because it was something on 
which he could collaborate 
with Knapik and Polish acting 
students. 
Collaboration 
made sense, Tulip explained, 
because 
of 
their 
shared 
artistic views, in addition 
to the political unrest under 
conservative administrations.
“These 
more-to-the-right 
administrations … seemed to 
be a common bond,” Tulip 
said. “We had artistic things 
in common, we had political 
struggles in common.”
Music, Theatre & Dance 
professor Vince Mountain, 
one of the designers of the play, 
discussed the performance’s 
visual aspects and explained 
how a combination of visuals, 
movement and sound are used 
to make the play come alive. 

He noted his appreciation of 
the unrefined, messy nature 
of Mee’s plays.
“(Mee) talks about on his 
website … he likes things that 
aren’t neat,” Mountain said. 
“He says I want things to 
crash into each other and be 
messy and be unresolved, and 
I do find a lot of mainstream 
theater is a little bit too neat. 
Personally, in my own work, 
I like things that are messy 
and crash into each other and 
so the opportunity to do this 
is really great because you do 
one thing, and other people 
contribute.”
Kovacs prompted the cast 
members to speak about their 
experience working on a play 

with a unique, movement-
based style. Music, Theatre 
& Dance junior Amanda Kuo 
was one of the actors who 
responded, touching on the 
freedom 
and 
vulnerability 
using her body to convey a 
message.
“Knowing that this was 
a dance theater piece also 
meant displaying your body 
and using that as a means of 
storytelling and putting an 
emphasis on that,” Kuo said. 
“It’s slightly liberating, but 
also puts you in a vulnerable 
place because it’s your body, 
it’s your whole self, not just 
the text. So in that way, this 
process has pushed us to stop 
thinking and just start doing, 
and trusting each other and 
creating images.”
Knapik explained how she 
pushed the actors to explore 
their 
movements, 
giving 
them room to improvise and 
create, but at the same time 
making sure they were testing 
themselves.
“It’s not addressing what 
people are dancing but what is 
really moving them,” Knapik 
said. “Addressing what kind 
of motion they have inside. 
Really I’m trying to make it 
in a very specific rhythm that 
can be challenging also for 
them. It’s something between 
being super strict and giving 
freedom to the creativity.”
This 
creativity 
and 
improvisation really appealed 
to Music, Theatre & Dance 
senior Kathleen Taylor, who 
spoke about her appreciation 
of the play not adhering to one 
single statement.
“It’s been really fascinating 
for me to be able to work on 
this piece that is sort of messy 
and is not necessarily making 
any one particular statement 
other 
than 
that 
every 
decision we make is political, 
everything we’re putting out 
into the world at least I believe 
during this time has inherent 
political value,” Taylor said.
Music, Theatre & Dance 
junior 
Daniel 
Flick 
said 
attending the play would be a 
valuable experience for every 
potential audience member.
“I don’t think there’s a 
specific audience I would 
want to see this,” Flick said. 
“I think everyone can take 
something away from it and 
I think it will challenge 
everyone’s beliefs in a certain 
way to a certain extent.”

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, September 20, 2018 — 3

of state it can be a real motivator 
for people to come out that don’t 
normally because it’s so unique.”
Stabenow, who is up for 
reelection in November, opened 
the 
event 
by 
stressing 
the 
importance of voting in the 
midterm election. Among other 
prominent issues this year, she 
highlighted clean water, universal 
health care, net neutrality, college 
debt alleviation and Great Lake 
protections.
“You understand what’s at 
stake,” Stabenow said. “We are 
at a point in time where literally 
everything we care about is on 
the ballot.”
She also acknowledged the 
historically lackluster turnout 
rates across the state and stressed 
this election needs to be a turning 
point for Michigan.
“Michigan 
traditionally, 
unfortunately, has the distinction 
of being the state with the lowest 
turnout 
in 
non-presidential 
years,” Stabenow said. “Think 
about that. This year, we have to 
change that.”

