
soccer. Experiencing more than one 

can be very serious, my third caused 
migraines that lasted three weeks.”

The study was published in the 

Journal of the American Medical 
Association in Sept. 26, 2017.

LSA sophomore Will Olvera 

responded 
he 
also 
initially 

associated 
this 
statistic 
with 

sports, especially with the student 
body at the University.

“Upon first reaction, I’m not 

surprised,” he said. “I’m not really 
into sports in general, but I feel like 
no matter how much protection 
you use accidents happen. It’d be 
interesting to see how much more 
you’d see among certain sports 
like football or lacrosse ... but that 
number really doesn’t surprise 
me.”

SURVEY
From Page 1

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

the Fourth Street parking 
structure. He said the process 
was 
delayed 
in 
the 
past 

because of high costs and 
other construction in the area.

“Given 
today’s 
death, 

we’re 
moving 
forward 
to 

get the railings put in with 
those higher bid numbers,” 
Warpehoski 
said. 
“If 
we 

find out because of the other 
construction that it’s going to 
take a long time, we’ll go ahead 
and put lower-cost chain-

link fences or something else 
that can be deployed more 
quickly.”

Ann Arbor resident Peter 

Eckstein agreed placing a 
railing would help prevent 
suicide. 
He 
dispelled 
the 

common 
myth 
that 
“if 

someone is determined to 
kill themselves, they will, so 
putting up a fence will make 
them do it another way.”

“The statement defies itself,” 

Eckstein 
said. 
“‘If 
they’re 

determined!’ But often people 
aren’t determined in that same 
sense. It’s an impulse.”

Eckstein shared the story 

about his friend jumping from 

the Golden Gate Bridge in San 
Francisco after his girlfriend 
broke up with him. The bridge 
did not have railings back 
then.

“These things are often 

done on impulse, the gloomy 
moment. It’s dark out. The sun 
may come out in half an hour, 
in 10 minutes. By then you’re 
dead,” Eckstein said. “You 
may get a job, you may get a 
purpose, you may get another 
girlfriend or boyfriend. It’s not 
‘if you’re determined, you’re 
going to do it.’ And it is so easy 
to just climb up that wall and 
jump off. It’s scandalous that 
we let it happen.”

CITY COUNCIL
From Page 1

She just has 
a beautiful 
story; her 

whole concept 

of creating 
her scents 

was based on 
her own faith 
journey and 
things and 
places she 

experiences in 
her discovery 
of who God 

was in her life,