The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com News Thursday, September 27, 2018 — 3A the council to preserve the chimney as a free-standing structure for the protected species. Cathy Theisen, conservation chair at the Washtenaw Audubon Society, explained chimney swifts roost during the fall and spring to keep warm before migrating back to South America. Chimney swifts used to roost in trees until they were cut down. “They usually would have roosted in old grove trees that were hollowed out once they died,” Theisen said. “But, in the early 1900s, all the old grove trees were taken … there are so few trees left for them that they adapted to living in urban environments.” As of August, the Washtenaw Audubon Society had recorded 1,400 birds roosting in the chimney. Theisen said the birds provide an ecological advantage for the area because they eat one-third of their weight daily in insects such as mosquitoes, termites and wasps. Kathy Griswold, who won the Ward 2 Democratic primary for City Council and is now uncontested in the general election, is concerned with council decisions becoming more based in emotion than facts. “One of my concerns is are we going to have a formal decision- making process to decide what to do with the building?” Griswold said. “Frequently we get input from the community but it’s more just (a lot of emotion) gets interjected and we don’t have the facts and a framework to make the decision.” Theisen says the council has been very responsive to Washtenaw Audubon Society in finding a conservation solution. “My belief is that the city wants to cooperate,” Theisen said. “Obviously, they’re going to have to (decide) what the citizens want. That is why it is so crucial that any Ann Arbor voter who wants to preserve this chimney contact Council.” Councilmember Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1, said she and Mayor Christopher Taylor drafted a proposal for presentation at the City Council’s Oct. 1 meeting, which she assured puts the needs of the chimney swifts before development of the property. Theisen said the beauty of the chimney swifts resonates with residents. “I heard one woman tell me that on 9/11 after she watched the buildings go down that the only thing she could think to do was go out and look at the (chimney swifts) just to see something natural is instead of what was going on in the world,” Theisen said. City officials are considering redevelopment of the dilapidated city- owned building. City Administrator Howard Lazarus said the city is still exploring options regarding the development of the property. “There are no definitive plans right now. The City’s intent is to explore options concerning the chimney and the swifts as part of the redevelopment process,” Lazarus wrote. Griswold believes the chimney should be preserved and the rest of the building torn down. “That building I think is an eyesore and is unsafe and it really needs to come down independent of the chimney, especially the part that comes close to the road,” Griswold said. “I just don’t see where the city would allow a private company to have that kind of a building standing the way it is.” While no distinct plans are scheduled, the city has been previously approached by multiple realtors, according to MLive. One realtor, Bud Falsetta with Real Estate One, proposed a senior living facility owned by Morningstar Senior Living based in Denver. Conducted assessments have shown it is not worthwhile to rehabilitate the buildings due to costs and structural concerns. Griswold said she hasn’t seen any reports from the city staff, saying city government operates on political motives rather than data. “The culture of City Council and city staff for the last couple of decades just hasn’t really been data driven.” Griswold said. “They’ve been more politically driven.” City records also allude to pollution concerns of contaminated soil under the property. According to Historic District Application Records, the property’s building code cannot be changed due to the flood elevations of the site. A DRN Architects reportconcluded the building is not a good candidate for rehabilitation or reuse. The Washtenaw Audubon Society has currently raised approximately $5,000 to donate toward preservation efforts. In its letter written to the council, the society said they hope to see the chimney serve as a natural history site. “This is a way we can really change our environment with a very small bit of action,” Theisen said. BIRD From Page 1A is a community component needed. (The center) could really be a resource for people in our general community, whether it be with re-entry into society or for potential students getting into college. Essentially, we want to bring Michigan up to speed where a lot of institutions already are.” The center would also connect the already existing programs at the University, such as the Prison Creative Arts Project and Inside- Out Prison Exchange Program, to work together and further enhance the relationship between the University community and those incarcerated. PCAP is the one of the world’s largest prison arts programs and operates within each of Michigan’s 52 correctional facilities. These workshops allow for joint projects between students and incarcerated individuals to communicate and creatively write, draw and perform. Each week, about 80 volunteers enter facilities and meet with those inside. At the end of the semester, PCAP publishes both exhibitions of art and a journal of writing by the Michigan prisoners they have worked with all year. LSA junior Liv Naimi, a PCAP executive board member, is excited about the prospect of a new carceral studies program. “(PCAP) allows students to see that people inside are not only creative but productive and amazing people — it really humanizes them,” Naimi said. “Some of them will be in there forever, and some of them won’t. Sometimes, something as little as playing an improv game, where people just simply get to laugh, feels like a transformative moment.” PCAP Director Ashley Lucas, a Theatre & Drama associate professor, believes education inside doesn’t just benefit incarcerated individuals, but society as whole by means of public safety. “Education and family support are the two things that really help people to be successful after they come home from prison,” Lucas said. “The vast majority of the people we’ve locked up are coming home someday. Do we want them to come home uneducated, angry, having lived in social environment that didn’t prepare them for the outside world? Do we want them to have a lack of connections to communities outside? Education helps to fix all of those issues.” Moreover, Lucas said many of those behind bars were not afforded opportunities to receive a good education in the first place — or perhaps an education at all. These programs intend to give prisoners the chance to have that quality educational experience, which Lucas hopes will help them succeed when they reenter everyday society. “If you don’t give people educational opportunities, they may never know what they’re really good at,” Lucas said. “They may have come from a place with little stability and crime was the only viable option, or it may feel that way if you’re in a certain set of circumstances and you don’t realize you have other choices. There is nobody who really knows what their life and career is truly going to offer, but education helps us think those things through and plan for a better life. It helps us build relationships and relate to other people in a lot of ways