A

s 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan 
football 
season comes to an end, 
students begin to worry about 
where to keep their school 
spirit — leaving behind boxes 
of maize and blue apparel and 
enthusiasm. In the wake of 
last weekend’s final football 
game of the regular season, 
mourning is permitted, but 
only until our next hockey 
game.
If you frequent the hockey 
games, you know the student 
section’s unique dance moves, 
unparalleled 
volume 
and 
timely cheers. The Michigan 
Daily 
spoke 
with 
John 
Bartman and “Tall Tom,” two 
of the rowdy juniors that lead 
cheers for the arena.
“Hockey is the best-kept 
secret at the University of 
Michigan,” Tall Tom said, as 
he stands a staggering 6 feet 9 
inches above the crowd.
His accomplice, Bartman, 
strategically sits at the other 
end of the front row, and 
plays cowbell as the infamous 
metronome for the stadium’s 
cheers.
When the puck drops, we 
stand shoulder to shoulder, 
happily 
chanting, 
“The 
Victors.” When Bartman and 
Tom see fit, we unanimously 
begin yelling at the other 
goalie, with criticisms such 
as “It’s all your fault,” “You 
suck” or “Ugly goalie.” Others 
tend to join in along the 
way, resulting in an echo of 
inventive 
insults. 
Further, 
Tall Tom writes his own novel 
cheers on a whiteboard.
“They’re 
very 
in 
the 
moment, they’re clever,” Tom 
said.
When 
Michigan 
Men’s 
Hockey 
played 
against 
the University of Vermont 
Catamounts last season, we 

came back to win 3-2 after 
fighting against a steady 2-1 
head start. Tom spent the days 
before the game studying up 
on Catamount facts. In light 
of 
the 
announcement 
that 
Vermont is finally opening 
their first Target, the sign 
read: “You may have lost a 2-1 
lead, but at least you’re getting 
a Target.”
Other 
slights 
include 
photoshopping the opposing 
team’s coach into demeaning 
photographs, making claims 
about the team’s local bars 
and taking their opponents’ 
pictures off of dating apps, 
calling 
the 
photos 
“cute.” 
In the moment, clever and 
insulting. That’s the Michigan 
school spirit.
Throughout the Nov. 9 game 
against Notre Dame, Tom’s 
sign asked the Yost staff to 
play songs in high demand 
among students.
“We know the people that 
run the scoreboard and the 
audio,” Bartman said. “At 
the end of the year, we talk 
about what we can do better, 
what they want us to improve 
on and what went well.” 
By working with Yost, the 
students are able to create 
an 
environment 
comprised 
of cowbells, loud voices and 
passion, and one that draws 
in fans of all ages.
There’s 
something 
about 
the band’s placement adjacent 
to the student section that 
amplifies the excitement of 
both parties. Since the director 
of the band stands towards the 
bleachers, he can conduct the 
official band members while 
keeping an eye on John and his 
cowbell. This maintains great 
communication between the 
fans and the music, according 
to Bartman.
“We can’t override them 

— we kind of play off each 
other,” he said, alluding to 
the collaborative rendition of 
the “SpongeBob SquarePants” 
theme song sung the night 
before.
The 
teamwork 
between 
the band and the students is 
arguably the most integral 
part of the game, harnessing 
the passion that distinguishes 
Michigan spirit from other 
schools.
What will happen when 
these two graduate in 2020?
“I think it’s understood that 
once we leave, someone will 
fill our void, because that’s 
what we did,” Tom said as he 
reminisced on his freshman 
year.
Bartman 
agreed, 
adding 
that 
his 
energy 
and 
enthusiasm is what ultimately 
recruited him to play the 
cowbell. Though the crew 
discusses 
passing 
down 
the torch as an “organic” 
process and rejects the idea 
of a hierarchy, they have their 
eye on a number of younger 
students to fill their void.
“It’s free-flowing,” Bartman 
claimed. 
“We 
consider 
ourselves the children of Yost. 
We’ve all kind of taken that 
role.”
Michigan 
spirit 
never 
dies, but instead, hibernates. 
John Bartman and Tall Tom 
proclaimed themselves as the 
team’s “mascots,” with no 
incentive except school spirit. 
The hockey games have the 
talent on the ice and passion 
in the stands, but seem to lack 
the numbers seen at the Big 
House for football games. The 
next home game is against 
Michigan State on Dec. 1 at 
7:00 p.m.

