“S

tates are where all the 
action 
in 
domestic 
policymaking 
is.” 
This is what I learned 
from Jenna Bednar, a 
University of Michigan 
political 
science 
professor and specialist 
on federalism, when 
I sat down with her 
this week. We agreed 
that 
state 
elections 
are 
extraordinarily 
important 
and 
are 
often underrepresented 
in our country. Much 
of our country’s policy either 
originates from or is informed by 
state and local policies. As Supreme 
Court 
Justice 
Louis 
Brandeis 
wrote in his dissent in New State 
Ice Co. v. Liebmann, “it is one of 
the happy incidents of the federal 
system, that a single courageous 
state may, if its citizens choose, 
serve as a laboratory; and try novel 
social and economic experiments 
without risk to the rest of the 
country.” 
TV 
comedian 
John 
Oliver, in a 2014 episode, cited that 
Congress passed 185 laws in that 
session. State legislatures, in the 
same time frame, passed more than 
24,000. But why are state elections 
underrepresented if that is where 
most domestic policy comes from? 
Is there a certain group to blame?
Some might jump to blaming 
the media, and they would have 
a few fair points. We learn in our 
government classes in high school 
that elections are covered “like 
horse races.” It’s fun and exciting 
to track polling numbers up to 
election day, so that’s what the 
media often focuses on. It also 
makes sense for the national news 
media to focus on national news 
and elections, leaving states to 
fall by the wayside. Why should a 
person watching CNN in Florida 
care about Massachusetts’s state 
legislature election? Between 2003 
and 2012, the newspaper workforce 
dropped 30 percent, including 
a significant cutback in those 
covering local and state politics for 
both local and national news. This 
has had several effects, including 
candidates less engaged with local 

news, along with those candidates 
relying on TV ads to get their 
messages out instead of interacting 
with the media.
Maybe the political 
parties are at fault. 
Another 
thing 
we 
learn in government is 
that the job of political 
parties is to get people 
elected. These parties 
do a great job of raising 
money and spending 
that money, but where? 
If 
you 
watch 
TV, 
you’ve almost certainly 
seen ads this election season for 
Senate and gubernatorial races. 
What about the state House of 
Representatives or state Senate? 
Follow the money. More than $2 
billion was spent on the presidential 
race in 2016 and $4 billion was 
spent on all of the congressional 
races combined.
Perhaps it is just the nature 
of the local and state offices that 
doesn’t attract this attention. One 
point Bednar made was that at 
lower levels of government there 
is a higher likelihood of deviation 
from party doctrines. If these 
government officials are less likely 
to follow strict party lines, then it 
follows that parties would invest 
less money because they stand to 
get less in return.
It’d be easy to place the blame 
here on one single entity and move 
on, but an issue like this isn’t that 
simple. There’s plenty of blame to go 
around and some of that rightly falls 
on us. What was the last state issue 
you heard about? In Michigan, for 
many, it is probably the Flint water 
crisis. In this “information age” we 
have unprecedented access to so 
much information, but often we are 
only willing to take in so little. We 
stick to one cable news show or we 
have our favorite newspaper.
Election turnout is typically 
around 60 percent for presidential 
elections, but only 40 percent 
for midterms. It is even lower 
for primary, local and off-year 
elections. For example, in Dallas, 
only 6.1 percent of eligible voters 
participated 
in 
the 
mayoral 
election in May 2015. Turnout 

