freshmen hailed from in-state 
in the fall of 2017. This is an 8% 
drop from in-state freshmen 
enrollment in the fall of 2013. 
The decision of whether to 
pursue more national enrollment 
or continue emphasizing in-state 
enrollment remains an issue for 
public universities across the 
country, as the article reports 
11 flagship universities that had 
incoming freshman classes in 
2016 with over half of students 
being out-of-state.

Kedra Ishop, vice provost 

for Enrollment Management, 
explained in an email interview 
that the Office of Enrollment 
Management works to keep a 
majority in-state freshman class 
while also representing interests 
coming from the national and 
international scene.

Ishop 
stated 
high 
school 

populations in the state of 
Michigan are declining, and, 
likewise, the number of in-state 
applications remain lower than 
those from out-of-state students, 
with one-third of applicants 
coming from in-state and two-
thirds from out-of-state. She 
explained 
applications 
have 

increased 120 percent since 
2010, with a record number of 
applications in 2017. Yet the 
number of students admitted 
remains nearly the same. Because 
of this, seats for admission have 
become especially competitive, 
with in-state students having 
twice the admit rate as out-of-
state and international students.

“Generally 
speaking, 

residency 
determines 
the 

pool in which the applicants 
compete,” Ishop wrote. “Among 
the many qualities of a U-M 
education is the opportunity to 
experience a college education 
with students from different 
areas of the state of Michigan, 
all counties of the United States, 
and over 150 countries of the 
world. 
Educational 
diversity 

is 
important 
for 
the 
21st 

century educated student who 
is preparing to go out into the 
world to lead.”

LSA sophomore Alexandra 

Niforos, an in-state student, 
agreed in-state versus out-of-
state factors aren’t limiting to 
the University’s diverse aspect, 
as 
both 
resident 
and 
non-

resident students bring different 
backgrounds to the table.

“Michigan is pretty diverse 

in what backgrounds people 
can come from because they 
can come anywhere from rural 
Michigan to central Detroit,” 
Niforos said. “Everyone has a 
different background, but maybe 
bringing perspectives from other 
states, other school districts, 
other educational standards.”

When 
considering 
the 

financial aspect of enrollment, 
however, 
both 
Conrad 
and 

Niforos agreed the discrepancy 
between in-state and out-of-
state tuition cannot go unnoticed 
and expressed concerns that 
many students remain unaware 
of exactly where their tuition 
dollars are being spent. 

student body won’t be as wealthy 
as the student body here. It’ll be 
as homogenous in terms of racial 
demographics, but I anticipate the 
politics might be less progressive.

TMD: Take us through your 

journey here. Nine years ago, you 
weren’t as involved when you 
were beginning your Ph.D., then 
moving to the front lines with the 
megaphone in your hand after 
#BBUM and Aura Rosser, and 
now you’re more in the classroom, 
taking an academic or advisory 
approach. What was that like for 
you?

McCoy: 
I 
was 
always 

interested in getting involved, 
but didn’t know where to go or 
what to participate in. There 
was organizing and protests, 
but I didn’t see as much of it. I 
remember a professor asking me 
when I first got here like, “Austin, 
where are all the protests?” and I 
didn’t have an answer in my first 
month in Ann Arbor. I focused 
more on trying to fulfill our 
requirements.

In 
the 
summer 
of 
2013, 

when George Zimmerman was 
acquitted for killing Trayvon 
Martin, I was extremely upset, 
and it was one of the few times 
in the last few years I’ve cried. 
One of those nights where I cried 
myself to sleep thinking about 
it. But it also moved me to get 

involved in issues pertaining to 
racism.

That fall, a friend of mine 

named Garrett Felber, who was a 
Ph.D. student in the Department 
of American Culture, asked if 
I wanted to co-write an op-ed 
for The Daily about affirmative 
action and the history of Black 
student protest. He pitched is as 
relevant given the week before 
there had been a silent protest on 
the Diag around a lack of diversity 
and I said sure. That was October, 
and a few months later, #BBUM 
went viral. That was the same 
night the Black Student Union, 
We are Michigan and A New 
Trotter had a mass meeting. 
That was the first time I’d been 
in a room where there was an 
overwhelming majority of Black 
students. The days and weeks 
before, Garrett and I had been 
talking about what we could do 
as graduate students. So after that 
meeting, me, him, and a Latina 
Ph.D. student named Tatiana 
Cruz, 
began 
organizing. 
We 

created the United Coalition for 
Racial Justice, the point of which 
was to support #BBUM, but we 
also wanted to do an overnight 
teach-in. The organizing for the 
speak-out for racial justice the 
following year was the first time 
I had gotten involved on campus.

TMD: You’ve always been 

someone to invest in students 
and their organizing, wants and 
needs, and strategies. Where does 
that come from for you?