H

ow 
can 
we 
conceptualize 
what it means to be 
sustainable? To start, we can 
go by a definition: “pertaining 
to a system that maintains 
its own viability by using 
techniques and resources that 
allow for continual reuse.” We 
can really ingest the words in 
this statement, understanding 
that to be sustainable means to 
live for the future, but it’s truly 
bewildering to consider how 
we can be conscious of each 
moment in the present in order 
to allow our future to exist. The 
glorified crux of sustainability 
has been a very difficult reality 
to achieve — perhaps even an 
unrealistic effort at this point. 
But I believe it’s equally as 
monumental to ask ourselves 
how we can each improve 
our own lifestyles in order to 
arrive that much closer to what 
has been widely perceived as 
impossible to reach.
Adopting 
a 
sustainable 
lifestyle has likely been one of 
the most radical phenomena to 
be theorized over the past few 
decades. We have been driven 
to live a modernized life by 
abiding to the constructs that 
were formed with the birth of 
industrialization in the 18th 
century. For our entire lives, 
we have eaten and thrown 
away our meals, used and 
thrown away clothes that have 
been too worn out, bought new 
vehicles and gotten rid of them 
once they were replaceable 
or irreparable and wore our 
bodies out with a scattered 
lifestyle until death. What we 
have failed to realize today is 
that those constructs can be 
now changed in a less radical 
way when their alternatives 
are less stigmatized by money 
and by the popular clique 
that is our society. We can 
eat natural meals that avoid 
manufacturing and processing, 
use clothes with more durable 
and 
less 
lavish 
material, 
use vehicles that prioritize 
efficiency 
rather 
than 
convenience 
and 
maintain 
ourselves 
in 
coexistence 
with other organisms for an 
enduring life.
We haven’t realized this 
need to change various aspects 
of our lifestyle because we’ve 
been 
able 
to 
survive 
and 
seemingly 
thrive 
for 
this 
long 
without 
considering 

our future. Like any survival 
measures, our lifestyle is not 
meant for permanence. We 
only use temporary techniques 
to keep ourselves going until 
we are able to find some stable 
resolve. The problem is that we 
fail to consider the future as 
we survive, yet we have to now 
more than ever so that it even 
exists.
Our politicians have recently 
not demonstrated a sustainable 
mindset, as they merely rely 
on technology and engineered 
methods to solve the issues 
that call for radical change. 
For one, I want to defend that 
conducting shooter drills or 
arming 
public 
places 
with 
guards is not how we should 
approach 
reducing 
civilian 
deaths 
by 
gun 
violence. 
Promoting the use of portable 
air filters as a substitute to 
clean air when the areas in 
which we live become engulfed 
in 
smoke 
from 
towering 
wildfires is not how we should 
approach improving the overall 
air quality of our populated 
areas. We should be taking 
direct action at the cause of 
these issues, being proactive 
rather than reactive so that we 
can create an enduring way of 
life for ourselves.
Many will follow up this 
argument 
with 
skepticism 
towards the feasibility of a 
sustainable society, claiming 
that it’s impossible to plan 
and implement a sustainable 
lifestyle 
that 
works 
everywhere. But what I believe 
is more important than asking 
how we will conquer this 
massive ordeal is asking when 
we will take it upon ourselves 
to 
even 
try. 
People 
are 
discouraged by the fact that no 
one can say exactly how we can 
all adopt a more sustainable 
lifestyle for ourselves now, 
for humankind in the future, 
but there is no possibility of 
even inching closer to that 
world if we don’t make an 
effort to advance towards it 
through 
understanding 
and 
collaboration. While we remain 
unsure if the plans we propose 
will completely follow through 
despite 
our 
progressive 
intentions, it’s necessary that 
we sincerely begin this process 
to overcome the contest we face 
from a stagnant government 
and society.
The young people of this 