is less than 20 percent for 15 of 
the 30 most populous cities in 
the country in mayoral elections. 
Even in gubernatorial election 
years, turnout is low. In every 
gubernatorial election year since 
1970, except for 2006, turnout was 
below 50 percent in Michigan. Most 
of the time the majority of people 
don’t vote if it isn’t a presidential 
election year. Generally speaking, 
in only one year out of every 
four does more than half of the 
electorate make their way to a 
ballot box.
Over the past few weeks, many 
of my professors have encouraged 
students to register by the Oct. 9 
deadline. One of these professors 
told us that her opinion is that 
“if you don’t vote, you don’t get 
to complain.” I would go further. 
If you don’t cast an informed 
vote, then you should not feel 
comfortable commenting at all. 
Take a minute to research the 
candidates on every level. You 
should know who is running for 
office in your community and have 
a general idea what they believe in, 
beyond the “R” or “D” next to their 
name. My father, for example, gets 
an absentee ballot, so he can sit at 
home with his laptop and research 
each candidate’s platform online as 
he fills in the bubbles.
We could blame the media, 
or political parties, or candidates, 
or some idea that our votes don’t 
matter, for why people can’t find 
their way to the ballot box and 
why many don’t have a strong 
grasp of the politics of their local 
community. I’d rather take the 
blame and the responsibility on 
myself to get informed and to do 
my part in deciding the future of 
this country. It’s just as easy to lie 
to yourself and say you’ll put effort 
into getting informed as it is to tell 
yourself that you’re going to start 
going to the gym. However, we 
have more to lose in our elections 
if we don’t get informed than we do 
if we skip the gym a few times, so 
please, find the ballot box but only 
after doing some research.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Friday, October 5, 2018

Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Emily Huhman

Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang

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

MILES STEPHENSON | COLUMN

Can disaffiliated Greek life save itself?
A

s the fall 2018 Greek life 
rush 
continues 
across 
campus, 
disaffiliated 
fraternities and their relationships 
with 
incoming 
students 
are 
left in an uncertain purgatory. 
Fraternities officially affiliated with 
the University of Michigan operate 
under a well-defined framework 
of rules. They’re geared to further 
focus on charitable work, inclusion 
and academic performance. Even 
the signing of bids for students 
chosen fraternities is administered 
through Interfraternity Council 
personnel. Recently, however, six 
fraternities (some of which with 
strong national charters and a 
large student base) have chosen 
to divorce themselves from the 
University and its IFC regulations. 
This 
separation 
raises 
more 
questions than it answers. How 
will these disaffiliated fraternities 
continue 
to 
operate 
in 
the 
University’s social ecosystem? How 
will students perceive this new 
type of underground fraternity? 
And how will these disaffiliated 
fraternities impact the University’s 
Greek life that is already under siege 
for hazing, alcohol-related harm 
and sexual misconduct incidents? 
The answers to these questions 
might be within the fraternities 
themselves.
Colleges 
and 
universities 
across the United States have 
recently been grappling with how 
to regulate Greek life in the wake 
of a series of incidents. U.S. News 
and World Report has reported 
that American campuses have 
experienced at least one student 
death by hazing every year since 
1959. Universities are meant to be 
crucibles of knowledge and self-
exploration, not pitfalls where 
students are sent into potentially 
life-threatening situations. The 
University of Michigan, with its 
tradition of solving complex social 
and 
organizational 
problems 
since its founding in 1817, and as 
a university with one of the oldest 
and richest Greek communities in 
the country, must take a national 
leadership role in forging a 
lasting and workable solution to 
this problem. It is important to 
note that fraternities, just like 
the students that compose the 
memberships, are individual and 

