The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 — 3
City Council amends Greek house ordinances
Startup app allows local students to
mix party playlists with upvote system
Human rights lecture
highlights global view
UpNext platform created by students across schools debuts on mobile app stores
Academics from around the country convene to
endorse data-driven policies in int’l conflicts
New rules revoke zoning for chapters who lose University recognition, $4.2 million purchase also discussed
In Monday night’s meeting,
Ann
Arbor
City
Council
amended housing ordinances
for fraternities and sororities
in Ann Arbor and a $4.2 million
empty lot repurchase.
The
council
passed
an
ordinance on the Ann Arbor
housing code to modify the
definition
of
fraternity
or
sorority housing in Ann Arbor
and to amend special exception
use standards.
The ordinance will not allow
any fraternities or sororities
that are not sanctioned by
a university — namely the
University
of
Michigan.
As
a result, if a fraternity loses
its recognition, that property
would have to be replaced by a
recognized group or the zoning
will be revoked. The council’s
ordinance
comes
after
the
Interfraternity Council imposed
a ban on social activities due
to several incidents of hazing
and sexual assault. The ban
was lifted at the beginning of
the winter semester, but even
after the ban was lifted, one
fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, had
their charter revoked due to
sexual assault allegations.
Councilmember
Zachary
Ackerman, D-Ward 3, said the
ordinance is another step in
discouraging rape culture on
campus.
“It’s another tool to curb the
culture of sexual assault and
hazing,” Ackerman said.
Furthermore,
with
new
“special
exception
use”
standards the ordinance will
further control the density and
population of the houses. Under
this new ordinance, the initial
special exception use standard
would
define
how
many
individuals could live in the
house. In order to increase the
maximum population allowed
in the house, the fraternity
or sorority would be forced
to apply for another special
exception use standard.
Capitalizing on the theme of
zoning, the council also focused
on a $4.2 million repurchase.
During an hour-long closed
session, the council discussed
the repurchase of the former
YMCA lot on 350 S. Fifth Ave.
Amid
controversy
over
the repurchase and due to a
stalemate in the voting process,
the council was forced to table
the discussion and moved the
decision to the next council
meeting.
The repurchase was part
of an agreement created four
years ago. Under this agreement
the council was given the right
to repurchase the site after
four years if the agreed upon
development didn’t come to
fruition by April 2018, the city
could buy back the lot for either
the appraised value or $4.2
million — whichever would be
lower.
As a result of the council’s
consideration of repurchasing
the site, the property’s current
owner, Dennis Dahlmann, is
currently in the process of suing
the city over the property in
hopes of getting four more years
to bring the project to fruition
within the specifications of the
council for affordable housing
development.
Many
members,
including
Mayor
Christopher
Taylor,
Councilmember
Ackerman
and
Councilmember
Chuck
Warpehoski, D-Ward 5, argued
the purchase would be a simple
decision.
“There is a lot of public good
for affordable housing, for street
lights, even for road repair we
could do with that money,”
Warpehoski said.
While Councilmembers Jack
Eaton, D-Ward 4, and Sumi
Kailasapathy, D-Ward 1, argued
against the purchase.
“It’s a huge risk,” Eaton said.
“We’ve known for quite some
time that this building would
not be done today, yet here
we are discussing what we
are going to do. I don’t think
it’s responsible for us to use
that reserve account for this
purpose.”
The
resolution
needed
eight
votes
to
pass.
With
Eaton,
Kailasapathy
and
Councilmember
Annie
Bannister, D-Ward 1, voting
against
the
resolution,
the
council was forced to table the
discussion until the next council
meeting.
Claims of fake news have
pervaded American news media
in the year and a half since the
2016
presidential
election.
Yet as the LSA Donia Human
Rights Center at the University
of Michigan aimed to illustrate
Monday, the accuracy of facts
and data is under question
abroad, too. A human rights
conference
Monday
titled
“Frontiers of Human Rights
Research:
Methodological
Innovations and New Rights
Issues,” organized by Center
Director
Kiyoteru
Tsutsui,
associate professor of sociology,
gave audiences a broad picture
of human rights in the world
today.