generation who have begun to 
display their concern haven’t 
completely figured out how 
to execute our intentions yet, 
but we have at the very least 
begun to demand the answers 
to the big questions that some 
of our key politicians are 
failing to address regarding 
the 
sustainability 
issue. 
As stated by young activist 
Jeremy Ornstein in a rally for 
the “Green New Deal” towards 
the likely next speaker of the 
House 
of 
Representatives, 
“Speaker Pelosi, Democratic 
leadership, 
we 
are 
asking 
you to grow up. When will 
you come up with a plan to 
stop the climate crisis and 
defend the homes of millions 
of would-be climate refugees? 
When will you embrace a 
Green New Deal? You know, 
please, Speaker Pelosi, come 
of age with us. But if you can’t, 
if you’re too scared to try, if 
you’re too corrupt or cowardly, 
then get out of the way.” 
The truth is that we can’t 
conceptualize what it means 
to be sustainable yet. We are 
merely at the beginning of 
a new era during which we 
will discover a multitude of 
techniques to adopt so that we 
can lead a lifestyle that will 
maintain humankind for ages 
to come. As of now, I urge you 
to contribute to the creation 
of the era of sustainability 
by 
educating 
yourself 
on 
the facts of climate change 
like 
various 
university 
professors have done with 
the Intergovernmental Panel 
on Climate Change climate 
report. 
Support 
policies 
that demonstrate a potential 
drastic enough to uproot our 
society’s current constructs 
like the Green New Deal, 
and demand that our leaders 
work to make sustainable 
lifestyles, such as veganism, 
more accessible to people 
of 
every 
background 
and 
economic 
disposition. 
By 
taking 
action 
against 
the 
status quo with a brute force 
strong enough to deconstruct 
it, an act as heroic as saving 
the future of our world will 
become 
that 
much 
more 
normalized and that much 
more possible.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, November 26, 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

School spirit never dies

Calling for an era of sustainability

KIANNA MARQUEZ | COLUMN

Julia Montag can be reached at 

jtmon@umich.edu.

Kianna Marquez can be reached at 

kmarquez@umich.edu.

N

ov. 
19 
is 
marked 
as 
International 
Men’s Day, devoted 
to 
the 
positive 
contributions 
of 
men 
to 
greater 
society as well as 
highlighting 
men’s 
well-being. 
It 
is 
a 
day 
that 
went 
unrealized 
and 
unmarked. Perhaps 
this 
makes 
sense 
to 
many. 
After 
all, why celebrate 
the 
advances 
and 
highlight the plights of a 
historically privileged group? 
Men as a demographic have 
not typically had to fight 
for rights on the basis of 
gender. On the whole, they 
have been less likely to be 
victims of domestic violence, 
sexual violence and human 
trafficking. Worldwide, men 
hold the majority of the wealth, 
both in money and in land. It 
seems as though society was 
created for the male gender to 
succeed, and thus the point of 
an international day for men 
should be moot. 
However, even in the 21st 
century, gender imbalances 
still 
prevail. 
These 
imbalances exist beyond those 
perpetuated against women, 
though these are the ones 
most 
apparent 
in 
society. 
While 
gender 
inequalities 
against women are egregious 
and 
apparent, 
those 
that 
impact men still exist. They 
are 
under-discussed 
and 
often 
overlooked, 
possibly 
because men are more often 
encouraged 
to 
hide 
their 
problems and conform to social 
standards. 
Nevertheless, 
men and boys still are held to 
similar standards and suffer 
under the same inequalities 
that influence women, often 
in much more discreet ways.
In 
its 
modern 
form, 
International Men’s Day began 
in 1999, initiated in Trinidad 
and 
Tobago 
by 
Jerome 
Teelucksingh. 
In 
contrast 
with March 8’s International 
Women’s Day, International 
Men’s 
Day 
passes 
rather 
quietly, without marches or 
media attention. This fact 
is largely representative of 
the gender issues that affect 
men. For example, in much of 
the Western world, there is 
immense pressure to perform 
all standards of masculinity. 
This 
largely 
includes 
providing for the family as 
the 
primary 
breadwinner. 
Marriages in which the female 
partner outearns her male 
counterpart are more likely 
to suffer from infidelity and 