widely 
varying. 
Disaffiliating 
so-called “bad actor” fraternities 
under this “eviction” system only 
treats the symptoms and not the 
root causes of isolated, erratic 
behavior, and may exacerbate 
the dangerous situations. And 
the prospect of creating a new, 
disaffiliated 
category 
of 
off-
campus housing could cultivate 
a “Wild West” dynamic and 
compound 
the 
issues 
the 
University seeks to control.
The University boasts some 
of the brightest minds in the 
world, which should be called 
to action to craft a solution that 
involves input from fraternity and 
sorority 
leadership, 
university 
administration 
and 
functional 
academics. 
Instituting 
rules 
designed to “bring the frats into 
compliance,” for instance, new 
zoning ordinances that shackle 
fraternities to policy without 
due 
process, 
will 
result 
in 
rebellion, witnessed by the recent 
disaffiliations of six fraternities 
due to a zoning code restriction 
passed by the Ann Arbor City 
Council 
this 
summer. 
Surely 
there is a solution that doesn’t 
“evict” fraternities, but instead 
empowers them to self-regulate 
within a system that challenges 
them to meet the standards of 
the community. This would allow 
them to operate and manage 
themselves appropriately, while 
still proving to the University’s 
community that they are a force of 
good. They could meet challenges 
of financial performance (houses 
remain solvent and self-paying), 
academic 
performance 
and 
volunteering and charitable work. 
Under this proposal, the IFC 
would function less as university 
adults imposing arbitrary rules 
and more as an apparatus working 
more closely with the fraternities 
to better manage their houses, 
their safety and their success. 
Not 
only 
would 
this 
allow 
the fraternities to have more 
accountability, but it also might 
enliven chapters to run with 
their new personal responsibility. 
Greek rushing is up 45 percent at 
universities around the country 
since 2006, and a system like this 
at the University could pave the 
way for self-regulated fraternities 

across the United States.
But why do we have Greek 
life anyway? It’s flawed at its core 
and we should just ban the whole 
thing, some will argue. Greek 
life at the University constitutes 
22 percent of the undergraduate 
student 
population 
(that’s 
more than 6,200 students) and 
generates 
millions 
of 
dollars 
annually for the Ann Arbor 
economy. The chapters hire cooks, 
cleaners, sanitation workers and 
repairmen 
to 
maintain 
their 
houses, buy bulk food and provide 
amenities 
for 
the 
residential 
students. 
Fraternities 
and 
sororities, social and otherwise, 
are woven into the fabric of the 
university’s social, academic and 
charitable life. Furthermore, these 
Greek life organizations have 
connections all throughout the 
private business sector and even 
the political sphere. U.S. News 
and World Report reports that 44 
percent of the U.S. presidents, 35 
members of the U.S. Senate, and 
60 members of the U.S. House 
have held fraternity memberships. 
Furthermore, in the past year, 
the 
Interfraternity 
Council 
grade point average was higher 
than the all-male average for 
University students, underscoring 
that Greek life membership and 
academic performance are not 
mutually exclusive. A solution to 
the disaffiliated fraternity issue 
must recognize that Greek life 
is an overwhelmingly positive 
force at the University, offering 
relationships, 
housing, 
social 
experiences 
and 
networking 
for thousands of students each 
year. Hazing and underage 
binge drinking are exceptions to 
the rule, and the University and 
local law enforcement must be 
uncompromising in attending to 
these situations. Working from 
the excellent, albeit imperfect 
framework and organization of 
the existing IFC, the University 
must challenge and empower 
fraternity and sorority leadership 
to collaborate on policies, rules 
and procedures designed to better 
police themselves.

What state elections?

DAVID HAYSE | COLUMN

David Hayse can be reached at 

dhayse@umich.edu.

DAVID 
HAYSE

O

n 
Tuesday 
afternoon, 
President Donald Trump 
expressed his sympathy 
for 
young 
men 
in 
America while speaking 
to reporters outside the 
White House. In his 
words: “It is a very scary 
time for young men in 
America, where you can 
be guilty of something 
you may not be guilty 
of.” His view represents 
a wider concern among 
some 
conservative 
Americans in light of the 
accusations against Supreme Court 
nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the 
#MeToo movement at large. They 
are concerned with due process 
and fear the rights of the accused 
are being undermined in cases 
of sexual assault. However, these 
worries are largely unfounded, as 
study after study has confirmed 
that false accusations are incredibly 
uncommon. Thus, this line of 
backlash was predictable coming 
from Trump. He concluded his 
statements with a starkly less 
familiar sentiment; when asked if he 
had any words for young American 
women, he responded, “Women are 
doing great.”
Maybe all of the women around 
me and I are anomalies, but it does 
not quite seem that women are 
doing great. On the contrary, the 
Kavanaugh hearings have brought 
back memories of sexual trauma 
for many victims, who are mostly 
women. I did not plan on writing 
about Kavanaugh (again) this week. I 
had hoped my column this semester 
would be centered around a topic of 
pure intellectual curiosity and not 
my own experiences with gender-

