Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, January 23, 2019
We need an effective carbon neutrality commission
THE CLIMATE ACTION MOVEMENT AT U-M | OP-ED
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Sarah Khan
Lucas Maiman
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger
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What the Empowered Arab Sisterhood has done for me
MARIA ULAYYET | COLUMN
C
ulture shock.
For the first time in
my life, I finally knew
and felt what those two words
really meant. As I walked
into that lecture hall in the
Chemistry Building on the first
day of my freshman orientation,
I felt like an alien. I desperately
looked
around
the
packed
auditorium
to
find
another
person of color, to find someone
even remotely like me, even if it
were just in our shared feeling
of being different.
During the last month at
home between my orientation
and my move-in day, I dreaded
having to go back to Ann Arbor.
Everyone had made friends at
orientation and was relieved to
be leaving home, but I couldn’t
relate. I was scared. I felt so
alone
during
my
three-day
orientation. I couldn’t believe
that the joy of the moment
of going away to an amazing
school, a moment I had been
waiting for for years, had been
so discreetly stolen away from
me.
As both the oldest child
and oldest girl in my Arab
immigrant family, going away
for college had been out of the
question until my junior year.
My parents told me if I could
get into a good school, I could
move out for college. Seeing
my hard work as a student go
to waste was my greatest fear.
With limited help from my
school and no help from my
family, I tried to figure out the
ACT, SAT, Common Application
and other college application
materials. So when I got into
the
University
during
my
senior year, I felt like I finally
succeeded. Little did I know
that the struggles for me were
just now beginning.
As
a
first-generation
American,
first-generation
college student and an Arab-
Muslim
woman,
I
quickly
realized that, as I sank into
my seat in the corner of that
auditorium in the Chemistry
Building,
the
odds
weren’t
really in my favor.
Who could I relate to here?
Who would I be friends with?
Who was I going to study with?
Who was I going to spend the
alleged “best years” of my life
with?
Enter
Epsilon
Alpha
Sigma — better known as the
Empowered Arab Sisterhood
— the first and only nationally
recognized
predominantly-
Arab sorority. Nearly a year and
a half later, with my 14 sisters
by my side, I can finally say
the University has become my
second home. I never pegged
myself for the sisterhood type,
let alone a “sorority girl,” but
now I can’t imagine my college
life any other way. EAS was the
space I never knew I needed,
but in reality, I was drowning
without it.
As Arab women, many of us
the daughters of immigrants,
our presence of simply being
at the University of Michigan
is stigmatized. For me, a lot of
Arab women from my hometown
either didn’t go to college or
went to local schools. Going
away was almost always out of
the question. Simply being at
Michigan felt groundbreaking
to me. But simply being here
isn’t enough.
As minorities, we’re always
playing catch up. We can get the
good grades and the test scores,
but we lack the key component:
the network.
One of EAS’s many purposes
is to fill this gap. By bringing
together the most ambitious
and passionate Arab women
leaders
on
campus,
it
is
creating a network of young
female professionals. Rather
than a toxic culture of women
constantly tearing each other
down and competing with one
another, EAS serves to provide
a breath of fresh air of women
lifting
each
other
up
and
helping each other reach their
academic
and
professional
goals. We want to break the
stigma against Arab women in
leadership roles.
Throughout
my
life
as
an Arab woman, I’ve never
truly felt like I fit in with
white people and drifted to
other communities of color.
And while I find solace in
our conjoined alienation and
marginalization,
there
still
remained a gap. As more Arab
women are reaching college and
our communities continue to
grow, it is especially pertinent
to provide these spaces like
EAS so that we no longer have
to feel lost and alone.
Through EAS, we’re going
to beat the odds that have
always been stacked against us.
Maria Ulayyet can be reached at
mulayyet@umich.edu.
CHANDLER COUZENS | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT COUZCHA@UMICH.EDU
AMANDA ZHANG | COLUMN
T
he pressure of choosing
a
good
partner
for
class projects is all too
familiar to us college
students.
But
even
worse
than
having
to choose is getting
stuck
with
the
incompetent kid your
Graduate
Student
Instructor randomly
assigned to you. This
scenario became all
too familiar to me
last semester in my
physics
lab
when,
every
Thursday
morning,
I
would walk to my classroom in
Randall Laboratory and sit next
to a complete stranger.
