E
very time a classroom door
opens in the middle of a
class, I momentarily freeze.
I look toward the door, no longer able
to hear my professor’s words, only
coming to a place of relaxation when
a student or somebody else who’s
meant to be there meets my eyes.
I’m scared of it being someone
who has come to shoot my peers
and me.
This has been true throughout
my time at college, in all kinds of
classrooms. Maybe you think this
is paranoid and stupid. As the child
of two psychoanalysts, I might try
to consider this a quirk of mine that
speaks to some larger insecurity
relating to some larger truth about
myself that only a professional can
solve for me.
Or maybe this is a sign of how
internalized these shootings have
become, how automatically the
shootings are part of our lexicon,
both with each other and within
ourselves. My understanding of
what is conceivable on a moment-to-
moment basis, of what my present
environment might bring me, feels
like it has to include these shootings
because of how often they occur.
I imagine what the implications
of this automatic acceptance of the
possibility that this would take place
would have on younger kids. The
Sandy Hook shooting, frequently
cited as the event that introduced
this modern era of public shootings
in the U.S. (at schools, concerts and
movie theaters alike), only happened
in 2012, when I was 15. I imagine
what it’s like to be growing up in
elementary schools around the
country that are under threat, as
silence continues to emanate from
our lawmakers.
I saw an Instagram post from
Shaun King, the writer and civil
rights activist. He had taken a
photograph of travel blogger Tanai
Benard’s Facebook feed. Benard
is a mother of a 10-year-old child
who was explaining the protocol
his teachers taught him in case an
“active shooter” came to his school.
The child says, “The teacher is
supposed to shut and lock the door,
put the black paper over the window
on the door. Then myself and three
other boys are supposed to push the
table against the door. After that the
class is going to stand behind us on
the back wall.”
Shocked that her Black son —
only one of three Black children in
a class of 23 students — would be
asked to stand in front of the whole
group, Benard asks him, “Why did
you get picked to stand in front of
everyone else if a shooter came to
your school?” And the child answers:
“I didn’t get picked. I volunteered
to push the table and protect my
friends.” Benard asks him why. And
he says, “If it came down to it I would
rather be the one that died protecting
my friends than have an entire class
die and I be the only one that lived.”
Benard’s
10-year-old
child
goes to school with a life-or-death
mindset, willing to sacrifice his body
for his classmates. This is simply part
of the process of going to school, even
from such an early age as 10.
This question of gun control,
then, is not about anything besides
these children. This is not about
preserving the cultural tradition
of the Second Amendment — that
is an argument that deals with the
connotations of the debate rather
than the debate itself. This is not
about mental health, either — of
course, people who kill others en
masse are mentally deranged. Every
single country in the world has these
people. But only the United States
arms them. Last year, President
Donald Trump signed a bill revoking
gun checks for mentally ill people.
No. There are two sides in
this debate: the National Rifle
Association and the government
that it funds versus these children in
American schools. How we respond
to this set of questions will impact
not only the future students to die at
the hands of one of these attacks, but
also those who survive; left to learn
in an environment of danger and
potentially grave sacrifice. Students
have been forced to understand
themselves and their peers as
competitors, not collaborators. They
become tactical pieces in an effort
to save their own lives, using time in
school to push tables against walls
and hide.
Hide. Go to school and
learn to hide. Is there no more
backward lesson to teach our
children than that? Elementary
schools and high schools alike
ought to be a place where
students
flourish
and
find
themselves in their passions,
their friendships, where they
can freely and safely navigate the
pressures and contradictions and
messy developments of life.
I do not know the implications
of
this
kind
of
fear-based
education. I don’t think any of
us can until some time further
down the line. But I do know that
in my own life, my most fruitful
educational
experiences,
in
and outside of classrooms, have
occurred when I have felt least
strongly a need to hide. Instead,
they have come when I have
been able to come out and speak
in such a way that my voice and
my story gets developed, where
there’s a free and open exchange
of ideas across differences.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, February 21, 2018
DAYTON HARE
Managing Editor
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.