based violence and sexual trauma. 
Unfortunately, I have not gone an 
hour — waking or sleeping — since 
last Thursday morning 
without reliving those 
experiences. 
Last 
Thursday 
morning 
is 
when 
Stanford 
University psychologist 
Christine Blasey Ford 
sat in front of the Senate 
Judiciary 
Committee 
to provide testimony 
about her assault at 
the hands of Brett 
Kavanaugh.
I had a class with a no-screen 
policy for the first hour of the 
hearings, so I sat in blissful 
ignorance of the texts flying into 
my phone about the heartbreak that 
each of my loved ones felt watching 
Ford speak. Then I watched the 
committee question her throughout 
my stats lecture, with the screen 
split on my laptop between notes 
and C-SPAN. I expected to feel 
empathy for her — I was too a victim 
of sexual assault and I feel quite 
strongly about keeping abusers 
away from power. I did not expect 
to leave the lecture hall in a panic, 
heart pounding and tears forming. 
I had forgotten what a panic attack 
felt like. It had been a year or so since 
I experienced one. But I sat on some 
concrete ledge outside the Modern 
Languages 
Building 
and 
that 
once familiar feeling of tightness 
in the chest, shortness of breath 
and desperate desire to escape 
overwhelmed me. I could only 
think, “I was 15 too,” and about how 
infantile my 15-year-old self seems 
now. Ford’s testimony forced me to 
relive that experience in a new way. 
Yes — I’d thought about my assaults, 

I’d written about them, assessed 
them, but it was always from a 
numbed distance provided by the 
passed time. I had dealt with those 
experiences more as an onlooker. 
But her words broke through that 
numbness, and as she described the 
night from her own point of view, 
I became able to access my own 
younger self’s point of view. 
My friends expressed similar 
accounts of watching the hearings 
— that they were surprised by their 
own reactions. It led one friend 
to stay away from campus all day 
due to anxiety, and another friend 
to come to terms with her own 
experience — admitting to herself 
that she too had been assaulted. A 
close friend revealed how similar 
Kavanaugh was to her own abuser 
— a privileged, white, private school 
boy. My friends and I were not an 
anomaly, though. Rape, Incest and 
Abuse National Network had its 
busiest day on record last Thursday. 
Survivors across the country were 
shaken by Ford’s tragedy, and by 
Kavanaugh’s vehement denial of it. 
Watching her brokenness so clearly 
juxtaposed with his indignant rage 
was simply too close to home.
So, on Thursday, and in the days 
to follow, American women have 
not been gloating in our vengeful 
attempted takedown of a powerful 
man. We have been mourning 
for Ford, both now and at age 15, 
for each other and for ourselves. 
Once again, we have been forced 
to wring out our trauma in the 
public sphere in a hopeless effort to 
stop our political institutions from 
further demise.

“Women are doing great”

MARGOT LIBERTINI | COLUMN

Margot Libertini can be reached at 

mlibertini@umich.edu.