end in divorce. Husbands who 
earn less than their wives 
tend to feel inadequate and 
emasculated, 
as 
though they have 
failed to live up to 
their potential.
Such 
feelings 
of inadequacy can 
contribute to men’s 
failing 
mental 
health. Nationwide, 
6 million men suffer 
from 
depression. 
However, 
this 
condition 
goes 
largely undiagnosed in men. 
This may be because men are 
less likely to present with the 
more widely known symptoms 
of hopelessness and sadness, 

and tend to demonstrate anger, 
fatigue and loss of interest in 
daily life activities. It also may 
be the result of a general male 
reluctance to seek help for 
their disorders, owing largely 
to a tendency to downplay 
symptoms or to comply to 
social norms of emotional 
strength and stability. This 
is a trend with disastrous 
results. Male suicides have 
been consistently rising since 
2000, with men being four 
times as likely to die by suicide 
than women.
Typically 
stigmatized 
social behaviors are often 
policed more harshly when 
they appear in men. Gay and 
bisexual men suffer harshly 
from homophobia. According 
to a 1999 study, gay men were 
more likely than lesbians to be 
deemed mentally ill by society, 
and child adoption by gay men 
was viewed less favorably 
than by that of gay women. 
While societal attitudes have 
certainly shifted over the past 
two decades, particularly with 
the legalization of same-sex 
marriage in 2015, instances 
of homophobia still abound. 
Men and boys are less likely to 
engage in platonic touch with 
friends, leaving them cut-off 
physically and emotionally.
This 
lack 
of 
friendly 
touching between men and 
boys contributes to deeper 
emotional issues. Touch can 
act as a means of reducing 

stress 
and 
boosting 
self-
esteem. Lack of touch affects 
parenthood. Fathers tend to 
be less involved parents than 
mothers. This mostly stems 
from 
the 
aforementioned 
economic 
pressures 
that 
lead 
many 
men 
out 
of 
the 
home 
and 
into 
high-
pressure, 
long-hour 
jobs. 
Furthermore, paid paternity 
leave in the United States is 
extraordinarily scarce. Even 
when it is available, men 
who take advantage of the 
opportunity 
are 
criticized. 
Take, for example, a 2014 
instance involving New York 
Mets second baseman Daniel 
Murphy. Murphy missed the 
opening game of the season for 
the birth of his first child. In 
the days following the birth, 
Murphy received a series of 
criticisms for using his three 
days of paternity leave. Sports 
radio WFAN hosts Boomer 
Esiason 
and 
Craig 
Carton 
suggested 
that 
Murphy 
and his wife should have 
scheduled a C-section prior 
to the season opener. This 
anecdote is demonstrative of 
the fact that men are often 
shamed for engaging in typical 
standards of parenting. The 
manner through which men 
are shamed for stereotypically 
feminine behaviors prevents 
men and boys from creating 
and maintaining meaningful 
relationships.
When the topic of gender 
issues 
is 
invoked, 
the 
injustices 
against 
women 
are 
often 
the 
only 
ones 
discussed. 
This 
is 
often 
rightfully so, as these abuses 
are particularly egregious. 
However, 
this 
fact 
does 
not mean that men’s issues 
deserve 
to 
be 
completely 
ignored. The gender-related 
inequalities 
that 
impact 
males, the immense societal 
pressure to provide for their 
families, the discouragement 
of discussing their emotions 
and the harsh policing of 
potentially feminine behavior 
have 
overwhelmingly 
negative impacts on the male 
psyche. With rising suicide 
rates and instances of male 
substance abuse, it is evident 
that something must be done 
to alleviate this crisis. True 
gender equality cannot be 
achieved until all relating 
issues 
are 
acknowledged 
and combatted. In the era of 
#MeToo and other feminist 
movements, it is important to 
remember that gender issues 
affect everybody. 

ALANNA BERGER | COLUMN

Why we still need an International Men’s Day

Alanna Berger can be reached at 

balanna@umich.edu.

ALANNA
BERGER

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Even in the 21st 
century, gender 
imbalances still 
prevail

JULIA MONTAG | COLUMN