In both the 2014 and 2010 
midterm 
elections, 
however, 
voter turnout in Michigan was 
above the national averages of 37.8 
and 36.3 percent, respectively. 
Voter turnout rates for the 2018 
primary rose from 2014 levels, 
however, indicating turnout may 
increase come November.
Kennedy began his segment by 
asking the audience members to 
shout out what issues they cared 
about the most. He collected 
a long list of issues –– climate 
change, access and affordability of 
higher education, a woman’s right 
to choose, gun control, universal 
health care, immigration, racial 
inequality –– and had audience 
members raise hands to vote their 
personal top three issues.
He then shared some statistics 
about today’s economy and the 
financial 
hurdles 
millennials 
face. 
According 
to 
Kennedy, 
millennials have to work 4,500 
hours of a minimum wage job to 
afford a college degree, whereas 
baby boomers only had to work 
300 hours.
Additionally, Kennedy said, 
20 percent of the economy is 
now essentially a contract or gig 
economy, so the protections that 
came with secure employment 

are gone. He also shared about 
half of millennials have zero 
savings. Kennedy used these facts 
as a motivator for young voters to 
be engaged and decide on policies 
that will benefit their futures and 
ease financial anxieties.
“I promise you, you will decide 
this election, period,” Kennedy 
said. “You’ll decide it because 
you vote, or you’ll decide it 
because you don’t … You guys 
have a chance to actually send a 
message to every single politician 
and aspiring politician about the 
direction of the nation that we see 
today.”
Kildee, 
Dingell, 
Driskell 
and Brown also talked about 
the importance of youth voter 
engagement in the midterms. 
Kildee discussed Flint, Michigan, 
which lies in his congressional 
district, as an example of failed 
government leadership.
“What happened in Flint was 
not a storm, it wasn’t an accident. 
It 
wasn’t 
some 
unforeseen, 
unpreventable disaster,” Kildee 
said. “It was the predictable result 
of a philosophy of government 
that says those kids (from Flint) 
come last, and the people at the 
top – the wealthy, the powerful 
– are the folks who are going to 

get the resources that could have 
guaranteed clean water for these 
kids.”
Dingell, along with several 
of the other speakers, brought 
attention to the Big Ten Voting 
Challenge, a competition among 
the 14 Big Ten universities to 
get the highest student turnout 
rate on campus for the midterm 
elections.
LSA 
sophomore 
Marni 
Balamut attended the event in 
preparation for voting in the 
midterm election.
“Obviously with the midterms 
it’s so important to be voting and 
especially as young people, the 
policies of this presidency affects 
us so much,” Balamut said. “To 
be able to hear Congressmen and 
people really representing us talk 
to us as real people and telling us 
important issues and stuff from 
their experience is important.”
After the event, Lounds said 
she was happy with the student 
turnout, as well as the quality of 
speakers she was able to secure.
“We have such a force of 
Democratic 
power 
in 
the 
southeast side of the state,” 
Lounds said. “It’s awesome to get 
them all together and see what 
we can really do together.”

DEMS
From Page 1A

PANEL
From Page 1A

Professor 
Kristin 
Hass 
is 
currently teaching a course on 
Detroit and finds the increased 
programs and initiatives in 
Detroit exciting.
“We have a lot to learn from 
the history of the city and the 
people of the city,” Hass said. “I 
wouldn’t want to over-promise 
on the impact, (but) everybody 
aspires to have a positive impact 
on the city.”
Holloway said the goal for 
initiatives and programs is for 
the University and the city to 
mutually benefit. To further 
the productivity of programs, 
Holloway said local support is 
important. The University has 
300 projects grounded in and 
around Detroit.
“In order to accomplish our 
goals in relation to research 
and education, we have to do 
that with local support and 
local partners. We want to 
realize the reciprocal benefit, 
working with local partners. 
The dialogue is important.”
Underlying the University’s 
new ventures in Detroit is 
its pre-existing relationship 
with the city — or at times, a 
lack thereof. The University 
was founded in Detroit in 
1817, but departed for Ann 
Arbor two decades later. In 
the 
last 
half-century, 
city 
residents have lived through 
post-industrial 
decline, 