“The
idea
behind
the
conference is looking at what’s
going on in the world today,”
Tsutsui
said.
“Fact-based
policymaking is under threat
— there’s a lot of fake news,
alternative facts and all that,
so reports on human rights
violations are often questioned
in a way that really undermines
the legitimacy of claims by
the victims. So we wanted to
present some methodological
innovations that have been
taking place in the field of
human
rights
research
to
showcase that there are ways to
collect data that produce good,
solid empirical research that
is very strong in terms of its
evidentiary basis.”
The
talk
featured
four
different
panels
discussing
developments in human rights
research and human rights
issues in general. Discussions
revolved around new ways to
collect data on human rights,
as well as new human rights
challenges that we have to face
now such as drones.
Tsutsui said he hoped people
in attendance would be able to
learn about techniques in the
field they didn’t know about
before.
“I want people who attend to
take away from the conference
that there are all kinds of
exciting research that is being
conducted by scholars who
study these things,” Tsutsui
said.
Author
Beth
Simmons,
professor of law and political
science at the University of
Pennsylvania, gave the keynote
speech. Simmons talked about
the future of human rights, and
said she was impressed by the
papers and theories presented
by the panel members.
“I
think
the
future
of
international rights is going to
be a good one based on what
I’ve heard today,” Simmons
said.
Simmons said the world is
at a juncture in the area of
international
human
rights,
and discussed some theories as
to why this was the case. Her
talk focused on the economic
effects of human rights, as
well as the fragility of many
of the democracies in the
world that are meant to ensure
these human rights. She also
discussed the effects the media
and reports of human rights
issues have on public opinion of
these issues.
“So much of what passes
for
research
on
human
rights is headline changing,”
Simmons said. “Human rights
researchers will often just start
off by talking about everything
that is wrong in the world and
tell you that the world is on an
irretrievable decline and that
human rights are at the end of
times.”
She
also
mentioned
human
rights
activists
as
unintentionally contributing to
this issue of perception.
“Human rights activists need
to keep us aware of the negative
developments in the world,
and because it’s their job, and
because they’re so good at it,
we get such a negative sense of
the world,” Simmons said.
To counter this, Simmons
showed
some
major
improvements
that
have
occurred within the realm of
human rights. She brought up
the decline in infant mortality
rates, the decrease in the
disparity between men and
women’s wages, the percentage
of countries that are under
democratic
governments
and the evident decline of
human deaths in international
conflicts in the past 50 years.
“We seem to be killing each
other less than we have done in
the past,” Simmons said.
However,
Simmons
also
acknowledged while progress
was happening, it was certainly
no easy feat, and it also isn’t
permanent.
“International human rights
progress has been real, and
slow, it has been selective, and
it is also fragile,” Simmons said.
“There is absolutely nothing
inevitable about what I showed
you.”
LSA junior Jonathan Aue
attended the talk, and though
he said it was not as interesting
as others he has attended, he
was still interested in the topic.
“Right
now
we’ve
got
problems with Cuba, China and
Iran taking away their women’s
rights, and that is against
our Universal Declaration of
Human Rights,” Aue said. “It’s
a global problem so everyone
should be stepping in to figure
out why exactly they’re getting
away with it.”
Less
than
six
months
ago,
Business
sophomores
Raymond Sukanto and Victor
Mahdavi
bonded
over
a
frustration many University
of Michigan students have
at parties — feeling helpless
over a bad music playlist.
In a matter of a few weeks,
they
partnered
with
LSA
sophomore
Dan
Kaper
to
create a music queuing app
called UpNext to assist fellow
music-minded
students
on
their nights out.
The app is run by a team of
devoted University students,
across LSA, the Ross School
of Business and the College of
Engineering, whose mission
is to unite students at social
gatherings over the aux cord.
