These past few months, The 
Michigan Daily readers have 
probably become a bit more 
mindful when using Facebook. 
Following 
the 
Cambridge 
Analytica 
scandal, 
people 
were outraged. So, we started 
clicking away on our profiles’s 
privacy settings, congratulating 
ourselves on our newly found 
concern for the data collected 
on us and maybe even stopped 
liking things so that advertisers 
wouldn’t know our interests. 
Indeed, Facebook did a lot of 
outrageous 
things 
with 
our 
data, 
like 
allowing 
housing 
advertisers to target their ads to 
only white people and employers 
to advertise jobs exclusively to 
young people. We might argue 
that our beloved social media 
platforms 
will 
slowly 
wash 
away their sins as journalists 
discover and report the misuses 
of their algorithms — seemingly 
holding Facebook and the like 
accountable. Is that the whole 
story, though?
With every piece of data 
collected about each one of us, 
and each algorithm that comes 
across our individual online 
trails, we become entangled in 
a system that takes ownership 
of our private lives. Algorithms 
and data collection form these 
sticky webs around our online 
and offline lives — that we both 
knowingly and unknowingly get 
stuck in. Once we clicked the 
“turn off” button in our privacy 
settings, it might feel as if we 
own our data once again — that 
we have liberated ourselves from 
some of the algorithmic sticky 
webs laid out all around us. But 
what about the less educated 
people, those who don’t know 
enough about privacy, people 
who maybe wouldn’t even be 
able 
to 
navigate 
Facebook’s 
privacy settings? They are still 
caught up in that web.
While some of us might 
be worried about advertisers 
collecting data on our love for 
burritos and our favorite series, 
others — who might not even 

know what to look out for — are 
often part of a stickier, denser 
part of the web: a web in which 
it’s not only Facebook and Netflix 
collecting their data.
At the beginning of this 
year, I came across an article 
published by ProPublica in 2016 
about a software used across the 
U.S. intended to collect data on 
defendants, process it and get a 
score. The score would predict 
people’s future as criminals — 
and it was biased against Black 
defendants. 
My 
inner 
geek 
who loved the idea of using 
math to predict future events 
was terrified by that article 
for a long time. So, I went on a 

journey via Google to discover 
what other algorithms were 
being used by the government. 
During my search, I came across 
a website filled with tips on 
possible algorithms used by the 
government. Then, I got stuck. 
I realized I knew nothing about 
how these algorithms worked. 
From where did they collect 
the data? Did they have data 
on everyone? How could you 
even get your hands on these 
algorithms and study them?
Thankfully, Prof. Virginia 
Eubanks blessed me (and all of 
us) with her book: “Automating 
Inequality,” which brings me 
back to our algorithmic sticky 
web we are all caught in. Her 
book shined a light on the 
denser, hidden parts of the web 
where people from low-income 
families might find themselves 
caught. She delves into three 
algorithms used in different 

states: one that decides citizens’ 
eligibility for welfare programs, 
one that assigns scores to people 
who find themselves homeless, 
and one which tries to predict 
child maltreatment in families. 
Read again that last sentence. 
All of them focus on low income 
citizens. 
Why? 
Because 
the 
government can only collect 
data from those who access 
welfare programs, adding them 
forever to a database, creating a 
score out of their past in order to 
categorize their future.
Still, as enlightening as books 
can be, they rarely offer us a step-
by-step guide to taking action. 
We are only college students 
and, for a lot of us, the closest 
we have come to algorithms are 
the recommendations offered 
by Amazon. There are some of 
us, like myself, who are not even 
American citizens, and so we 
obviously start wondering if all 
this algorithmic bias isn’t better 
fit for a Wired article or a late-
night talk in the dorms than as a 
wake-up alarm for protests. I’ve 
definitely faced these questions 
and I am still navigating them, 
but I am looking at all of us when 
I am saying this issue needs to 
be solved and discussed. Math 
and engineering students, take 
a break from your classes and 
take the time to understand the 
world where social justice takes 
precedence over the power of 
numbers and coding. Humanities 
and social science students, 
take a break from writing 
your paper because if you 
don’t intervene, concepts like 
justice and fairness will get to 
be shaped by a score given by 
an algorithm. School has just 
started, so don’t get so busy 
with your coursework that you 
forget to take in the influence 
that your work might have in 
a society changing at the pace 
of an algorithm giving you a 
score.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Emily Huhman

Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Lucas Maiman
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

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

ALANNA BERGER | COLUMN

Don’t blame the border

Like many Americans, I spent 
this summer — one filled with 
political scandals and rampant pop 
culture gossip — haunted by one 
news story in particular: the story of 
Mollie Tibbetts, a University of Iowa 
student. Tibbetts’s disappearance 
prompted a national media circus, 
a desperate search and the ultimate 
discovery of her murder resulted in 
political outcry. 
Twenty-year-old Tibbetts was 
last seen before she went for a jog on 
the evening of July 18, 2018. She was 
reported missing the next morning 
when she did not show up for 
work, and for the next month her 
image was plastered on major news 
outlets and across social media. Her 
family pleaded for her safe return 
— a cry that went unanswered until 
August 21, 2018, when 24-year-old 
Cristhian Rivera confessed to her 
murder and led authorities to her 
body. Rivera later revealed that 
he came across Tibbetts on her 
evening jog, where he then pursued 
her both in his vehicle and on foot. 
She repeatedly told him to leave 
her alone, finally threatening to call 
the police. It was then that Rivera, 
angry at her blatant rejection, 
allegedly kidnapped and murdered 
Tibbetts, leaving her body in a vast 
cornfield.
There is much to be said about 
Mollie Tibbetts’s story, and many 
reasons why it resonated so strongly 
with the American people. There 
is the shock value of a wholesome 
young 
Midwestern 
woman 
meeting a violent and tragic end in 
a small sleepy town. Then there’s 
the political: Rivera’s contested 
legal status. This detail has been 
seized upon to support the anti-
immigration narrative of President 
Trump and other members of the 
Republican Party — a political move 
subsequently denounced by the 
victim’s father.
But 
among 
these 
various 
debates, one fact of her story 
remains clear: In 2018, among 
an age of anti-misogynist social 
movements and female political 
empowerment, it still remains 
dangerous, even potentially fatal, 
for a woman to reject the advances 
of a man. The hardest aspect to 

swallow of Tibbetts’s story is that 
it is not at all unique. In the days 
after her body was found, a 2016 
Runner’s World survey resurfaced. 
The survey asked readers, “How 
often, if ever, does a stranger 
whistle at you, comment on your 
body, needlessly honk at you, or give 
you other similar unsolicited sexual 
attention?” Forty-three percent of 
female respondents answered that 
they “sometimes, often, or always” 
encountered such attention during 
a run, while only 4 percent of their 
male counterparts reported the 

same. The statistics get even more 
abysmal from there. While only 
3 percent of female respondents 
reported any sort of physical 
contact or assault while on a run, 30 
percent reported being followed on 
foot or by car, 18 percent reported 
being sexually propositioned and 5 
percent reported being flashed.
Maybe, in light of Tibbetts’s 
murder, 
a 
whistle, 
honk 
or 
unwanted comment seems trivial, 
and there is undoubtedly a world 
of difference between a catcall 
and a murder. But ask any girl or 
woman above the age of 15, and 
she will certainly have an arsenal 
of instances of being leered at, 
whistled at, groped or spoken to like 
a sexual object by a man in a way 
that made her fear for her safety, or 
even her life.
These small instances build up 
to create a society in which women 
are taught to constantly be on edge. 
In this society, we’re instructed 
to never walk anywhere alone, 
especially at night, or if we must, 
to never wear headphones, to hold 
our keys between our fingers to use 
as a potential weapon and to carry 

