I 

used to dread the first day of 
school. I didn’t dread it because 
it meant that summer was 
ending and that I’d soon spend my 
evenings doing homework rather 
than relaxing. It was because 
teachers 
never 
pronounced my 
name right. Before I started going by 
Krystal, I went by my non-American, 
phonetically spelled (yet somehow 
still difficult to pronounce) name that 
I won’t write here because I know no 
one will be able to pronounce it.
The first day of school, I always 
had to listen to the teachers blunder 
through my name before I corrected 
them with the entire class watching 
me. Same with substitute teachers 
— my classmates would laugh as the 
teacher would try to say my name. Of 
course, I’m not blaming the teachers 
for not being able to pronounce my 
name. We both felt embarrassed as 
we became a spectacle. I know I can’t 
expect people to properly pronounce 
my name if they don’t speak the 
language from which my name 
originated.
I was reminded of this trauma 
after hearing about two recent 
celebrity interviews. Chrissy Teigen 
recently revealed on “The Tonight 
Show” (after being prompted by 
host Jimmy Fallon) that contrary to 
popular belief, her name is actually 
pronounced “tie-genn,” instead of 
“tee-genn.” She said of her name: “So, 
correct is Tie-genn. Do I want people 
to call me that? Not really, because 
then only half are going to do it. And 
then, would we want my dad to be 
happy?” Ariana Grande also recently 
said on Beats Radio, “my grandpa said 
‘grand-eee.’” They then discussed 
how 
her 
grandfather 
changed 
the pronunciation to “grand-eee” 
most likely to make it sound more 
Americanized. However, neither of 
these women has ever corrected the 
public for saying their names wrong, 
and only discussed the way in which 
they say their names when prompted 
to do so.
Hearing Teigen and Grande 
discuss their names led me to think 
about how I used to feel correcting 
people about the pronunciation of 
my name. Often times, I felt that 
correcting them made no difference 
— all correcting them essentially 
did was teach them the formal 

mispronunciation of my name. When 
substitute teachers would butcher 
my name and excitedly ask if they 
pronounced it right, I always said yes. 
Honestly, I don’t think I would have 
been so uncaring about how people 
pronounce my name if I didn’t hate 
the way that my name sounded in 
its formal American pronunciation. 
I thought that it sounded too whiny 
and nasally and it made me dislike 
my name and cringe whenever 
someone would address me by it, so 
really, it didn’t matter to me whether 
or not anyone pronounced it in the 
formal way: Either way, they would 
be wrong.
However, in high school, I 
decided to go by the name Krystal 
after realizing I didn’t have to 
continue listening to my name being 
butchered in various ways. I chose 
“Krystal” because it was a name 
that everyone knew how to say, yet 
I knew that I wouldn’t become one 
out of a sea of many Krystals, as what 
sometimes happens to people with 
common names such as Emily or 
Alex.
Sometimes, I feel guilty about 
having changed my name, as if 
I’m abandoning my heritage or 
dishonoring my parents by rejecting 
the name that has defined me for 
so many years. However, when I 
remember the discontent I felt when 
I heard my name being butchered for 
so many years, I don’t feel as sorry. I 
think of it more as protecting my name 
from being tainted by so many bad 
memories of it being mispronounced, 
time and time again.
Interestingly enough, many of my 
friends protested when I told them 
about my choice to go by “Krystal.” 
They told me they didn’t like the name 
“Krystal,” and some of them even 
made it a point to not call me “Krystal” 
even when referring to me when with 
other people. While I understood 
some people would not like the name 
“Krystal,” I found it confusing some of 
my friends thought they were entitled 
to define me in the way they wanted, 
rather than in the way that I wanted. 
Perhaps it was confusing for them 
to understand why I would want to 
go by an entirely new name; but then 
again, they were the same people who 
unknowingly made me hate my name.
In a similar vein, when I studied 

Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” 
in high school, my English teacher 
told us in the middle of discussion 
she calls one of the main characters, 
Ikemefuna, by “Ike”, a nickname 
I believe she coined herself. Most 
of the other students followed her 
and started calling the character 
by that nickname, too. However, I 
always thought it was a bit insulting 
to “Americanize” his name in such 
a way without his consent. While 
Ikemefuna is a fictional character, and 
people give other people nicknames 
quite frequently, the sole purpose of 
calling him “Ike” was to make our 
lives easier. “Ike” wasn’t a nickname 
borne out of affection but of pure 
laziness about saying four extra 
syllables.
Knowing what I know now 
about how to pronounce Grande and 
Teigen’s last names, I’m unsure about 
where to proceed. I don’t want to be 
complicit with the same laziness that 
changed Ikemefuna to “Ike” in my 
English class. Do I start saying their 
names the way they’re supposed to 
be pronounced? The logical answer 
is yes — but there’s inevitably going to 
be people who haven’t watched their 
respective interviews who are going 
to believe that I’m mispronouncing 
their names and think that I’m a 
complete dunce.
Perhaps a better question to ask 
is what Grande or Teigen would 
prefer people to do. Because it’s their 
names, they’re ultimately the ones 
who should have a say in how we 
refer to them. Just as I exercised my 
power over my name by changing it 
to Krystal despite some of my friends’ 
opposition, they too should be the 
ones who get to decide how their 
names are said. While Teigen said she 
doesn’t want people to pronounce her 
last name the way that it’s supposed 
to be pronounced, Grande was less 
clear about how she wants people to 
say her last name. It’s possible that 
she doesn’t have a clear preference 
— and that’s fine, too —as long as it’s 
clear that she’s the one who rightfully 
has the power over how others 
pronounce her name.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, October 1, 2018

Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Emily Huhman

Tara Jayaram
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Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

DAYTON HARE
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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

ALEX SATOLA | COLUMN

The scourge of online trolling
T

he United States has a long 
history of disinformation. 
One of the first major 
manipulations of the media took 
place in 1782 when Ben Franklin 
oversaw the publishing of an entirely 
fake issue of the Boston Chronicle. 
Printed on the pages of the issue was 
an incendiary story about the scalping 
of 700 colonists by Native Americans 
meant to generate sympathy among 
British citizens for the plight of 
Americans.
However, 
the 
contemporary 
perpetrators of “fake news” are 
capable of far more harm than 
anything 
the 
founding 
fathers 
could have imagined (or concocted 
themselves). With the immense 
volume of data and ease of accessibility 
provided by the internet, bad actors 
are now able to have an exaggerated 
influence on public opinion. Keeping 
the internet free for everyone while 
simultaneously controlling the effects 
of disinformation is a balancing 
act, but ultimately we all as digital 
citizens have a responsibility to be 
aware of the myriad of online threats 
and its consequences.
We know that disinformation 
is nothing new, but how exactly 
did it come about on the internet? 
The pioneers of this new breed 
of digital content are known as 
“trolls,” invoking the mean-spirited 
mythological creature that taunts 
its victims from under a bridge. 
According to Data & Society, a 
research institute that focuses on 
the social and cultural impact of 
data in the modern world, a troll is 
defined as someone who deliberately 
baits people to elicit an emotional 
response. Trolls started to pop up in 
the early 2000s on internet message 
boards such as the website 4chan, 
where anonymous users can post 
content consisting of simple words 
and pictures.
It was primarily on these 
anonymous 
platforms 
that 
the 
malicious side of trolling took shape. 
Though many trolls claim to be 
apolitical — simply trolling for the 
“lulz,” as they like to call it, the reality 
is trolling is skewed much more 
toward “alt-right” viewpoints. For 
example, the users of 4chan’s /b/ sub-
board use deliberately offensive hate 
speech to create an emotional impact 
on their targets. As opposed to the 
moralistic, sometimes smug political 

