I was 19 then — a socially anxious first-year — with time on my hands and a tendency to procrastinate. I wanted better time management skills and, most importantly, money for books and Panda Express. After winter break was over, I immediately emailed two people at the library about potentially working there for a few hours per week. The supervisor replied promptly, asking for a meet- up the next day. I’ll call him Matt. I was told to meet up with Matt and another supervisor at the café on the first floor of the library. I was a little jittery — this was my first time applying for a job on campus — and after all, I knew I might not get it. Matt and a woman showed up soon, and we all sat down at a small table in the corner. They asked for my schedule and resume, which they quickly glanced over, and Matt smirked at. When I said I needed a little time to reflect before I signed up for shifts — my class schedule was up in the air — Matt said that he was not a scary person to work with. Something about the comment and the way he stared almost piercingly made me feel slightly uneasy, slightly creeped out and caught off-guard. He had white hair, he’d hardly smiled during the conversation, and he was in his 50s, at least. I left the interview, feeling a little worried, pondering about my next step. I was possibly overthinking it. I was too prone to jump to conclusions. I emailed Matt two days later, saying I was ready to start at the earliest date possible. I needed a few signatures from him before going to Student Activities and getting my documents finalized. He replied quickly, asking me to meet him for a cup of coffee at the same café. It was around noon; students and staff were flocking in and out of the doors and gathering around the couches. I bought a small coffee and sat at a table in the middle of the crowd, pulling my phone out to check the time. I felt someone lightly tap me on the shoulder before he pulled a chair across from me and sat down. Matt looked quite excited. He was wearing a tight, turtleneck sweater, he reeked of cologne and sweat and his glasses tilted on his nose. I asked whether the other supervisor from last time would join us. He said no, seemingly pleased. He then proceeded to ask me how my day was going, what classes I was taking, what I liked doing in my free time, etc. It appeared friendly and innocent, but something felt disconcerting. I tried to bottle the feeling of apprehensiveness rising inside me. I attempted to divert his attention toward the papers he needed to sign so I could get up and leave. He signed slowly, lifted his hand up and paused, a smile protruding from the corner of his mouth. He leaned in, peering closer — I abruptly saw his white eyelashes — and placed his hand on both of mine. He gave them a squeeze and asked smoothly, “Are you going to hire me?” “What?” I sputtered after a few seconds. “N-no.” He repeated, squeezing my hands again, laughing quietly. I got up, feeling flabbergasted and numb. He immediately came over to my side and pulled out my chair for me. I left, muttering a goodbye and running towards the bus stop. My legs felt heavy, a little shaky; I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what I should be doing. As I waited, I saw that he’d followed me to the bus stop. When he caught me glancing, he turned around and struck up a conversation with someone else. The whole thing felt bizarre, violating and wrong. During classes, I wondered and worried. I ended up not taking the job. For a while, I tried to force myself into taking it, believing that nothing would happen. I could manage it, I thought. I just had to make sure that the two of us were never alone in a room. I blamed myself, wondering why I didn’t say anything to his face, why I felt a sense of cowardice enveloping me then. I also didn’t feel like going to the library anymore, and I’d gone there almost every other night to study. Occasionally seeing him there — even as I tried my best to avoid him — made me feel queasy and angry. I understood that what he’d done wasn’t something huge, but there was a chance that something more could’ve happened. I sensed it, I felt it in my gut and I knew I wouldn’t be able to fend for myself if the situation got worse. I hated that I had to worry about fending for myself in a workplace even as it boasted about having zero tolerance for sexual harassment. I hated that I didn’t know who to tell, that my incident would get chalked up to nothing and that I’d be going against an experienced supervisor who was also a white man. I’d seen it happen to others too many times to imagine my situation would’ve been different. I knew if I joined his team, I’d dread seeing him every day. I kept quiet for three years and moved on, but I remembered it. I remembered it when I applied for another job on campus and hoped that it wouldn’t be a man who’d interview me. I remembered it when I seated myself far away from male co-workers and professors in cramped offices. I remembered it well enough to know that everything I’ve felt back then does matter. It might not be a big deal when compared to many other cases, but it was still humiliating, unnecessary and violating of my personal space. It was still sexual harassment. It was still the same story about a man inappropriately touching a woman and getting away without any consequences. I hated running after