ALEXA ST. JOHN
Editor in Chief
ANU ROY-CHAUDHURY AND
ASHLEY ZHANG
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
Samantha Goldstein
Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Jeremy Kaplan
Sarah Khan
Lucas Maiman
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Ali Safawi
Kevin Sweitzer
Tara Jayaram
Ashley Zhang
#RespecttheLecs
T
his evening, the University
of Michigan’s Department
of History is sponsoring
“Disrupting
White
Supremacy,”
a teach-in on the global history of
white supremacy, from 5 p.m. to
9 p.m. in Mendelssohn Theatre in
the Michigan League. The teach-
in’s mission reads in part: “White
supremacy uses history to fuel its
fictions. Its promulgators anchor
their vision of a racist future in
mythical depictions of the past. But
the past is not the place that white
supremacists imagine it to be. We
must reclaim and retell the global
history of race.” Or to put it another
way, Richard Spencer is largely
beside the point.
Yes, Spencer and his followers in
the “alt-right” constitute a dangerous
force in American society. As we saw
last summer in Charlottesville, Va.,
they are a real and present danger
to Black and brown people and all
who stand up for racial equality
and justice. His simplistic and
hateful message of white identity
politics and ethnic cleansing is
easy to identify and oppose. But the
true challenge is to root out white
supremacy in the very institutions
we inhabit every day.
When the controversy over
Spencer’s request to speak at
the University of Michigan first
emerged, I worried it would distract
the University community from
essential discussions of what it
will take to build a racially-just
university. In one sense, I was right.
For months now, students, faculty
and
community
activists
have
devoted countless hours to building
coalitions and debating strategic
options for confronting Spencer’s
white supremacy and hate speech.
But far from distracting activists
from the imperative to work for
racial justice on campus and in
the local community, these efforts
have produced a renewed sense of
solidarity and commitment within
the anti-racist community. Activists
have organized a series of principled,
creative protests and educational
initiatives that have not only voiced
their outrage against the resurgence
of white supremacist hate but
also served to remind us all of the
continual need to work for racial
justice. This is the message that
tonight’s teach-in seeks to reinforce:
that white supremacy is more than a
project of a few extremists on the far
right, that ideologies and practices
of racial superiority have been a
driving force in constructing the
radical disparities in health, wealth
and opportunity that characterize
the modern world, and that in order
to win local struggles for racial
equity and justice we must grapple
with the long, global history of racial
domination and exploitation.
As the saying goes, if you are not
outraged, you have not been paying
attention. But outrage is not enough.
It will take much more than outrage
if we are going to systematically
address
the
structural
forces
that continue to leave Black and
brown people excluded from and
marginalized within the University
community.
Take, for example, the issue
of African-American, Latinx and
Native American enrollment at the
University. For its first 150 years, the
University was virtually an all-white
institution. While Michigan was not
legally segregated like its southern
counterparts,
the
University
operated within a cultural milieu
that assumed that all but a very
small handful of people of color
lacked the intellectual capacity to
attend the University. Before 1970,
as educational historian James
Anderson has put it, Michigan
“engaged in racially discriminatory
and exclusionary practices that
earned it a reputation as an institution
for White students.” In fact, for most
of its history, the University did not
even keep track of the number of
students of color enrolled. Only now
has the Bentley Library undertaken
a project to identify and document
all the African Americans who
attended the University in the years
before the civil rights movement. As
of last April, the library’s researchers
had identified 1,700 Black students
for the 117 years between 1853
and 1970. As late as 1966, the
University estimated the Black
student population to have been
about 400 students, or 1.2 percent
of that year’s total enrollment of
32,500 undergraduate and graduate
students.