correctness and affinity for fairness 
supported by the left, trolls bring 
out the worst in toxic white rage, 
meninism, nativism and similarly 
twisted views about vulnerable 
groups that slip through the cracks of 
“alt-right” ideology.
The effects of trolling are not 
limited to sub-boards, though, and 
in the past few years mainstream 
conservatives have adopted the 
highly sensational tactics of trolling 
to appeal to voters. From the first 
moments of Donald Trump’s 2016 
campaign, when he rode down the 
escalators to announce his candidacy 
and said of Mexicans, “They’re 
bringing drugs. They’re bringing 
crime. They’re rapists. And some, I 
assume, are good people,” his speech 
had all the hallmark elements of 
trolling.
Back then, people still thought 
that Trump was running to highlight 
the hypocrisy of the political elite. 
Yes, he was running for office from 
an official standpoint, but very few 
people thought he was serious. This 
represents a key trolling tactic of 
preserving ambiguity called Poe’s 
Law, an internet adage that asserts the 
difficulty of distinguishing between 
sincere expressions of extremism 
and satire of extremism. Therefore, 
trolls theoretically always have the 
moral authority of challenging the 
establishment, as Trump positioned 
himself so many times on the 
campaign trail, rather than simply 
engaging in hateful discourse.
Unfortunately, 
armed 
with 
hateful rhetoric and their own 
version of moral justification, a very 
visible sub-species of trolls (shall 
we call them ogres?) emboldened 
by online trolling behavior has 
come to dominate today’s political 
discourse. 
In 
a 
country 
that 
supposedly 
champions 
liberal 
values, the most valued content in 
our online atmosphere proves to be 
sensational and damaging. Websites 
such as Twitter and Facebook are 
struggling to curtail the effects of 
racist, misogynistic and xenophobic 
accounts, most of which are run 
by foreign actors or fake bots 
designed to algorithmically post 
inflammatory statements. In 2017, 
Facebook reported up to 3 percent 
of its accounts were fake, totaling 
60 million “users” not associated 
with a real person. The internet, and 

social media sites in particular, are 
predisposed to promote content that 
attracts attention, yet a consequence 
of this is the promotion of sensational 
messages that sow discord and harm.
Because the natural tendency of 
the internet is to guide users toward 
attention-grabbing 
sensationalism, 
we need creative solutions to 
take back control of our online 
spaces. There have been attempts 
at pulling the policy lever on this 
issue, such as legislation passed by 
the French Parliament that allows 
courts to remove fake news during 
election periods. However, when 
governments or companies gain 
the authority of censoring online 
content, it creates a slippery slope; 
one that may ultimately lead to the 
infringement of our first amendment 
rights in the United States.
Instead, the way to combat 
disinformation is to make users 
more digitally literate. Students 
have it drilled into them since 
middle school that they need to use 
credible sources for their essays, but 
this warning should go beyond the 
classroom. Let us make it a personal 
responsibility for everyone to be 
conscious surfers of the web. This 
can be done without limiting the 
freedoms of any individual user, 
while also impacting their choices of 
who and what to interact with online. 
For example, qualified professionals 
in schools could teach online safety, 
content evaluation and personal data 
protection that may help students 
make better choices. Structuring 
these courses in the same way as drug 
and alcohol awareness or consent 
education seminars would be a good 
first step toward promoting more 
responsible internet usage.
The internet is the biggest 
playground in the history of human 
civilization, and every playground 
has its bullies. But through education 
about disinformation, fake news and 
trolling behavior, it is possible to give 
each internet user the resources they 
need to function in this complicated 
ecosystem. 
A 
more 
educated 
populace will lead to a safer internet 
for all and provide a chance to reverse 
some of the negative consequences of 
unlimited information.

What’s in a name?

Institutional reform can’t change the Supreme Court

KRYSTAL HUR | COLUMN

Alex Satola can be reached at 

apsatola@umich.edu.

I

’ve sat through my classes in 
the past weeks and watched 
as students halfheartedly took 
lecture notes while they streamed 
hearing after hearing on their 
laptops, like a melancholy version 
of March Madness. I listened to 
my peers chat about each new 
development in the fleeting minutes 
before professors start lecturing, the 
conversations no longer dominated 
by, “So, did you do the reading?”
By 
Thursday, 
we 
felt 
overwhelmed, hopeless and unable 
to focus in our classes. We asked 
each other in hushed voices, “Do 
you think we’ll talk about Brett 
Kavanaugh today?” But we didn’t. 
I’m in four political science classes 
this semester. Only one of my 
professors has taken time to talk 
about Kavanaugh, let alone ask his 
students’ concerns on the matter.
Our professors tell us time and 
time again that our department 
is one of the best in the world. But 
how can that be true if we neglect 
to discuss what is quite possibly the 
most controversial political event 
of our lifetime? We weren’t alive for 
Anita Hill. We are the generation 
that brought discussions of rape 
culture on college campuses to the 
forefront. We marched for those 
of us brave enough to share their 
stories of survival, and we continue 
to stand by the courageous women 
who decide to share their stories. We 