bankruptcy 
and 
population 
loss — and some members 
of the campus community 
question the motives behind 
the University’s partnerships. 
“There was a point at which 
my recommendation was that 
we pull out of Detroit altogether 
— that we didn’t really mean 
it,” former professor Martha 
Jones told The Daily last 
summer. “Now that was more 
of a provocation, but it’s not so 
far-fetched. That would be in 
keeping with one vision of who 
we are. As an institution, we’re 
very late in coming to Detroit...
we weren’t sure if we wanted 
to be a university that just 
happened to be in southeastern 
Michigan. A few years ago, I 
wound up doing a survey of 
all the programs in Detroit 
emanating from Ann Arbor, 
and there are scores of them. 
But after itemizing them, they 
didn’t really have one coherent 
mission or vision.”
In a similar vein, University 
alum 
Stephen 
Wallace 
criticized common research 
approaches to Detroit. Wallace, 
a 
Detroit 
native, 
sparked 
debate at a Ford School policy 
talk two years ago wherein a 
Detroit deputy mayor called 
the city a policy “laboratory.”
“I found that referring to 
Detroit as a laboratory for 
public 
policy 
experiments 
(was) very offensive because 
you’re dealing with people’s 
real lives,” Wallace pointed 
out. “I am very fortunate to 
come out of my neighborhood 

DETROIT
From Page 1A

and go to one of the best schools 
in the world, but I had a lot of 
opportunities that some people 
don’t have and to refer to 
their lives and their futures as 
experiments … is a very slippery 
slope. It causes you to view 
the city and the people in it as 
something less than human.
University 
alum 
Michael 
Chrzan is a native of Detroit and 
now teaches math to Detroit high 
school students. He said when 
the programs are well developed, 
they can be valuable to the 
community.
“I’m a fan of large institutions 
doing work like this if it’s done 
in conscious ways, where there’s 
clear thought given on the impact 
on the community,” Chrzan said. 
“One of the big critiques I’ve 
heard of Michigan, especially 
the School of Ed, is that the work 
they do, they almost are using 
students as guinea pigs. It’s a fine 
line between research.”
He also stressed the University 
does try and balance research 
with understanding the students.
The P-20 Partnership is a 
program that Chrzan thinks is 
needed, emphasizing the idea 
of a teacher residency would be 
useful.
“The teacher residency was 
an idea they were trying to pilot 
when I was in a teaching intern 
program,” Chrzan said. “I was 
really excited to hear about 
that, we really need it in the 
profession.”
According to Holloway, the 
University operates under three 
principles when meeting with 

communities 
for 
dialogue: 
recognition, 
respect 
and 
equitable partnership.
“When we engage with a 
partner in Detroit, they’re giving 
us their time and their support, 
and we need to respect that,” 
Holloway said.
Hass agreed the University 
should approach Detroit with 
respect.
“I 
emphasize 
approaching 
the whole thing with humility,” 
Hass said. “Detroit as a city and 
the people of the city are not 
anybody’s laboratory. I think the 
presence of the University could 
be a wonderful thing.”
Chrzan mentioned growing 
up in east Detroit, he didn’t hear 
much from the University. Even 
today, he said the University 
might want to consider which 
regions they focus on and invest 
in.
“There are a lot of investments 
being made in northwest and 
western regions that I’m not 
hearing 
about 
in 
eastside 
neighborhoods, which gets into 
the crisis of ‘New Detroit,’” 
Chrzan said. “If the University 
isn’t careful they could wind up 
exacerbating things like that.”
As for the new space in the 
Rackham 
Memorial 
Building, 
Holloway said the University 
could use the new area for 
classrooms 
and 
community 
dialogue.
“The purchase of the Rackham 
Building is part of a statement 
really from the University that 
we think we have a long-term 
engagement with Detroit.”