The movement to demand
racial equity in U-M student
enrollment began with the “Black
Action Movement” in 1970, which
demanded the University achieve
10 percent Black enrollment by
1973. The story of the three “Black
Action Movements” and the rise
and fall of affirmative action at the
University is too long and involved
for this article. What we can say
is that student activism led to the
establishment of the Michigan
Mandate in 1988 and a new set of
admissions policies that raised black
undergraduate enrollment to a peak
of 2,101 students (9.2 percent) in 1997
and
underrepresented
minority
enrollment
(African-American,
Native
American,
and
Latinx
students) to a peak of 3,297 (14.5
percent) in that same year. But these
were short-lived gains. Following
the 2006 passage of Proposition 2,
the referendum that banned the
use of racial preferences in college
admissions in Michigan, the number
of Black undergraduates fell to 1,166
or 4.6 percent of total enrollment
and
underrepresented
minority
enrollment to 2,822 (10.7 percent)
in 2014. Once again it took student
activism, this time in in the form of
the #BBUM (Being Black at U-M)
movement, to push the University
administration to prioritize diversity
in undergraduate enrollment. Four
years later, overall underrepresented
minority undergraduate enrollment
has increased to 12.8 percent.
However, Black student enrollment
remains stuck at 4.57 percent, ten
percentage points below the state’s
Black population.
The
cultural
biases
and
structural barriers that excluded
African
Americans
from
the
University during its first 150 years
continue to shape Black and brown
educational opportunity in the state
and at the University as it enters
its third century. It is one thing to
oppose the Richard Spencers of the
world. But unless we are willing to
insist that the University take action
to admit a student body that reflects
our state and nation’s diversity, we
will have done little to dismantle
the white supremacist practices that
pervade daily life on campus.
Nor is diversity enough. We
must also address the often-
overlooked
structures
and
practices that undergird the
sense that students and faculty
of color are more interlopers
than valued members of the
community. This will be hard
work as it involves attitudes and
expectations as much as formal
rules and procedures. At this
point, the University’s Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion plan seems
more focused on process, long-
term goals and feel-good visions
than on benchmarks and tangible
steps. Plans are important but
what we need is accountability,
from the University, from its
academic programs and from
every member of the campus
community.
Disrupting White Supremacy
Hiding from our lives
ISAIAH ZEAVIN-MOSS | COLUMN
Isaiah Zeavin-Moss can be reached
at izeavinm@umich.edu.
Professor Matthew Countryman is
an Associate Professor of History and
American Culture in the College of LSA
M
y
friends
always
complain that I know
my teachers by first
name. They scoff when
I wave to my Spanish
instructor in the hall.
They complain about
their own professors,
nameless bodies who
occupy a lecture hall
for an hour and then
disappear into space,
their purpose fulfilled.
As
a
student
in
the
University
of
Michigan’s Residential
College, I have the advantage
of creating close relationships
with my teachers: Class sizes are
smaller, meaning more one-on-
one interaction. Additionally, RC
faculty plans an overwhelming
number
of
extracurricular
events to help students, such
as language lunch tables and
community engagement classes.
In other words, they go above
and beyond.
It
wasn’t
until
halfway
through
my
first
semester
that one of those above-and-
beyond
mentors,
Katherine
Mendeloff,
my
first-year
writing requirement instructor,
mentioned
the
Lecturers’
Employee Organization to my
class. She described how the
majority of RC faculty do not
serve as tenured staff, but as
non-tenure track faculty called
lecturers. I thought about my
own instructors, and how every
one of my passionate, dedicated
and knowledgeable teachers has
been a lecturer. As I researched
more into the labor union, and
the work they do, I became
increasingly irritated. How could
the University disrespect such a
large, impactful and necessary
population of their staff, one
that had eased and enhanced my
transition to college?
LEO is a labor union of
lecturers on all three University
of
Michigan
campuses.