UpNext serves as a platform
for creating a collaborative
playlist, where users are given
the power to suggest songs and
“upvote” or “downvote” tracks
on the queue.
Though the app primarily
functions
as
a
playlist
generator, the team’s vision is
to consolidate party planning
by transforming UpNext into
a social app, where users can
locate nearby events.
“The main thing now is us
focusing on being a music-
sharing app, but the end goal
is to be something more, like
a social media platform where
we could essentially help a
user decide and plan out their
entire night, from where they
go, who they go with, and then
eventually what music they
listen to,” Kaper said. “The
idea is to become a more of an
all-inclusive way to connect
and
experience
parties
together.”
Since its launch on the Apple
App Store in January, UpNext
has been downloaded by over
500 users, including Business
freshman Alana Gartenberg.
“Before, you could have
been fighting over the aux or
fighting over the music and
it took away from the time
you could have been spending
talking about other things,”
Gartenberg said. “This app
makes it so much easier to just
put in what you want.”
UpNext’s
current
users
have accumulated organically
through word-of-mouth and
small publicity stunts, like
sponsored
Snapchat
filters.
The team paid for Snapchat
filters
in
Puerto
Vallarta,
Mexico over Spring Break, as
well as multiple party spaces
over St. Patrick’s Day weekend.
However,
Mahdavi
said
the team has strayed away
from depending on marketing
strategies to promote the app
and instead are focusing on
letting the product sell itself.
“We
didn’t
put
enough
emphasis
on
the
actual
design,”
Mahdavi
said.
“I
think
most
successful
companies that make social
media products really focus on
the product. Then it speaks for
itself. People will use it if they
like it.”
Kaper,
who
worked
on
developing
the
app,
said
the
team
recognizes
app
design is vital in attracting
users. In recent weeks, the
app’s developing team has
concentrated
on
cleaning
the user interface design by
minimizing
screens
users
must
swipe
through
and
introducing a “home” screen,
which
is
widely
used
in
popular apps like Snapchat
and Tinder.
“The main idea is to create
simplicity,” Kaper said. “It’s
easier to retain the user if the
appearance on the app is pretty
easy and straightforward.”
One of UpNext’s selling
points is that it was created
for college students, by college
students. The team spends
every week updating the app
based on students’ reactions to
it with a hearty goal of 1,500 to
2,000 downloads by the end of
the semester.
The hardest part of the
process, according to Sukanto,
is getting those users.
“You
never
know,
at
this
stage,
what
people
really want,” Sukanto said.
“Everything is still a guessing
game. That’s why every week
we push to test and see if it
improves. It’s a cycle.”
According
to
Sukanto,
UpNext is putting Ann Arbor
first this semester, focusing on
reaching out to students in the
area, but next semester’s plans
foresee a push to other college
towns.
“Our goal this semester
is truly about learning what
product features work and
what
marketing
strategies
work,” Sukanto said. “Right
now, our only focus is Ann
Arbor.”
Members
of
the
team
have
gotten
support
from
CHISL Design, a student-run
branding group, as well as
from Entrepreneurship 412, a
University course modeled on
real-world startup incubators
and
accelerator
programs.
However,
Mahdavi
said
what helps drive the app’s
development the most is the
support they get from each
other.
“School is super important,
that’s why we’re here and
learning so much, and that’s
how we met each other,”
Mahdavi said. “But there’s
something very exciting about
having your own app and
having something to your own
name and seeing people have
fun with it.”
GRACE KAY
Daily Staff Reporter
MOLLY NORRIS
Daily Staff Reporter
NATASHA PIETRUSCHKA
Daily Staff Reporter
back and forth, and sometimes
they would be almost equal.”
Reverend
Lindasusan
Ulrich, an assistant minister
at First Unitarian Universalist
Congregation of Ann Arbor,
acknowledged this struggle,
but also said she was able to
find ways to join her religious
and queer identities.
“For me, I see definitive
connections having a non-
monosexual
identity
and
being a Unitarian Universalist
in that there’s an openness
to different possibilities and
a curiosity about different
possibilities,”
Ulrich
said.
