The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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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

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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,”