I wish I could say my mind
raced with thoughts like, “I
wonder if this one is smart” or “I
hope this one knows what he or
she’s doing,” but the fact of the
matter is my mind would already
be two steps ahead by the time my
partners even uttered a word. My
assumptions were pretty binary.
For guys, it was, “Thank God,
he seems smart,” and for girls, it
was, “Looks like I’m on my own
this week.”
The longer I thought about my
physics lab, the more I realized
that this was far from an isolated
instance. I say this as a self-
proclaimed feminist: I am sexist.
But how could I not be? By age 6,
society had already ingrained in
me that my gender wasn’t cut out
for the big leagues. I was raised
to hail names like Albert Einstein
and Isaac Newton, to gawk at
CEOs like Steve Jobs and Bill
Gates. As I grew older, I learned
that seats for women at male-
dominated tables were limited
and competition with my own
gender was the only viable path
to success.
By the time my 19-year-
old self reached physics lab at
the
University
of
Michigan,
the logical side of my mind
that staunchly supported the
advancement of my fellow women
was no match for those disgusting
but subtle implicit biases that had
been festering in my mind for
years.
It is certainly important to
acknowledge that women have
made massive strides toward
gender
equality,
but
these
past advancements should not
overshadow the ones that have
still yet to come. Modern day
feminism
faces
a
uniquely
difficult
path
ahead.
Our
foremothers
have
largely
battled
and
defeated
the
flagrantly
obvious
injustices
toward
women, but now it
is our responsibility
to
defeat
those
injustices that are not
so glaring — the ones
that hide in our subconscious and
manifest without notice.
It is a common but destructive
belief that because these forms of
sexism are so subtle, they are less
important. But in fact, it is these
hidden biases that hold women
back, even when the tangible
metrics like access to health care
and education have significantly
leveled out. The University’s own
Ross School of Business Class of
2020 master’s students currently
consists of 43 percent women.
While shooting for an eventual
50-50
gender
ratio
should
undeniably be a major focus for
business
schools,
we
cannot
forget that these advancements
in higher education are meant to
reap greater rewards in later life.
Women are 15 percent less
likely to earn promotions than
their male counterparts. And to
make things even more disturbing,
when the prevalence of females
grows in a certain industry,
wages for those jobs tend to see a
decrease, even when factors like
required education and relative
difficulty
are
accounted
for.
This is not an issue of merit. Our
society
subconsciously
values
male labor more than female
labor, and when industries see an
influx of females, those jobs are
subsequently perceived as less
difficult and less valuable.
When
we
talk
about
programs that seek to advance
women and minorities in the
workplace
and
academia,
we
almost exclusively debate them as
policies that give an upper hand
to the disadvantaged and the
less qualified. We debate these
programs as if the inferiority
of women is a given, and that
the sexism of institutions is
not. It is time we shift the
conversation, not just regarding
these programs, but regarding all
barriers to female advancement.
Our history textbooks love
to teach in terms of major
milestones.
The
Nineteenth
Amendment
gave
women
the right to vote, Title IX
prohibits sex discrimination in
federally supported education
programs and Roe v. Wade
upheld a woman’s legal right
to an abortion. But when it
comes
to
eliminating
the
sexism that makes me feel
relief upon getting a male lab
partner but irritation upon a
getting a female one, our future
textbooks may never find a one-
sentence landmark moment.
Our generation may never
be able to entirely shed our
sexist tendencies, but we can
take action to minimize them.
We all need to make a greater
effort to simply recognize and
acknowledge these instances
when they happen. Everyone
can be, and often is, sexist
— not just men or women or
conservatives or liberals, but
everyone — and we, as a society,
must come to terms with that
if we really want to achieve
equality of opportunity.
I have spent my entire
life staring at celebrations of
successful men, and I am sexist
as a result of this. We need to
allow women their fair share
of
successes.
Furthermore,
we need to invite women to
share the stage with men who
are already in the limelight.
Otherwise,
our
sons
and
daughters will grow up no
differently.
Coming to terms with my own sexism
Amanda Zhang can be reached at
amanzhan@umich.edu.
As Arab women,
our presence of
simply being at
the University
of Michigan is
stigmatized
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION
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tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
“
It’s not that global warming is
like a world war. It is a world
war. And we are losing.” So
claims renowned climate scholar Bill
McKibben in his latest piece urging
our leaders (and the public they
serve) to devote the attention and
resources demanded by the world’s
scientists and military strategists
to the greatest threat we have ever
faced. Despite the University of
Michigan’s intimate involvement in
producing the very science behind
McKibben’s appeal, the University’s
climate
efforts
have
remained
painfully weak, with substantive
action
stymied
by
committees
formed with little guidance and no
structural accountability.