baseball games. After all, baseball isn’t much of an endurance sport, and the punishment of choice for most of my coaches after a poor performance was making us run from foul pole to foul pole for what seemed like an eternity. Of course, this wasn’t the case for every team I played on, and it happened mostly after age 13 when baseball became more competitive. But throughout my career, the majority of coaches treated us as professionals — despite the fact that most of us were unable to do our own laundry, couldn’t cook an egg and definitely could not drive. So, when I took my first job as an assistant coach for 13-year-olds this past summer, I vowed to find alternatives to running as punishment, which I saw as a counterproductive and negative strategy. Perhaps ignorant and naïve, I hoped that my philosophy was one that coaches and parents across the country also shared. However, upon returning home last month for Fall Break, I found quite the opposite: There was a growing crowd of children who were being trained and treated like professional athletes — which is, in my opinion, a dangerous prospect for the future of sports in this country. Midtown Athletic Club, a notorious spot for aging parents to relive their glory days on the elliptical machine, had turned into a modern athletic sweatshop of sorts since my last visit. Unlike the “training” of my early years — dodgeball, steal the bacon and flag football — I witnessed 8- and 9-year-olds working out ferociously with trainers. At one point, I overheard a trainer tell the parent of a young, slightly overweight boy that “he needs to be running every day to be ready for high school tennis,” despite the fact that this boy did not even seem old enough to understand algebra. Later in my workout, I was appalled to see a group of young girls running sprint “suicides,” an exercise I had previously only witnessed in highly competitive high school and college sports. This growing trend to treat children as professional athletes and specialize their training has dangerous consequences. According to a recent survey conducted by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, 70 percent of children in the U.S. quit organized sports by the age of 13 because “it’s just not fun anymore.” Though I stuck it out because of my love for the sport, baseball in my hometown of Deerfield, Ill., has a reputation for weeding out kids for that very reason. The increasing pressure coaches, parents and the community put on young baseball players has not only caused kids to transition to other sports like basketball or lacrosse, but has also prompted many to quit organized sports altogether. Overall, Little League baseball participation is down 20 percent since its peak in the early 2000s, a disappointing statistic to read for someone whose experience was almost entirely positive. By professionalizing youth sports, many kids are no longer exposed to the benefits of organized athletics — learning the importance of teamwork, selflessness and discipline. And apart from minimizing the positive experiences kids like myself had playing sports, increasing professionalization ties into another negative trend in youth sports: specialization and overuse of the body. According to Dr. Albert Knuth, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Advocate Children’s Hospital just outside of Chicago, the United States sees 3.5 million youth sports injuries per year, and an estimated 50 percent of those come from overuse. Where youth sports used to be focused on effort, learning core values and having fun, recent trends have seen kids training vigorously for one sport in order to pursue some sort of college or professional career — like the young boy I saw being overworked at Midtown last month. The roots of specialization and overuse injuries lie largely in the prospect of college scholarships. Many parents, seeking a way to alleviate financial stress, put their children through intense training programs and hope to see Division 1 offers pile up. Unfortunately, the reality is gloomy for almost all youth athletes. Only 6 percent of high school athletes will play in college, and only 1 to 2 percent of those college athletes will see their efforts pan out professionally. Though not their intention, big-time athletic programs provide a largely unrealistic expectation for zealous parents seeking an opportunity for upward economic mobility. And it all comes down to running. Though I’m a fan of discipline and teaching work ethic, overworking kids to prepare them for a professional career completely defeats the purpose of youth sports. I hope my efforts as a coach last summer signal a changing direction for the future of youth sports, and that others follow my lead. Though I know it won’t be the case for most if not all parents and coaches involved in organized sports, putting the “fun” back in youth athletics will positively impact the experience of many children and reduce their risk for injury in the future. While the results might not be visible immediately, replacing foul poles and sprints with thoughtful post-game conversations will have the most positive impact on kids and their sports experience in the long term. Opinion The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com 4A — Friday, November 10, 2017 REBECCA LERNER Managing Editor 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. EMMA