T

he 
2018 
November 
election will be closely 
watched 
across 
the 
country for the impact it will 
have at the state and federal 
levels, but even here in Ann 
Arbor, voters will have the 
opportunity to cast a vote with 
a long-lasting impact on our 
city. Appearing on Ann Arbor 
ballots is Proposal A, which 
concerns a city-owned plot 
of land, popularly called the 
“Library Lot,” adjacent to the 
downtown branch of the Ann 
Arbor District Library.
The Library Lot is currently 
a parking lot, as it has been 
for roughly the last 70 years. 
In 
2009, 
an 
underground 
parking structure was added, 
which opened for use in 2012. 
Since that time, Ann Arbor 
administrators and City Council 
have considered various options 
for what to do with the land at 
the surface. Last year, in an 8 
to 3 vote, the mayor and other 
members of the City Council 
approved the selection of a 
proposal from Chicago-based 
developer Core Spaces to buy 
the land and build a mixed-
use building on it. Though the 
paperwork has been signed to 
execute it, the sale is currently 
on hold pending the outcome 
of a lawsuit filed by two of the 
other members of City Council 
challenging its validity. And 
Proposal A would only further 
complicate matters.
Proposal A appears on the 
ballot as follows:
Charter 
Amendment 
for 
the City-Owned Public Land 
Bounded by Fifth Avenue, and 
William, Division, and Liberty 
Streets to be Designated, in 
Perpetuity, as an Urban Park 
and Civic Center Commons to 
be Known as the “Center of the 
City,” by Amending the Ann 
Arbor City Charter Adding a 
New Section 1.4 to Chapter 1 of 
the Charter.
Shall the City-owned public 
land bounded by Fifth Ave, and 
William, Division and Liberty 
Streets be retained in public 
ownership, in perpetuity, and 
developed as an urban park and 

civic center commons, known 
as the “Center of the City” by 
adding a new section for the 
purpose as explained above?
The very first word identifies 
a 
key 
point: 
The 
proposal 
would amend the City Charter, 
the 
highest-level 
governing 
document of Ann Arbor and 
not somewhere that land use 
normally would appear. The City 
Charter is at issue here, because 
the normal process for land 
use has already been employed 
(resulting in the mentioned sale 
to Core Spaces). By amending 
the Charter, Proposal A would 
circumvent the normal process 
and invalidate the actions of 
City Council by removing their 
authority to determine how 
the property should be used. 
One of the reasons that land 
use does not typically appear 
in the City Charter is that it 
tends to change more frequently 
than such provisions permit — 
City Council regularly votes to 
approve leases, easements and 
other modifications to land use, 
and has bought and sold land 
before, unhindered by such 
a constraint. But Proposal A 
makes clear that its endurance 
is intentional by specifying that 
the Library Lot would retain its 
new status “in perpetuity.”
What, then, is that status? 
The proposal would designate 
the Library Lot as the “Center 
of the City,” an “urban park 
and civic center commons.” 
While this leaves some room for 
flexibility, City Council clearly 
does not have plans to realize 
such a vision (having instead 
made the previously-described 
arrangement with Core Spaces), 
and, more concerningly, it seems 
the 
supporters 
of 
Proposal 
A may not either. Leaders 
of the group responsible for 
organizing this support suggest 
the “collective vision” of the 
community will drive what is 
to be done with the land once it 
is secured in the City Charter, 
and that there are various 
opportunities for securing the 
necessary funding to implement 
this vision. But we cannot, as 
responsible voters, allow our 

city’s policy to be permanently 
decided based on the hope for 
what might be rather than the 
facts we have before us.
The 
funding 
that 
would 
be necessary to change the 
current 
surface-level 
lot 
to 
something resembling a park 
or commons is not mentioned 
in the language of the proposal, 
and has not been allocated or 
raised in the 70 years during 
which the property has been in 
its current form. Furthermore, 
the proposal does not address 
the city’s current plans for the 
property. As part of the sale 
to Core Spaces, the city would 
assign $5 million from the 
sale to the Ann Arbor Housing 
Commission for the purpose of 
supporting affordable housing 
elsewhere in the city, and 
collect $2.3 million annually 
in property taxes from the new 
owners. This revenue has no 
counterpart in Proposal A.
The facts we’ve laid out are 
among the reasons that Proposal 
A is opposed by the Ann Arbor 
Housing 
Commission, 
who 
recognize the value of both 
the housing in the proposed 
Core Spaces development and 
the additional money it would 
provide for affordable housing, 
and the Board of the Ann Arbor 
District Library, which as the 
next-door neighbor to either 
a new building or a new park, 
stands to be most immediately 
affected. Ann Arbor urgently 
needs more housing, and the 
Library Lot is an appropriate 
location for this level of density. 
The 
resulting 
additional 
funding for more affordable 
housing efforts will ensure that 
the entire community stands to 
benefit. We oppose Proposal A, 
which would pull the rug out 
from under the careful process 
that led to this plan, and hope 
that you will consider doing the 
same.