Knowing 
that this 
was a dance 
theater piece 
also meant 
displaying your 
body and using 
that as a means 
of storytelling

Washtenaw County
Commissioners 
will consider first 
salary raise since 
2013 vote 

Elected officials to vote on new bill 
proposing 70 percent salary raise to 
bring average wage to $27,056/year 

The 
Ways 
and 
Means 
committee 
of 
the 
Washtenaw County Board of 
Commissioners discussed a 
salary raise Wednesday night. 
The nine elected officials 
currently make an average of 
$15,911 per year—under the 
new proposal, these wages 
could rise to $27,056 over 
the next two years. Though 
The Daily could not confirm 
whether the measure was 
voted on Wednesday night, 
the proposed salaries would 
represent close to a 70 percent 
increase.The measure seeks 
to pay the commissioners—
who serve in their capacities 
part-time—45 percent of the 
median income in Washtenaw 
County. 
County 
Board 
Chairman Andy LaBarre (D) 
told MLive he expects the 
raises to pass with most of the 
board’s support. 

“This is certainly a job 
where, if you’re looking to do 
it right, it can come to a half-
time commitment, sometimes 
even 
more 
if 
you’re 
in 
leadership,” he said. “But 
right now, the wage we pay I 
think sort of produces a board 
that either has folks who are 
no longer in the workforce, 
folks who are maybe students 
or have a non-traditional 
setup, or some folks, if they 
have 
full-time 
jobs, 
they 
either have to have a lot of 
flexibility in those jobs or 
they’re not able to do as much 
as other commissioners.”
The 
average 
wage 
for 
county commissioners in the 
state of Michigan is currently 
$18,700. 
The 
board 
last 
made 
headlines for unanimuously 
adopting a racial equity policy 
earlier this month. The salary 
measures will go before the 
entire board for confirmation 
on Oct. 3. 

RIYAH BASHA
Managing News Editor

that’s built into corrections,” he 
said. “Even though it’s called 
corrections, there is a bias to 
keep you illiterate, to keep you 
at a remedial level, and it takes 
a village to get former inmates 
back into society.”
When Sanders was released, 
he 
was 
helped 
by 
several 
University of Michigan and 
Wayne State University social 
work interns as well as his sisters 
to get a state identification 
card and health insurance, in 
addition to completing other 
re-entry regulatory steps. He 
claimed one of his proudest 
accomplishments since prison 
was registering and later voting 
for 
gubernatorial 
candidate 
Abdul El-Sayed.
“This 
is 
very 
important 
for you guys: Determine your 
own fate, and don’t do it just 
after the primary, do it so you 
aren’t left with someone that 
somebody else picked for you,” 
he said. “The same day I got out 
of prison, being there for almost 
43 years, first thing I did was 
register to vote. And I went with 
Abdul.”
Sanders’ 
transition 
back 
into society was a difficult 
one, especially in terms of 
finding work. He was hired at 
McDonald’s after a successful 
interview, when his status as a 
former felon wasn’t mentioned 
until the end. He hopes to 
contribute to the field of social 
work or law in the future. 
Sanders mentioned Gov. Rick 

Snyder’s ban on the checkbox 
designating former felons on job 
applications as an institutional 
step in the right direction.
Sanders received help from 
the 
Unviersity’s 
Information 
Alliance 
for 
Community 
Development, which he said 
was essential to gaining fluency 
in digital work applications and 
general technological skills.
Rackham 
student 
Ihudiya 
Ogburu 
researches 
digital 
literacy 
in 
the 
School 
of 
Information, 
and 
described 
the effort of this organization 
and why she felt compelled to 
spearhead the program.
“I’m 
interested 
in 
understanding how returning 
citizens or people who were 
formerly 
incarcerated 
use 
technology in general, and how 
they go about looking for jobs 
in this digital society,” she said. 
“We just finished interviewing 
last week, it’s on Sundays from 
2:00 to 5:00 pm, and we want to 
further recruit volunteers.”
Graduate 
student 
Yixian 
Zhou explained her interest 
in 
the 
transitionary 
period 
between 
incarceration 
and 
returning to society brought her 
to the lecture.
“The reason why I came here 
is that I’m curious about this 
topic — there are a few topics 
about how when people came 
from prison, and how people 
transition and adapt into normal 
life. This is a completely different 
life than in prison. I’m curious 
about that, and also how people 
handle mental health issues 
and change their thoughts and 
conceptions to adapt to society.”

PARALEGAL
From Page 1A