McCoy: Part of this comes from 

my own undergraduate years 
at (The Ohio State University at 
Mansfield), my hometown. The 
student body there was a lot more 
conservative, so it was me and a 
few other people who would do 
organizing 
around 
anti-racist 

movements and against the Iraq 
War. It was small things like 
panels and writing letters to the 
editors, anything that would raise 
awareness. We had support from 
a lot of professors and students, 
but there were few people around 
who I felt like I could talk to about 
organizing.

I believe in understanding 

when your role can change. I 
don’t think one person should 
always be out front, and I believe 
that if you’re an organizer, part of 
what you’re doing as an organizer 
is facilitating. You help connect 
people, and you support the 
people who will be on the front 
lines. It was once the organizing 
around Aura Rosser began to 
mature in 2015 — there were other 
people who were stepping up like 
Maryam Aziz who were doing 
a phenomenal job. There were 
other undergrads who would get 
involved around that, or student 
labor, and they began asking me 
to do teach-ins. People would 
come asking me to talk about 
diversity or the history of Black 
student protests or the history 
of UCRJ … The more I did that, 
the more people asked me to do 
teach-ins, the more undergrads 
would come to me asking about 
organizing and balancing life and 

school. It was a feedback loop. It’s 
important to be there for students 
as much as possible. In undergrad, 
if I saw a professor I liked at an 
event I organized, it was always 
energizing and comforting. I’m 
perfectly content with not being 
the face of everything.

TMD: The balance of academic, 

personal, political is hard. I know 
this has been a difficult year for 
you in many ways. How do you 
think you’ve changed?

McCoy: On the one hand, 

my life changed when I started 
getting organizing with UCRJ. 
Up until then, I was always 
interested, but was also rather 
content with finishing my Ph.D., 
graduating and leaving. Even 
with UCRJ, I thought we’d just do 
the speak-out and then be done. 
When we did that and we were 
successful, we began to get more 
people asking what we’d do next. 
There’s a next? And a we? Between 
UCRJ and Aura Rosser, my life 
totally changed. I went from being 
a graduate student interested in 
organizing to someone with a 
profile. I would run into people 
who knew who I was, and I didn’t 
know who they were. Since then, 
my life hasn’t been the same.

TMD: Is that hard? To have a 

profile, the constant demands on 
your time?

McCoy: The time, that can get 

difficult. You want to help as many 
people as possible. You want to do 
everything, and sometimes you 
feel like you can do everything. But 
it gets to the point where you look 

at your calendar and everything 
there is speaking, meetings or 
something 
else 
that’s 
related 

to politics. There’s less things I 
have scheduled for finishing my 
dissertation, or even myself. I 
had less energy to do dissertation 
work, let alone a social life.

One funny change is that I 

just watch more TV because I’m 
organizing all day. During UCRJ 
and Ann Arbor to Ferguson I’d 
be on campus all day and I’d get 
back home like, I’m going to work. 
But I’d turn on the TV and just 
knock out. My mind and my body 
were telling me that I couldn’t do 
anything right now.

That was a common theme with 

a lot of us here. Especially when it 
came to #BlackLivesMatter and 
the Aura Rosser killings, police 
seemed to be killing someone 
every month, no one got indicted, 
and there was just a constant 
cycle of vigils and actions. The 
violence is literally a matter of life 
and death, and that can happen 
to everyone who’s a part of a 
marginalized group anywhere. 
Recognizing that reality raised 
the stakes. And once the stakes 
were raised that high, I felt like 
I needed to be at every single 
protest, protesting every time 
something happened.

This past year, I knew this was 

going to be my last year no matter 
what, so it made more sense to 
serve in an advisory capacity. You 
can ask me to come speak and I 
would do that, but I was forced 
to 
juggle 
other 
professional 

obligations—I was away doing 
interviews every week—but then 
obviously with my mom passing, 
you just can’t. Something like 
that so personal happens that you 
have no option but to reprioritize. 
I had to grieve and be there for my 
family.

TMD: In the beginning of 

2016, it was Alton Sterling, 
then Philando Castile, one after 
another after another. There 
were so many vigils, I wondered 
if it was taking more from us 
than it was putting back in. How 
important are the protests?

McCoy: 
The 
vigils, 
the 

marches, going to City Council to 
confront political leaders, those 
things are very important. There 
were die-ins on the Diag, in the 
Law School after Baltimore and 
Sandra Bland. Are we focusing 
too much on reacting to the 
various shootings abroad versus 
Aura Rosser? Overlooking the fact 
that a 40-year old Black woman 
was shot right here in Ann Arbor, 
the mayor hadn’t apologized, the 
officer was never officially fired, 
her family had to deal with that 
trauma? There was a lot to focus 
on here, and we understood 
that. One the one hand, we 
felt compelled to respond to 
everything because other people 
here on campus had a desire 
to respond to Freddie Gray or 
Sandra Bland and #SayHerName. 

technology in life as well. 

Kristine Konz, a clinical social 

worker at the Depression Center, 
started the talk by explaining just 
how pervasive technology is and 
how we have molded our lives 
around it.