MARGOT 
LIBERTINI

A

s is often the case with these 
things, the 73rd session of 
the United Nations General 
Assembly raised more questions 
than answers. The two weeks were 
jam-packed with the events therein, 
churning out headline after headline. 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu embarrassed himself by 
way of his shameless hypocrisy and 
lies about Iran’s nonexistent “atomic 
warehouse.” Somali Foreign Minister 
Ahmed Awad Isse gave a powerful 
speech informing the assembly of the 
huge strides his country has taken on 
the path towards stability.
I could go on and on. The 
developments were plenty and to go 
through all of them would be, to put 
it simply, excessive. Rather, I would 
like to focus on what transpired 
during the course of the two weeks 
specifically in regard to United States-
Venezuela relations and what should 
be done going forward.
On Sept. 26, Nicolas Maduro 
shocked the world when, during a 
speech to the General Assembly, he 
stated that he is willing and ready 
to come to the table and meet with 
the Trump administration. Think 
of just how amazing that is. The 
Trump administration has been 
openly mulling the idea of invading 
Venezuela and overthrowing, and 
likely killing, Maduro since at least 
August 2017. While some might say 
he has been backed into a corner, to 
offer to speak with those who plot 
your demise is noteworthy, to say the 
least.
The 
Trump 
administration 
has yet to comment on the offer. To 
decline Maduro’s offer would only 
serve to expose the malevolence of 
their foreign policy even further. By 
all accounts, they are still set on the 
idea of a military intervention in the 

South American nation. What did 
you expect with John “the earlier you 
strike, the more damage you can do” 
Bolton as national security adviser?
Keep in mind the current 
administration is engaged in active 
bombing campaigns of eight different 
countries. They have also expanded 
the war in Afghanistan, which is both 
the longest and most unpopular war 
in American history. Moreover, the 
administration has pursued what 
essentially amounts to a scorched-
earth policy in Iraq and Syria, 
leading to record numbers of civilian 
casualties. All this is just scratching 
the surface as it pertains to the scope 
of their evil.
Nevertheless, as we see with the 
current rhetoric on Venezuela, it is 
clear that the administration is still 
hell-bent on spreading death and 
destruction abroad. When addressing 
anti-Maduro 
protesters 
outside 
the United Nations building, Nikki 
Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United 
Nations, said, “We are not just going 
to let the Maduro regime backed by 
Cuba hurt the Venezuelan people 
anymore.” If she had even one iota of 
honesty to her being, she would have 
concluded that statement by saying 
“now it’s our turn.”
The simple truth is that this 
administration does not care about 
Venezuelan lives. If they did, they 
would not be banging the war drums 
and calling for a coup — a move 
that would unleash untold horrors 
on a country that has already been 
through hell. If they really cared about 
Venezuelan lives, they would lift their 
crippling sanctions regime that has 
done nothing to target corruption but 
only foment instability.
If you want to help, then help. 
Invasion is not the way to do it. 
Attacking the independence of a 

sovereign nation-state is not the 
way to do it. It’s about time we start 
making friends instead of enemies.
This hypocrisy was addressed 
directly by none other than Maduro 
himself. He said, “Donald Trump 
said he was worried about Venezuela, 
he wanted to help Venezuela … I stand 
ready to talk with an open agenda on 
everything that he might wish to 
talk about with the United States of 
America.”
I must be honest, with the cast 
of characters currently running this 
country, prospects for peace do indeed 
look grim. I have little confidence in 
both bureaucrats and elected officials 
to do the right thing simply out of the 
goodness of their hearts. It is up to us — 
the people — to put pressure on them.
And so, I would like to conclude 
this column with a call to action. In the 
1960s and early 1970s, college campuses 
were at the heart of the anti-war 
movement. University students across 
the nation stood up and protested 
against the immoral, unjust Vietnam 
War. The role this played in advancing 
the agenda of eventual disengagement 
cannot be underestimated.
Let those honorable men and 
women be our example. We need 
to rekindle that flame. I want to see 
students once again rise up in a public 
way to protest the horrors of war. As 
patriotic Americans, we cannot allow 
for our so-called leaders to drag us into 
another foreign conflict.
I say all of this with a tremendous 
amount of urgency. We must do 
something fast. And what better 
place to start than the University of 
Michigan, home of the leaders and 
the best? Organize!

No war in Venezuela

ELIAS KHOURY | COLUMN

Elias Khoury can be reached at 

ekhoury@umich.edu.

Miles Stephenson can be reached at 

mvsteph@umich.edu.