pepper spray. We’re taught that 
simply existing as a woman makes 
us an open invitation to men, and 
we must do everything in our power 
to make ourselves less inviting, to 
dress ourselves in modest clothing, 
to wear less makeup and to drink 
less alcohol. We’ve had to hold 
ourselves responsible for crimes in 
which we were victimized. Perhaps 
most difficult of all, we’ve been 
conditioned to view every man as 
a potential threat, even the ones we 
think we trust and know intimately.
While Tibbetts fell victim to 
the violence of a stranger, women 
are overwhelmingly more likely to 
be stalked, threatened, assaulted 
or murdered by men they know. In 
fact, as reported by the National 
Organization for Women, every 
day three women are murdered by 
an intimate partner, and up to one-
third of female homicide victims are 
killed by their partners. The stories 
of these women are not as widely 
shared as that of Mollie Tibbetts, 
maybe because as a society we hold 
them responsible for their deaths 
because they closely knew their 
attackers, or maybe because they 
are disproportionately low-income 
women of color.
Yet, 
these 
women, 
along 
with Mollie Tibbetts and the 
smattering of other women who 
make headlines from time to time, 
highlight the fear that accompanies 
the everyday actions of women. 
Actions as habitual as going for 
a run. When it comes down to it, 
Mollie Tibbetts was not killed by 
illegal immigration, or because 
she made the “mistake” of going 
for a run by herself. She, along 
with thousands of other women 
annually, fell victim to a culture that 
encourages male entitlement and 
toxic masculinity. She was killed by 
a man enraged with her exercising 
her theoretical right to say no, a 
right that was stripped away from 
her and so many others. If we really 
want to address the violence that 
brought Tibbetts to her end, we 
need not look to our borders, but at 
ourselves. Until we rectify a society 
that places male desire above 

Algorithms of inequality

ANAMARIA CUZA | COLUMN

The patriotism of immigration

AARON BAKER | COLUMN

President Donald Trump’s 
position 
on 
immigration 
is 
blatantly unpatriotic. Through 
his comments and actions as 
a 
candidate 
and 
President, 
we know he is no fan of 
undocumented 
immigrants 
from Mexico and elsewhere. 
Many Trump supporters say it’s 
only illegal immigration that 
the President is opposed to, but 
the fact is that the president’s 
war against legal immigration 
is equally, if not more fervent 
than his efforts against illegal 
immigration.
President 
Trump 
has 
proposed to cut legal immigration 
in half by weakening the family 
ties clause of our immigration 
system that allows legal residents 
to sponsor family members. He 
wants to limit naturalization for 
legal immigrants if they have 
ever used government welfare 
programs. He has also cut the 
number of green cards we grant 
and is lessening the number 
of asylum seekers we accept. 
And let’s not forget his leaked 
comments that he doesn’t want 
people — legal or illegal — from 
“shithole” 
countries 
— 
each 
of which was poor and brown 
— 
immigrating here. Why are 
Trump’s immigration policies 
unpatriotic?
 In one of former President 
Ronald Reagan’s last televised 
addresses 
as 
president, 
he 
explained why he felt America 
was an exceptional country: 
“America represents something 
universal in the human spirit … 
Anybody from any corner of the 
world can come to America to 
live and become an American.” 
Reagan’s patriotism is rooted in 
the belief that American values 
are universal. That is, anyone 
should be able to become an 
American because the American 
identity is rooted in its values.
This 
is 
called 
civic 
nationalism, where the national 
identity is based on shared values 
rather than a shared perceptible 
identity. Late Sen. John McCain 
echoed 
Reagan’s 
sentiment 
last May, when he said that you 
don’t even need to know English 
to be fully American, you only 
need to have American values. 
What are these values? I would 
say they are they are pretty 
clearly delineated in the U.S. 
Constitution and the Declaration 
of Independence. They are a 
capacious set of values rooted 
in the basic liberal tradition of 
free speech, individual rights 

and due process. These values 
can incorporate a wide variety 
of political positions, ideologies, 
religions and cultures.
The 
vast 
majority 
of 
countries 
in 
the 
world 
are 
nation-states with an ethnic, 
religious or hegemonic cultural 
identity that serves as the basis 
of their national identity. Nation-
states like China, Italy or India 
have 
commonly 
perceived 
shared traits, like traditions, 
religious beliefs or histories 
that many citizens associate 
with their national identity. If 
you lie outside these common 
traits, integrating as a fully 
equal citizen in social and even 
sometimes legal terms can be 
hard. The extent of exclusivity 
to the national identities of the 
nation-states of the world varies, 
but I would argue none come 
close to the level of inclusivity 
the American identity has had 
in recent history. We grew up 
calling America a nation of 
immigrants for a reason.
But it was only in 1965, after 
the 
Civil 
Rights 
Movement 
had left its mark, that America 
liberalized 
its 
immigration 
policy and became the country 
Reagan and McCain praised. 