KINERY Editor in Chief ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY and REBECCA TARNOPOL Editorial Page Editors Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Put the fun back into sports BEN CHARLSON | COLUMN Are you going to hire me? Carolyn Ayaub Megan Burns Samantha Goldstein Emily Huhman Jeremy Kaplan Sarah Khan Max Lubell Lucas Maiman Madeline Nowicki Anna Polumbo-Levy Jason Rowland Anu Roy-Chaudhury Ali Safawi Sarah Salman Kevin Sweitzer Rebecca Tarnopol Stephanie Trierweiler Ashley Zhang Sami Matin is an LSA junior. Is it OK to joke about death? ELENA HUBBELL | COLUMN I ’ve found that the humor exhibited by University of Michigan students is usually pretty dark. If, back in high school, I had joked about wanting to get hit by a car, my friends probably would have stared at me in horror and told a guidance counselor that I needed help. But here in Ann Arbor, the same joke will most likely be met by a chorus of “same,” “me too” or even, “Hey, college is expensive — go get that insurance money.” Joking about death has become pretty commonplace on campus, and a way for a lot of students to express their frustration over never getting any sleep and always being under an intense amount of stress. And though I love dark humor — I’ve been known to casually joke about waiting for the sweet embrace of death — I also have conflicted feelings toward how University students casually talk about wanting to die. For people who have actually experienced a friend or family member dying or who have had thoughts of suicide, these types of jokes can be perceived as insensitive, careless or even triggering. I know that after my father passed away, I had a hard time finding any jokes about death to be anything less than insulting, even if they were not at my or my family’s expense. I once broke into tears after a friend joked about wanting to die after they turned 30 so that they wouldn’t have to get old. Others may feel differently, but I know that for a while after experiencing a death in the family, hearing jokes about wanting to die made me uncomfortable and upset. But I have to be honest — dark humor and making jokes about death can be a really good coping mechanism. With all the stress that we are under here at college, sometimes just being able to laugh with a friend about our mutual desire to no longer exist in this dimension can help make a long night of studying just a little more tolerable. I have yet to meet a fellow student who is sleeping enough or who feels content with their lives and because of this, it’s easy to understand why the atmosphere around campus would get a little grim. Making wholesome and pure jokes when you’re running on two hours of sleep just isn’t going to cut it. Even I have found myself making jokes that a few years ago would have insulted me. College really puts a person through a lot mentally and emotionally, and dark jokes and humor are sometimes what a person needs to make it through. This sensitive issue can sometimes be portrayed as black and white — people who make jokes about death should be more sensitive and stop, or, on the other side, people who are sensitive to jokes about death should just have a sense of humor. I believe that, concerning matters of death, a black and white approach will only create more tension and won’t allow for a nuanced discussion. It’s true that making these kinds of jokes can lead to hurt emotions and misunderstanding for some, but I also believe that people should be allowed to cope with trauma in whatever way they feel is best. If that means making a few death jokes, I’m really not going to complain, as I’m going through the same stress and experiencing the same feelings of inadequacy as every other student on this campus. Still, I believe that everyone should remain sensitive to the challenges that others may be going through, and I also think that some part of me will always find jokes about death distasteful. But what is also distasteful is a school system that prides itself in running students into the ground and creating a general atmosphere of stress. I believe that we should also remain sensitive to the students forced to deal with the distress that this University has put them through, and the unhealthy coping mechanisms that arise. Students who normalize death should be villainized — in my opinion, it’s one of the healthier unhealthy coping mechanisms. I hope that students can begin to see how their jokes surrounding death and suicide can be hurtful and dismissive to some. But, I would also like to see a school system that actually tries to help students learn, and not just put them through mental and emotional stress in the name of competition. This is the fourth piece in the Survivors Speak series, which seeks to share the varied, first-person experiences of survivors of sexual assault. If you are a survivor and would like to submit to the series, please visit https://tinyurl.com/survivespeak for more information. SAMI MATIN I kept quiet for three years and moved on, but I remembered it. Elena Hubbell can be reached at elepearl@umich.edu. Ben Charlson can be reached at bencharl@umich.edu. JOE IOVINO | CONTACT JOE AT JIOVINO@UMICH.EDU Students who normalize death should be villainized. I hope my efforts as a coach last summer signal a changing direction for the future of youth sports.