“We shape (our) environment 

and routines with devices,” Konz 
said. “When (we’re) tired and bored, 
(we) turn aimlessly to technology. 
(People) ages 18-24 check (their) 
phones 75 times per day.”

She explained how this addiction 

to technology also significantly 
impacts mental health as rates 
of depression and anxiety have 
increased by 70 percent in the past 
25 years in young adults. An increase 
in sleep problems, low self-esteem 
and eating disorders have also been 
noted with the growing presence of 
technology in our lives.

This 
phenomenon 
has 
also 

been linked to the increase in 
cyberbullying, doubling in the 
last seven years, with increased 
instances of self-harm, suicidal 
ideation and, occasionally, suicidal 
completion. Konz explained this 
correlation by connecting more 
time spent on social media to higher 
rates of social isolation.

“(With) less face-to-face contact, 

social circles become smaller, even 
though more time is spent on social 
media,” Konz said.

Konz also went on to describe 

the consequences of social media 
in particular. She discussed the 
concept of information overload, too 
many virtual friends to stay in touch 
with and growing concerns over the 

lack of privacy on social media.

“(You) become a target after 

sharing personal data and employers 
do watch (your profiles),” Konz said. 
 
 

The seminar then went on 

to highlight the positive impact 
technology has had. Connecting 
with people from around the 
world, 
easy 
and 
immediate 

communication, real-time news and 
a heightened access to information 
were some of the benefits listed. 

Konz ended the seminar on a 

more positive note by prescribing 
ways to counter the overbearing 
influence technology has on 
people. She advised to disconnect 
from 
technology 
and 
use 

unscheduled time to check in 
with yourself and essentially 
become more in tune with your 
surroundings.

“Take time to interact with 

the world around, especially with 
nature, people and pets,” Konz 
said.

LSA sophomore Julia Lauer 

explained how mindlessly using 
social media has been linked to 
a drop in overall well-being — 
especially when it is being used 
to passively consume others’ 
heavily-curated images and posts.

“Studies prove that simply 

scrolling through social media, 
passively, for 10 minutes can 
decrease one’s mood and well-
being in the following hours,” she 
said. “If you aren’t using social 
media actively then you’re at risk 
for putting yourself in a lower 
mental state by exposing yourself 
to an endless stream of others’ 
‘happiness.’ 
Definitely 
taking 

some time to realize this and 
adjust your social media habits 
to be an active user can help 
someone practice better social 

media engagement.”

Engineering junior Anna Learis, 

senior editor of Mentality Magazine, 
emphasized technology is actually 
not inherently bad in relation to self-
care. However, it cannot take the 
place of real-life practices.

“While 
it’s 
definitely 
clear 

that increased phone use, more 
importantly, 
increased 
social 

media use, is often harmful to one’s 
self-esteem and well-being due 
to comparing oneself to others, at 

the same time this instant access 
to technology can be extremely 
helpful,” 
Learis 
said. 
“From 

meditation apps to apps that allow 
you to text with a therapist, there are 
so many new resources at people’s 
fingertips 
that 
weren’t 
there 

before. I think utilizing self-care 
resources like the apps and websites 
I mentioned above are a great start, 
but without incorporating real-life 
self-care, there’s only so much that 
virtual self-care can accomplish.”

waste sent to landfills by 40 
percent by 2025 and has done 
so by 3 percent.

The University has met its 

goal of reducing chemical 
applications 
on 
campus 

landscapes by 40 percent and 
protecting the Huron River 
through stormwater control 
strategies. The University 
largely switched from using 
synthetic 
fertilizers 
to 

organic, which now account 
for 75 percent of fertilizers 
used by Grounds Services.

There 
has 
also 
been 

progress 
made 
toward 

purchasing 
20 
percent 

of 
food 
from 
local 
and 

sustainable sources by 2025, 
currently 
purchasing 
14 

percent of food from these 
sources.

Outside 
of 
its 
stated 

goals, Planet Blue has been 

piloting programs such as 
a composting program in 
the Fleming Administration 
Building, as well hosting 
large-scale, 
waste-free 

events such as the MStaff200, 
a bicentennial celebration 
event, and the football game 
against Rutgers University.

A few additional highlights 

of the 2017 Sustainability 
Progress 
Report 
include 

the University reaching a 
34 percent waste-diversion 
rate, recycling more than 
5,200 tons and composting 
nearly 1,400 tons through 
efforts across campus.

“The success of Planet 

Blue would not be possible 
without 
a 
universitywide 

commitment 
to 
ensuring 

that future generations will 
inherit a sustainable and 
verdant planet,” University 
President 
Mark 
Schlissel 

said in a University press 
release.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, April 11, 2018 — 3A

IBRAHIM IJAZ/Daily

Children’s literature librarian Angie Oehrli speaks with a student in front of the display at the Seven Fantasy Classics for Children event in Hatcher Tuesday. 

SEVE N FANTA SY CL A SSICS

PROGRESS
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