“I realized how much that
openness has influenced me in
my ministry. For me, they are
very intertwined.”
Panelists also described the
issues they had in being open
about their queer identities
in religious settings, or vice
versa. These two communities
have a history of negative
interactions — a recent one
being accusations against a
church in Detroit of planning
conversion therapy workshops.
Incidents
of
discrimination
like the church in Detroit
cause
animosity
in
both
communities.
A Public Health graduate
student,
who
requested
to
be anonymous due to her
sensitive identity, said many
may believe the stereotype of
Muslims being homophobic,
which can make it hard for
her to interact in queer spaces.
She also said while her Muslim
group of friends is very open,
conversations
about
gender
and sexuality are more closed-
off in mosques.
“Most of my Muslim friends
never really had to say, ‘It’s
cool to be gay’ within our
friend circles, but if we went to
mosques or we went to Sunday
school, there was a kind of
hesitation with being so open
and expressive about it,” she
said.
An undergraduate student
who also requested anonymity
felt
similarly
about
her
queer and orthodox Jewish
communities. She highlighted
the unwillingness to discuss
sexuality within the Jewish
community, as well as the lack
of
awareness
surrounding
Judaism in LGBTQ+ spaces.
“It’s hard to find ritual
spaces that are meaningful
for me because when you go in
and your identity isn’t there,
or it’s erased, or it’s invisible,”
she said. “In the wider LGBTQ
spaces, I encounter a lot of
ignorance about Judaism, what
it is, what its rituals are like.
This can be hard when you
want to start to talk to people
about things, and have them
understand where you come
from.”
Both
Jewish
and
Muslim
students
talked
about the genderedness of
their
respective
religions,
particularly in their rituals and
traditions. The Muslim student
discussed the gender divide
between men and women in
mosques, and how this has a
harmful effect on members of
the LGBTQ+ community. The
Jewish student expressed her
pain in acknowledging because
of her sexuality, she won’t
be able to partake in certain
traditions.
“It’s hard, the knowledge
that in some ways I won’t
really be able to participate in
the milestones and rituals that
are important to me because
of my sexuality, because of the
possible gender of my future
spouse, and because of inherent
gender
separation
in
the
rituals,” she said.
To
work
through
these
struggles, the religious leaders
among the panelists emphasized
education. Ulrich said she uses
her position as a minister to her
advantage in terms of teaching
her
congregation
about
LGBTQ+ issues.
“Sometimes the teaching is
really vital because I have the
privilege of a pulpit from which
I can say things like, ‘How can
this open our minds?’” Ulrich
said. “‘How about we think
about this?’”
The Jewish student offered
up
a
different
viewpoint,
questioning whether she has
an obligation to educate her
peers on these issues.
“On
the
one
hand,
we
shouldn’t have to, but on
the other hand, if you don’t
advocate for yourself, who’s
going to?” she asked.
In response to a question
posed by an audience member
on how to approach coming
out, the panelists had differing
perspectives. The Muslim and
Jewish
students
expressed
how it’s unnecessary to come
out to everyone while Spencer
emphasized the importance of
doing what feels comfortable.
“If I may give you a bit of
advice: Do it at your pace,
at what feels right for you,”
Spencer said. “Don’t let other
people tell you how fast you
have to go.”
Alyssa Cozad, an academic
advisor at the Stamps School
of
Art
and
Design,
felt
enlightened by the perspectives
and opinions of the panelists.
The difficulties the panelists
expressed in trying to live
authentically
and
exist
in
either spiritual or LGBTQ+
spaces resonated with her. She
expressed her hopes for events
of a similar nature.
“There’s room certainly for
more of this on campus and in
the Ann Arbor community,”
Cozad said. “We’re an open
community, I hope, for a lot
of people and a resource for
people. So I like to come to
these sorts of events so that
I can let them inform my
work and how I relate with
students.”
LGBTQ+
From Page 1
We seem to be
killing each other
less than we have
done in the past.