D

uring 
senior 
year 
of 
high school, my choir 
performed at a conference 
in Chicago. Singing was wonderful, 
but more importantly, it was a fun 
trip for my friends and me as we 
wrapped up our final semester. 
During some free time, my friend 
Jesse and I wandered the streets 
around our hotel in search of coffee 
and pastries, still thrilled by the 
novelty 
of 
independence, 
even 
knowing that in a few short months 
it would be our new way of life.
We found a coffee shop. We got 
drinks and split a peanut butter 
banana chocolate scone (it would 
be important to him that I include 
this detail). Nestled into some high-
backed armchairs by a large window 
overlooking the frigid February 
streets, we chatted about nothing 
in particular, taking bites from the 
pastry on the table between us. 
Jesse and I have been best friends 
since kindergarten. We had most 
of our classes together, traveled 
together and did all the same 
extracurriculars. We hadn’t ever 
been apart except for a month every 
summer when we attended different 
camps.
As we sat and enjoyed the comfort 
of being with someone who you 
know so well, I was struck by the 
transience of such moments. In a 
few months, who knew what would 
happen? I would be starting school 
in Ann Arbor and he would be 6,000 
miles away on a gap year in Israel. We 
would be in different time zones on 
different continents going through 
completely different experiences. I 
always had an ironclad confidence 
our friendship could make it through 
anything unscathed. For a moment, 
that wavered.
Jesse nudged the plate toward me, 
offering me the last chunk of scone. 
For some reason, that small gesture 
was a sweet reassurance. I happily 
accepted, popping the bite into my 
mouth and pulling up the Notes app 
on my phone. With a smirk, I wrote, 
“You know it’s a friendship that will 
transcend the distance and the years 
and the changes when he gives you 
the last bite of his scone.”
I have always been intrigued 
by time travel. Not to some distant 
historical event or unknown future 
world, but rather to somewhere 

along my own timeline. I try to find 
ways to hop between the years of my 
life, showing myself the past or the 
future, a reminder of where I came 
from and where I might be going. 
Sometime in September each year 
I flip through all the pages in my 
calendar, travelling to the last week 
of school, and write myself a note: 
“Here is where I am, here’s where 
you may be, I guess you know what 
I got on the exam I took this week, 
huh?” In the spring I find these notes 
and smile, finding some nugget of 
naïveté within myself from just a few 
months before.

In high school, I would write 
myself time bomb emails, scheduling 
them to arrive one year from that 
day. I found it oddly comforting to 
read about my concerns from the 
year before, seeing them in the wide-
angle lens of hindsight, and knowing 
whatever problems I currently had 
would be similarly trivial in a year’s 
time. By remembering exactly how 
it felt to be that girl a year before, 
I suddenly become her again for a 
moment, and I could see straight 
through to the future.
In the other direction, I leave 
observational breadcrumbs through 
the musings and lines of prose from 
which I gained inspiration for this 
semester’s column. They allow me to 
travel backward, reminding me how 
I saw the world at a younger age.
I was thinking about how 
reassured I was that day in the 
coffee shop as I drove Jesse to 
the airport last weekend. He 
goes to school in Atlanta, and 
had flown up for a visit. We spent 
the weekend doing nothing in 
particular, talking about nothing 
in particular. We just enjoyed the 
familiarity that comes from 15 

years of close friendship. It wasn’t 
sad to say goodbye. I’ll see him 
again soon.
As I go through my life, I try to 
leave touchstones to which I can 
return and mark the passage of 
time and the unpredictability of 
life’s journey. I have never felt as 
though I am only my present self, 
but rather like a Russian nesting 
doll with past versions saved 
somewhere in my head, fitting 
into one another seamlessly and 
augmenting what was already 
there. Like some ancient redwood, 
each year I add a new layer of self as 
I grow outward into the world. I am 
20 years old, but I am 18 and 15 and 
11 too, the thoughts, experiences 
and perspectives compounding 
into one hodgepodge of a person.
As each year passes, I see how 
time can strip away whatever is 
not tied down tightly. I have lots 
of once-close friends with whom I 
never speak. I spent hours honing 
skills my hands and mind have 
since forgotten. I do not mourn 
these losses. They are preserved, 
if not in the present, then in some 
past self. I will relive long gone 
friendships and memories with 
the next time bomb email. I will 
remember how it felt to perform 
at a choral conference or do a slide 
tackle in a soccer game the next 
time I scroll through Notes on my 
phone.
More 
than 
anything, 
my 
adventures through time have 
taught me that a year from now, 
everything 
will 
be 
different, 
except for the things that won’t. 
I’ll always know how to string 
sentences together. I’ll always 
want to share a blanket with my 
big sister on the couch watching 
reruns of the “The West Wing.” 
I’ll 
always 
read 
before 
bed, 
have a penchant for righteous 
indignation and surround myself 
with kind-hearted people. And I’ll 
always want to split a scone with 
Jesse. I will shed the things I do 
not need and hold tightly to those 
I cannot live without, and march 
forward through time until I can 
meet next year’s me.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, November 5, 2018

Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Emily Huhman

Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Lucas Maiman
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

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

WHIT FROEHLICH & AUSTIN GLASS | OP-ED

Vote no on Proposal A

O

n Oct. 25, Steven Crowder 
made 
a 
visit 
to 
the 
University of Michigan, 
broadcasting his podcast “Louder 
with Crowder” live from the 
Power Center of Performing Arts. 
Notorious 
for 
his 
unabashed 
honesty, one of Crowder’s main 
tenants is to break from the 
constraints of the “leftist” media 
and allow for free, uncensored 
speech. This got me thinking 
about media bias, something that 
has become prominent in the 
American political landscape ever 
since President Donald Trump rose 
to power during his “fake news” 
campaign. When you think about it, 
though Crowder may have escaped 
the liberally-rooted mainstream 
media, isn’t his show equally biased 
in the conservative direction? Not 
having analyzed his show enough, 
I’m not necessarily one to say; yet, 
with all this attack on the media, I 
did begin to wonder: Is there really 
anything wrong with media bias?
When it comes to something 
as rooted in subjectivity as bias, 
it 
becomes 
very 
difficult 
to 
objectively rate a source based on 
this benchmark. Neutral politics 

have become quite a rarity in the 
mainstream political field, and as 
a result, it has become increasingly 
difficult to find an easy way to 
discover a centrist source that 
doesn’t have any allegiance to 
either side. That said, however, a 
Gallup Poll found that 45 percent 
of Americans believe the media is 
biased and a whopping 66 percent 
believe the news media does not 
do a good job separating fact from 
opinion. Numbers don’t lie; it’s 
obvious that this seems to be a big 
problem to many American citizens.
The question then becomes, 
is it possible for someone to be 
unbiased? Researchers at Carnegie 
Mellon University believe bias is 
intrinsic and unavoidable. In fact, 
it has been known for a while that 
everyone pretty much has inherent 
biases. Individuals are shaped by the 
environments and cultures in which 
they were brought up. Each different 
person grows up prioritizing some 
values over others. In that way, each 
person ends up with drastically 
different natural biases. As such, 
asking for an unbiased news report 
is truly impossible. But, asking for 
facts and not “fake news” isn’t.

Understanding inherent biases 
is a big step in being able to better 
make informed decisions on what’s 
true and false as well as what’s fact 
and opinion. It’s OK for a reporter 
to offer his or her opinion on a fact 
or a news piece. In fact, this is what 
makes up most of the roundtable 
discussions 
we 
see 
on 
NBC, 
CNN, FOX and other major news 
networks. However, when a news 
source intentionally skews a fact or 
even purposefully leaves out some 
aspects of the truth, it becomes 
detrimental to the integrity of 
the media as a whole. This type 
of propaganda is what has driven 
many Americans away from some 
networks that have been blasted 
for being unreliable and not based 
on true fact. The media is obviously 
free to do whatever it wants, but 
excessive prejudice can lead to 
disillusionment among the people. 
We have seen the effects of this; it’s 
the last thing we would want.

The virtue of scones and time travel

KENDALL HECKER | COLUMN

Whit Froehlich is a student at 

University of Michigan Medical School 

and Austin Glass is a student at the 

Rackham Graduate School. 

Kendall Hecker can be reached at 

kfhecker@umich.edu. 

O

n Nov. 8, 2016, I fell asleep 
early, before the doubt 
crept into anyone’s mind, 
before 
the 
results 
came in. I fell asleep 
sure, as I was sure 
about anything, that 
I would wake up to 
the making of history. 
If I had had any 
doubt in my mind, I 
would certainly not 
have found the peace 
required to sleep at 
such an important 
moment.
Sometime around 4:00 a.m., 
I awoke to my TV blaring, still 
showing the same pundits usually 
on during primetime trying to 
explain — if not understand, 
themselves — the results of the 
election. It was so shocking. So 
unpredicted. 
So 
confounding. 
Still half asleep, I struggled to 
even catch my breath. It was quite 
literally a gut punch, immediately 
sending actual, shooting pains to 
all parts of my body. Deep in my 
bones, I felt a pain so visceral, so 
raw, that tears still fill my eyes 
and my chest still feels hollow just 
recalling that night, even two years 
later.
When I was first introduced 
to 
politics 
during 
the 
2008 
presidential election, I remember 
remarking to my parents that I 
didn’t like then-Senator Barack 
Obama, because “He was trying 
to take the presidency away from 
women.” Of course, I eventually 
grew to fall in love with Obama, 
but even then, I was thirsting for 
a certain recognition. I longed 
for an explicit, loud recognition 
and celebration of femininity 
and my womanhood. The only 
way to quench my thirst for this 
recognition was for it to be loud 
enough to turn enough heads: 
the election of the first female 
president of the United States.
Suffice to say, eight years 
later, deeper into my feminist 
awakening, 
I 
was 
positively 
desperate for my country to send 
some signal — any signal — that 
my identity as a woman was a 
gift, not a flaw, as it most often 
was growing up in conservative 
Indiana. When Secretary Clinton 
appeared to almost guarantee a 