From 1924 to 1965, America 
closed its doors with the passage 
of the Immigration Act of 1924. 
An ethnic and racial hierarchy 
was codified in a quota system 
that essentially only let Northern 
Europeans enter. 
Back then, xenophobia was 
directed toward not only non-
European 
groups, 
but 
also 
European 
groups 
perceived 
as threatening to the Anglo-
American character of America. 
Italians, Jews, Irish and at one 
point even Germans, threatened 
the homogeneity of the dominant 
culture. Italians, the Irish and 
the Jews were considered non-
white races and faced widespread 
discrimination. Eventually, all 
of these groups integrated into 
the dominant culture, a process 

which changed the immigrant 
groups but also changed the 
country for the better. America, 
despite the incessant plague of 
xenophobia, has continually been 
shaped by immigrants.
Since 1965, after the repeal 
of the Immigration Act of 1924, 
America’s demographics have 
begun to unsurprisingly change 
drastically. By 2065, so long 
as current rate of immigration 
remains constant, 46 percent of 
America will be white creating a 
majority-minority nation. When 
Trump said he doesn’t want 
people from shithole countries, 
he was harkening back to the 
tradition of xenophobia that 
resulted in the 1924 act. In fact, 
Attorney General Jeff Sessions 
actually cited the Immigration 
Act of 1924 as a model for 
current immigration policy in an 
interview with Breitbart News 
Network.
The fear that immigrants 
perceived as different cannot 
integrate into American society is 
clearly not new. And it is as wrong 
now as it was wrong in 1924. The 
implicit argument today that 
non-European immigrants carry 
an immutable cultural alienness 
that renders them unable to 
integrate into American society 
is 
incorrect. 
Yet, 
Hispanic 
immigrants, most often the target 
of anti-immigration rhetoric, are 
integrating into American society 
just as European immigrants 
have integrated in the past. Like 
President Reagan said, anyone 
can become American because 
anyone can live by the values of 
liberty and justice and strive to 
uphold these values when we all 
seem to be falling short.
Economic arguments against 
immigration similarly fall short 
of the facts and succumb to 
misperceptions. 
Immigrants 
contribute to the economy rather 
than slow it down. Immigrants 
are more likely than native-born 
Americans to start a business and 
contribute a net increase to the 
living standards of the average 
American. The impetus against 
immigration is largely a visceral 
fear that someone who looks 
different or practices a different 
religion can’t have the same 
values or way of life. But isn’t the 
true testament to the strength 
of our values the fact that we 
believe anyone can live by them?

Aaron Baker can be reached at 

aaronbak@umich.edu.

Alanna Berger can be reached at 

balanna@umich.edu.

Anamaria Cuza can be reached at 

anacuza@umich.edu.

In 2018, among an age 
of anti-misogynist 
social movements, it still 
remains potentially fatal 
for a woman to reject the 
advances of a man

Anyone should be able 
to become an American 
because the American 
identity is rooted in its 
values

JOIN OUR EDITORIAL BOARD

Our Editorial Board meets Mondays and Wednesdays 7:15-8:45 PM at 
our newsroom at 420 Maynard Street. All are welcome to come discuss 
national, state and campus affairs.

 MICHIGAN DAILY MASS MEETINGS

 Attend a mass meeting to learn more about The Daily and our various 
sections!
September 13, 17 and 19th at 7pm in The Michigan Daily newsroom at 
420 Maynard

With every piece of data 
collected about each one of 
us, we become entangled in a 
system that takes ownership 
of our private lives