As
stated previously, lecturers are
non-tenure track instructional
faculty; this means that, unlike
their tenured colleagues, they
don’t possess guaranteed job
stability, decent wages or other
benefits. For example, whereas
the
average
University
full
professor makes about $149,000
per academic year, the minimum
salary for a full-time Lecturer
is about $35,000 in Ann Arbor,
$28,000 in Dearborn and $27,000
in Flint. This translates to a $15
per hour pay, which is below a
living wage for a single parent
with children, or a two-parent
household with more than one
child. Many of these struggling
lecturers turn to other part-
time occupations,
such
as
driving
for Uber or other
jobs that add to
their
workweek.
Additionally,
lecturers
are
benefits-
insecure; due to
administration
policies,
part-
time
lecturers
cannot
obtain
consistent health care coverage.
This inequality has pushed LEO
lecturers to fight for an improved
contract for years.
These
are
not
greedy,
unsupported demands. As I
described, my own experience
has proven lecturers are qualified
instructors
who
go
beyond
what is expected to create a
stimulating
and
constructive
learning
environment.
Each
coffee hour I attended for
Spanish was organized, helpful
and fun. Every extracurricular
event I visited brought me closer
to
my
teachers,
classmates
and coursework. In addition,
there
is
statistical
evidence
that lecturers are a crucial
force in our University; they
generate a massive surplus of
tuition revenue. In the 2016-
2017 academic year, lecturers
induced a $377 million surplus
tuition, and yet only 4 percent of
this contribution was diverted
to lecturer pay and benefits.
Many argue that the reason
for this is that the University
cannot afford to raise lecturer
salary without raising student
tuition. This is false and simply
an excuse, as last academic
year, the University generated
$513 million in unrestricted
excess cash flow. This reflects
how the University can afford
to better pay lecturers. Our
administration
just
chooses
not to.
Due
to
this
constant
exploitation,
this
year,
the
fight for respect swelled. LEO
lecturers began bargaining with
University administration for
a new contract to secure fair
and consistent rights. Members
are
pushing
for
increased
wages, reliable health care,
job security, recognition for
inclusive teaching and improved
disability accommodations. In a
meeting on Feb. 12, University
administration
finally
introduced a counterproposal —
one that served as a slap in the
face. The University responded
with an offer of a $1,000 starting
salary
increase;
this
solely
demonstrates that the University
wants to move on, not actually
solve a problem. $1,000 is not a
sufficient raise by any measure;
even with this increase, lecturers
will struggle and suffer.
If this injustice does not
morally motivate change within
the student body, we should note
that it does affect us as students
as well. Student tuition is already
very substantial and creeping
higher and higher. Why isn’t
our money being invested back
into our education? Lecturers
often teach introductory or
undergraduate
courses,
so
their motivation, attention and
dedication are important to
our development in academia.
If a lecturer has to split time
between teaching and driving
Uber, they obviously cannot
give their 100 percent in
the
classroom.
Therefore,
everyone
suffers
and
the
highly paid administration
turns a blind eye.
This is a difficult and often
hidden fight. Many students
don’t know about the struggles
their
own
teachers
face.
Therefore, my call to action is
advocacy and presence. The
University
cannot
function
without lecturers — they teach
a third of student credit hours
in Ann Arbor — and we cannot
receive
a
good
education
without them. I urge my peers
to sport a #RespectTheLecs
pin, attend Board of Regents
meetings and create discourse
among our student body. Any
noise can be impactful in
showing support for lecturers.
It is easy to overlook your first
teachers in college, or to take
crucial
introductory
classes
for granted. However, these
teachers, who often fly under
the radar in their importance,
cannot be pushed aside in
their vitality. We do need to
#RespectTheLecs, but we also
need to be active in our fight for
them.
ATTEND
OPEN
BARGAINING: Friday, March
16th, 10:00 a.m.; 4th Floor
Palmer Commons
(Here,
allies
observe
bargaining. Having a room
filled with supportive students
sends a strong message)
Maggie Mihaylova can be reached
at mmhiyalo@umich.edu.
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA | COLUMN
MATTHEW COUNTRYMAN | OP-ED
HANNAH MYERS | HANNAH CAN BE REACHED AT HSMYERS@UMICH.EDU
MAGGIE
MIHAYLOVA