In 2015, University President
Mark Schlissel’s Greenhouse Gas
Reduction
Committee
released
its report detailing how to achieve
the meager University emissions
reduction goals made in 2011, with
numerous additional actions to take
in the pursuit of carbon neutrality.
In the four years since, progress
has been seemingly non-existent.
The
administration
has
failed
to undertake even the simplest
recommendations to ones that
better account for greenhouse gas
emissions.
As is often the case, this failure
is not due to the passionate and
well-meaning
individuals
who
volunteered their time and effort
to produce the report, but rather
seemingly due to a lack of top-level
prioritization and a bureaucratic
framework
that
rendered
the
committee impotent. More recently,
another committee, the Blue Ribbon
Panel, has been accused of being
unrepresentative and ineffectual
due to having a vague charge
and limited power — suggesting
a more systematic failure in how
committees are being structured.
For
this
reason,
it
should
be no surprise that Schlissel’s
announcement in October to “put
U-M on a trajectory toward carbon
neutrality” was met with skepticism,
as the only real commitment
made was to create yet another
commission “tasked with developing
U-M’s plan.” Indeed, there is no
indication that the new Presidential
Carbon
Neutrality
Commission
will not suffer from the exact same
structural flaws that doomed the
GHG Reduction Committee and
waste precious time in the fight
against climate change.
So what would make for an
effective PCNC?
Firstly, the commission needs a
clear mandate to develop a climate
action plan in order to achieve an
explicit goal: a target date of 2035
for carbon neutrality. Without a
commitment to a specific goal from
the
highest
levels,
committees
spend time exploring irrelevant
possibilities, and risk having hard-
wrung recommendations be ignored
— wasting time we cannot afford to
lose. As McKibben notes, “In this
war we’re in — the war that physics
is fighting hard, and that we aren’t —
winning slowly is the same as losing.”
We know the emissions targets we
need to hit, and from the resolutions
passed unanimously by Central
Student
Government,
Rackham
Student Government, the Senate
Advisory Committee on University
Affairs and others, we know that
the U-M community is united in its
support of committing the significant
resources necessary to achieve them.
Secondly, we must be assured
that our leaders understand the task
before us and that the considerable
time taken to chart a path to a
sustainable future will not be wasted
because those at the top balk at the
ambition it requires. Transparency
of this entire process is therefore
critical to sustain public trust
and engagement and to hold the
administration accountable to the
plan developed by the commission.
Attaining this level of accountability
and transparency requires built-in
structures mandating a publicly
available review and assessment
of
each
recommendation
the
commission produces.
Thirdly, the commission must
have representatives from across
the diverse spectrum of the U-M
community and include members
specializing in environmental justice.
We commend the administration
for its swift solicitation of public
input for the commission, but true
representation only comes from a seat
at the table.
Finally, we can capitalize on
the efforts of others to implement
standards
of
transparency
and
facilitate the flow of information
between the University and other
institutions. A straightforward and
powerful way to do this would be
to sign the American College and
University
Presidents’
Climate
Commitment, which would take
advantage of the framework and
resources already developed and
employed by others in the pursuit
of carbon neutrality. Rather than
wasting precious time reinventing
the wheel, the PCNC could learn
from the experience of hundreds of
other institutions, and easily share the
efforts undertaken at the University
so as to amplify our impact and join
a growing community of institutions
working to rapidly adapt to an
uncertain future.
These reasonable and specific
steps
provide
the
foundation
needed to achieve the difficult but
necessary goal of carbon neutrality
in a scientifically well-founded
and fiscally responsible manner.
Furthermore, by having a strong
vision and adhering to the principles
of transparency and accountability
described herein, the University
will serve as a model institution in
the fight for a sustainable future,
providing the framework for other
institutions to follow. We are eager
to work together to ensure the
University is part of the Leaders and
the Best in the fight for a sustainable
future.
The Climate Action Movement is
a coalition of University stakeholders
(students, faculty, staff and community
members) working to enact
sustainability policy that reflects the
values of the broader U-M community,
with a focus on the commitment to,
and attainment of, carbon neutrality.
This letter is adapted from a longer,
open letter sent to University President
Mark Schlissel in October 2018.
AMANDA
ZHANG
It is time we shift
the conversation
regarding all
barriers to female
advancement