watched as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford 
cried during her testimony, and so 
many of us cried with her. So why did 
so many of our professors neglect to 
acknowledge the mere existence of 
this entire situation?
I understand we cannot discuss 
every pertinent current event in class. 
I understand we must draw the line 
somewhere. But this isn’t where we 
should draw that line. Regardless of 
what students or professors believe 
about the validity of Ford’s testimony, 
Kavanaugh’s confirmation process 
has already had profound political 
implications.
This process has been the ugliest 
political battle many of us have ever 
seen. It speaks to growing political 
polarization. It speaks to lack of 
representation in Congress, as 11 
white men neglected to speak to a 
survivor of sexual assault, yet had no 
issues yelling at their colleagues in 
defense of another white man.
It even speaks to political theory: 
Is it a just separation of powers if one 
Republican senator votes against 
Kavanaugh’s confirmation and Vice 
President Mike Pence casts the tie-
breaking vote? Was that outcome 
the intent of the Framers, seeing as 
they wrote our Constitution so that 
the vice president was the runner-
up in the presidential election? 
Kavanaugh’s confirmation process 
has already had real repercussions 
for political science, and I’m sure 

more will come in the coming weeks. 
That, in and of itself, is worth talking 
about.
But outside of the ways in which 
Kavanaugh’s confirmation applies 
to our curriculum, our professors 
should take time to discuss the 
situation for a separate reason 
entirely. Because at the end of the 
day, we’re still students. Maybe we 
don’t get it all, or maybe there’s a 
side of this entire debacle that we’re 
neglecting to consider.
In the one class where my 
professor did take time to ask if we 
had questions or concerns, it sparked 
not only an intellectual conversation 
between students, but also a string 
of thought-provoking questions that 
the students asked our professor. 
The professor’s voice will always be 
louder, stronger and wiser in these 
discussions. To my professors: You 
are so much more likely to change 
our minds than we are to change 
each other’s. I don’t doubt that we’re 
getting one of the best political 
science educations in the world. 
But you also owe us an education 
that takes time to discuss what is 
unfolding in front of our eyes. So, let’s 
start talking. 

CATHERINE GREEBERG | OP-ED
Polsci professors, let’s talk Kavanaugh

Catharine Greenberg is a political 

science major in the class of 2020 who 

recently interned for the U.S. Senate.

T

he Supreme Court stands 
at 
an 
inflection 
point. 
Allegations of sexual assault 
have stalled Brett Kavanaugh’s 
nomination to the court, casting 
uncertainty over an appointment 
that 
only 
weeks 
ago 
seemed 
contentious but inevitable. The 
allegations have attracted more 
media scrutiny to the Senate’s 
upcoming floor vote on Kavanaugh’s 
confirmation, but the controversial 
nomination featured intense debate 
and partisan divide long before these 
accusations surfaced.
The 
Republicans’ 
mostly 
unwavering 
support 
and 
the 
Democrats’ 
steadfast 
opposition 
to 
Kavanaugh 
underscore 
the 
importance of this appointment, 
which is perhaps unparalleled in its 
potential to mold the future of the 
Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh is slated to replace 
Anthony 
Kennedy, 
who 
was 
arguably the Court’s only true 
moderate. Kennedy was nominated 
by President Ronald Reagan but 
semi-regularly sided with his liberal 
colleagues on social issues to provide 
the pivotal vote on cases that dealt 
with gay rights, abortion, affirmative 
action and capital punishment. 
Kennedy’s retirement likely leaves 
Chief Justice John Roberts as the 
court’s swing vote, but aside from 
a few notable defections, Roberts 
has voted reliably with the court’s 
conservative 
bloc 
throughout 
his tenure. The confirmation of a 
solidly conservative jurist, such as 
Kavanaugh, would tilt the court 
decidedly to the right, allowing 
President 
Donald 
Trump 
and 
congressional 
Republicans 
to 
legislate with less concern of being 
rebuffed by the Supreme Court.
In the near future, the court 
could have to rule on a variety 
of consequential and politically-
charged issues, including whether 
a sitting president can be indicted 
or whether a president can pardon 
himself. These decisions carry 
momentous 
legal 
and 
political 
implications, and they demand a 
high court without a visible partisan 
divide. Unfortunately, the Court’s 