you really can’t function in the outside world without: It teaches you a completely different social code.” Both Lucas and Thompson emphasize the barriers many with criminal records face in securing employment, housing and higher education. Earlier this month, Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill into law banning felon boxes from state job applications, but private employers and even the University itself still require self-reporting on applications. Students applying to the University have to check a box whether or not they have served time. To Thompson, this act is unjust, and she hopes the new center will mitigate the harmful after- effects of incarceration. “We want to make sure we open our doors to people who, if they are qualified to be here, their criminal history should be irrelevant,” Thompson said. “We have invested unprecedented public resources in the project of punishment in the last four years, which has enormous ripple effects: it has impacts on our U-M school system, it has impacts on our economy, and it has impacts on our voting and on our democracy. Institutions of learning are places where we ask questions.” Thompson said she aims for the new center will allow the University to become a leader and change-maker in the field of carceral studies. “Whether you’re a political scientist interested in voting participation or whether you’re a sociologist interested in family structure or whether you’re a doctor interested in health outcomes — you can’t ask any of those questions without noting the impact of this massive carceral state,” she said. “Michigan is a public institution. It is time we take the lead on this.” INCARCERATED From Page 1A survey that shows just over 45 percent of college students nationally were “extremely sure” climate change is real — nearly 30 percent lower than the University of Michigan figures. Bob Marans, a professor emeritus and researcher at the Institute for Social Research, serves as one of the principal investigators on the SCIP survey. Marans said events including forest fires in California and volcanic eruptions in Hawaii — as well as the increasing attention climate change receives on the political stage — have made climate change a more visible issue. He sees the latest data as an indicator that students are becoming more aware of current events. “Given what’s going on now with the hurricane that’s coming in, (in) North Carolina and South Carolina, a lot more of these kinds of events are happening and … people are probably reacting to what the United States did in terms of pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord,” Marans said. “I think those are some of the factors that are influencing a greater concern and awareness about it.” The results of the latest survey didn’t surprise LSA senior Tim Arvan, but they did impress him. Arvan is the co-director of Climate Blue, a climate change action group on campus that sends a delegation every year to a United Nations conference on climate change. Arvan said he’s seen more awareness of climate issues among his classmates recently. “It’s really encouraging to see this data and to see the leadership that U of M has, especially relative to the national average on climate change awareness,” Arvan said. “I think this is due to both the quality of instruction that’s offered at this university, but also due to the activism efforts and personal enthusiasm for these issues, and the passion to get involved both politically and scientifically within the student body itself.” Earth and Environmental Studies professor Julia Cole has led classes on climate change to undergraduate and graduate students at the University since last year and does not skirt around the issue in class. “I consistently teach it as if it is scientific fact that we are changing climate and that it’s bad and it’s about to get worse because that is my belief based on working in this area for a long time,” Cole said. “There really is no way around that.” Cole said none of the students she’s had at the University yet have pushed back on her approach. Like Arvan and Marans, she thinks the latest SCIP data makes sense based on what she’s seen. “I don’t think it’s surprising,” she said. “That said though, as a scientist I’d love to think that people make those kinds of statements based on (their) knowledge of science, but actually, the thing I’ve learned about communication is that they don’t, and that they tend to be persuaded by what their peers are talking about.” Nonetheless, Cole said it doesn’t matter so much how people are concluding climate change is important — she’s just happy to hear they think it’s important at all. “I think traditionally climate change has been one of those things that is considered to be extremely important in the next 20 years, but not necessarily extremely important in the next year,” she said. “But people vote and make decisions on their short-term worries and so if we keep thinking of it as a long-term future problem, we’re never going to solve it.” Whether students are treating climate change as an immediate problem is not quite clear from the data, though. While he’s enthusiastic about the latest SCIP results, Arvan said part of him worries there isn’t enough being done on campus to spur action. “I don’t speak for anyone other than myself when I say that,” Arvan said. “But I think a lot of the work that is done on campus gets people to feel really good about climate change issues and problem solving and that the process can be a bit of greenwashing where people feel that they are contributing enough by using a water bottle or by implementing some very, maybe entry level or simplistic lifestyle changes that really simplify the problem down without really diving deeper and understanding the complexities and further channels to get involved.” This topic gained some attention at the University’s Board of Regent’s September meeting. Several public commenters, including LSA sophomore Catherine Garton, a co-founder of the U-M Climate Action Movement, detailed concerns that the University was not devoting enough attention to mitigation climate change. “The University is trying, but it is not trying hard enough,” Garton said. “I feel that we have fallen behind in this regard. Climate change is the biggest problem facing my generation.” Arvan said he isn’t sure exactly how the University can translate students’ concerns into action. He said that’s “the million-dollar question.” But he does believe the latest SCIP data shows the school is moving in the right direction. “Understanding that policy is really the focal point of effectuating change and getting people … politically inclined to express themselves on these issues is a is a way to really drive home local change,” he said. “But then also I think that personal lifestyle changes are really important component of getting people to appreciate how their individual impacts can add up to be really significant … it’s an ongoing challenge of all the student organizations involved in this field to kind of figure out how to progress on that front.” CONCERNED From Page 1A JOIN THE MICHIGAN DAILY CHECK US OUT AT JOIN.MICHIGANDAILY.US NA ACP ALUMNI CARTER FOX/Daily Alumni speak to the University of Michigan’s chapter of the NAACP at East Hall Wednesday night. “I heard one woman tell me that on 9/11 after she watched the buildings go down that the only thing she could think to do was go out and look at the (chimney swifts) just to see something natural is instead of what was going on in the world,”