final conquest of the last frontier, 
I was elated. Finally! Finally, this 
country would see all of the things 
women uniquely offered 
to leadership. Finally, 
little girls would be able 
to look up to a woman 
in the Oval Office and 
dream 
big 
dreams. 
Finally, I would be seen 
as fully human, capable 
of the same successes as 
my foremothers.
And then the worst 
happened. Our broken 
system 
diverted 
the 
election 
of 
Hillary 
Rodham 
Clinton, 
arguably 
the 
most 
qualified person ever to run for 
president, to someone clearly less 
experienced, less qualified and 
exhibiting less humanity. I was 
simply hopeless.
In the last two years, I have 
felt a similar, though not quite the 
same, hopelessness. I felt hopeless 
after the administration signed 
a grotesque executive order to 
ban Muslim immigrants from 
the country. I felt hopeless after 
evil people marched the streets 
of 
Charlottesville 
screaming 
“Jews will not replace us.” I felt 
hopeless after hundreds of people 
in Las Vegas and many students in 
Parkland, Fla., were slaughtered. 
I felt hopeless when children 
were ripped from their parents’ 
arms and placed into cages. I felt 
hopeless when the overturning of 
Roe v. Wade was all but guaranteed 
after 
Supreme 
Court 
Justice 
Anthony Kennedy announced his 
retirement, and again when our 
government chose to confirm an 
unsuitable man to the highest court 
in the land after hearing the tragic 
testimony of a woman credibly 
accusing him of sexual assault 
and attempted rape. Now, I feel 
hopeless in the days after 11 Jewish 
congregants in Pittsburgh were 
massacred while they worshipped.
While there have been many 
more hopeless moments since 
that painful night in 2016, I still 
have hope. There are few places 
to find hope or joy in these dark 
days, but there is so much hope to 
draw upon from the hundreds of 
women running for office up and 
down the ballot, ready to be elected 
tomorrow. They will pick up and 

carry the torch of righteousness 
America dropped on Nov. 8, 2016, 
and uphold the legacy of our 
foremothers, 
including 
Hillary 
Rodham Clinton.
From Stacey Abrams in Georgia 
to Gina Ortiz Jones in Texas to 
Rashida Tlaib right here in Detroit, 
women, especially women of color, 
have put their foot down to limit 
the damage this administration 
can do to the American people and 
stood up to be the next leadership of 
this country. Instead of employing 
respectability politics and leaning 
into the already broken system, 
these women have decided to just 
take over the whole thing. They 
are ready to reject the same old 
advice the same old Washington 
consultants give them, which is to 
just basically conform and contort 
yourself into some half-priced, 
bargain bin version of a male 
politician. They are embracing 
their femininity and experiences 
related to their female identity to 
inform their political choices and 
strategies 
with 
understanding, 
experience and, most importantly, 
know-how.
They are ready to fight to 
make Washington work for the 
American people again, not to 
give huge tax cuts to the rich 
and 
corporations. 
They 
are 
ready to fight for health care and 
education, especially for those 
that need it most. Finally, for all of 
the little girls and boys, and even 
some of us in our college years, 
these women are the beacon of 
hope for the future of this country 
— our futures.
So when you go to the polls — 
and please, vote! — tomorrow, 
keep these women in mind 
as a unique, improved type of 
leadership able to fill the void 
in 
this 
country 
by 
holding 
this 
immoral 
administration 
accountable and working on 
behalf of the American people. 
While I am literally a card-
carrying 
Democrat 
excited 
about the possibility of a wave of 
Democratic candidates on their 
way to Washington, I am most 
hopeful about the pink wave 
coming to defend all of us.

MARISA WRIGHT | COLUMN

The pink wave in the midterms

Drawing the line between media bias and fake news

ADITHYA SANJAY | COLUMN

MARISA 
WRIGHT

Marisa Wright can be reached at 

marisadw@umich.edu.

As I go through 
my life, I try to 
leave touchstones 
to which I can 
return

Adithya Sanjay can be reached at 

asanjay@umich.edu.

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