ideological divide seems to only be 
growing wider.
An 
increasingly 
politicized 
Supreme Court is not a positive 
development. 
Roberts 
famously 
likened the role of the justices to 
calling “balls and strikes,” but it is 
difficult to agree with this view 
when Supreme Court votes become 
as predictable and consistent. As 
an institution, the Supreme Court 
works best when its justices serve 
as impartial umpires, but in reality 
they have political and ideological 
motives that are masked by their 
chosen judicial philosophies. These 
biases influence the cases they 
choose to take, the way they vote and 
the timing of their retirements.
Amid the current prospect of 
a majority-conservative Supreme 
Court for the foreseeable future, 
many on the left have called for 
institutional reform to the Supreme 
Court and the judicial branch in 
general. These proposals include 
establishing judicial term limits, 
packing the court or even electing 
justices. Ultimately, none of these 
proposals will work, because the 
problem with the Supreme Court is 
not institutional but ideological.
The institution of the Supreme 
Court has functioned with varying 
degrees of effectiveness since its 
inception. Its early relationship 
with the other branches was 
acrimonious. After coming to power 
in the elections of 1800, Thomas 
Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-
Republicans sought to curb the 
influence of the judiciary, which 
they considered to be biased in favor 
of their Federalist rivals. Jefferson’s 
Congressional 
allies 
took 
the 
unprecedented step of impeaching 
a Supreme Court justice, Samuel 
Chase, on grounds of political bias. 
Chase was acquitted by the Senate 
and he remains the only Supreme 
Court justice ever impeached.
Chase’s acquittal reaffirmed the 
court’s independent authority for 
most of the 19th century, though 
the court occasionally found its 
authority questioned or ignored 
when it waded into politically-
contentious 
issues 
like 
Native 

American tribal rights and slavery. 
The court’s legitimacy was next 
tested in the 1930s, after President 
Franklin Roosevelt proposed to 
pack the court after it overturned 
several of his New Deal reforms. 
Despite 
Roosevelt’s 
widespread 
popularity, his plan failed and the 
court remained at nine justices. 
Curiously, 
the 
court 
reversed 
course and upheld several pieces of 
New Deal legislation, including the 
Social Security Act, National Labor 
Relations Board and minimum 
wage laws, perhaps sensing their 
political vulnerability despite the 
failure of Roosevelt’s court-packing 
scheme.
In the decades that followed, the 
Supreme Court stayed relatively 
above the political fray. The court’s 
unanimous decision in U.S. v. Nixon 
led to clean, minimally partisan end 
of the Nixon saga. Nominations to 
the court, with a couple exceptions, 
usually 
enjoyed 
overwhelming 
bipartisan 
support. 
Antonin 
Scalia, a staunch conservative, was 
confirmed unanimously, as were 
John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day 
O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy. 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a solidly 
liberal justice, was confirmed 96-3, 
and even the first two of President 
Barack Obama’s nominees enjoyed 
some Republican support.
However, the Supreme Court 
appears to now be sliding back into 
the partisan fray that it has avoided 
for so many years. The Senate’s 
politically-motivated refusal to even 
hold hearings on Merrick Garland’s 
nomination 
in 
2016 
ensured 
Supreme Court appointments for 
the foreseeable future will be heated, 
partisan affairs. Furthermore, the 
elimination of the filibuster on 
Supreme Court nominations in 2017 
essentially removed any need for a 
president’s nominee to have cross-
party appeal.

Noah Harrison can be reached at 

noahharr@umich.edu

NOAH HARRISON | COLUMN

Krystal Hur can be reached at 

kryshur@umich.edu

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