Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, March 19, 2019

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

Erin White

FINNTAN STORER

Managing Editor

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MAYA GOLDMAN

Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 

AND JOEL DANILEWITZ

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

M

ost, if not all, of my 
favorite memories in 
my entire 

life take place inside 
a 
national 
park. 

There was the time 
I climbed a 14,000-
foot 
mountain 

located in a national 
forest in Colorado, 
or the time I spent 
multiple 
days 

hiking in beautiful 
Zion National Park 
in Utah. One of my 
most 
surreal 
experiences 

occurred laying on a beach 
in Acadia National Park in 
Maine, staring up at more 
stars than I had ever seen 
at 
one 
time, 
connecting 

them to form constellations 
and seeing the Milky Way 
shine brilliantly across the 
expansive 
night 
sky. 
My 

times in the national parks 
are what have driven my 
passion for the outdoors and 
my relationship with the 
environment. It is difficult to 
see these places and not leave 
with a profound discovered 
respect for the natural world.

This 
is 
not 
a 
unique 

sentiment. 
The 
national 

parks are visited each year by 
hundreds of millions. Summer 
is one of the most popular 
times for the parks, especially 
among students looking for 
a more adventurous summer 
break than the typical beach 
trip.

There 
is 
no 
doubt 

that 
today 
the 
National 

Park Service is one of the 
most beloved and enjoyed 
government agencies and is 
often something supported by 
both major parties. The first 
national park was Yellowstone 
in Montana and Wyoming, 
established in 1872. It wasn’t 
until Woodrow Wilson came 
around that the National Park 
Service was created under the 
“Organic Act” in 1916.

Before going further, I feel 

it is important to talk about 
something often overlooked 
in the history of the national 
parks: 
the 
indigenous 

people 
who 
inhabited 
the 

land. Parks such as Glacier, 
Badlands, Mesa Verde, the 
Grand 
Canyon 
and 
Death 

Valley were, as an article by 
Hanne Elisabeth Tidnam in 
Medium 
describes, 
“taken 

from the Native American 
communities that lived within 
them as part of the United 
States 
government’s 
larger 

efforts to relocate and remove 
them.” The establishment of 

Yosemite drove out 
the Ahwahneechee 
people 
who 
had 

inhabited the land 
for 
thousands 
of 

years prior.

This is just one 

example in a laundry 
list 
of 
injustices 

carried out against 
indigenous nations 
by 
the 
United 

States 
government 

throughout 
history. 
It 
is 

important to include this part 
of the narrative when talking 
about 
the 
national 
parks. 

Current campaigns like Stop 
the Con are aimed at raising 
awareness 
around 
issues 

involving 
conservation 
and 

indigenous people globally. The 
parks are beautiful monuments 
to nature that millions of 
Americans enjoy every year, but 
to disregard their complicated 
past would be irresponsible.

Recently, President Donald 

Trump’s 
administration 

surprised many by signing an 
expansive public lands bill 
that actually expanded the 
amount of protected land and 
permanently reauthorized the 
Land and Water Conservation 
Fund, which supports efforts 
to 
conserve 
and 
promote 

outdoor recreation nationwide. 
Environmentalists 
hailed 

this as a major victory in 
an administration that has 
historically 
championed 

slashing 
 
as 
much 

environmental regulation as 
possible. National Geographic 
keeps 
a 
comprehensive 

running 
list 
of 
how 
the 

president is affecting the 
environment, and it is mostly 
all bad news. Could this 
be a turning point for the 
president?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t 

look like this is the case. 
President 
Donald 
Trump 

released the Department of 
the Interior’s Fiscal Year 2020 

budget this week, and it deals 
devastating blows to public 
lands and the national parks. 
Thankfully, as Wes Siler for 
Outside said, “the president 
does not set the official 
budget — Congress does.” 
While it is extremely unlikely 
that this version of the budget 
ever gets passed, it still 
highlights where the current 
administration’s 
priorities 

lie.

All of this comes just a 

few months after the longest 
government 
shutdown 
in 

history, which left many of 
our beloved national parks 
unprotected for days — if not 
weeks — on end. During the 
shutdown, many of the parks 
suffered damages as staffing 
was 
drastically 
reduced. 

Joshua Tree in California, for 
example, suffered damages 
to its ecosystem that could 
remain for over 300 years as 
vandals came and cut down 
the 
protected 
trees 
from 

which the park gets its name.

Headlines like these are 

extremely 
concerning 
to 

those who value the parks. 
What can be done?

By all means, I highly 

encourage 
traveling 
to 

national 
parks. 
Michigan 

is actually home to a few 
nationally 
protected 
areas 

such as Pictured Rocks, Isle 
Royale, 
and 
the 
Sleeping 

Bear Dunes, which are each 
breathtaking in their own 
way. But we collectively need 
to do a better job of caring for 
these lands and treating them 
with respect. That means 
recognizing their complicated 
history 
and 
actively 

cherishing the land. It also 
means 
providing 
adequate 

funding for conservation and 
maintenance needs.

If you do find yourself 

traveling to one or multiple 
locations in the future, it is 
crucially important to be 
mindful of your surroundings 
and take care to not disturb 
the environment around you. 
As the old saying goes: “Take 
nothing but pictures, leave 
nothing but footprints, and 
kill nothing but time.” In line 
with its original directive, 
we need to make sure to 
leave the parks unimpaired 
for the enjoyment of future 
generations.

Timothy Spurlin can be reached at 

timrspur@umich.edu.

I 

cannot pay attention.

In an age in which 

we are so thoroughly 

interconnected, 
there 
is 

always something else to do. 
Something to read, 
to look up, to watch, 
to 
communicate 

— there is always 
something. 
Being 

forthright, 
while 

writing 
this, 
I 

probably checked my 
phone, went on social 
media and worked 
on an assignment. 
With 
information 

so 
accessible, 

constant 
distraction 
feels 

inevitable. This inability to 
entirely devote my attention 
to something for an extended 
period 
of 
time 
has 
only 

gotten worse and this lack of 
discipline has seeped into all 
aspects of my life.

Family 
gatherings, 

hanging out with friends, 
class — the dynamics of how 
we interact are different given 
that 
almost 
everyone 
has 

access to devices that allow 
them to divert their attention 
elsewhere. It is one thing to 
look up further information 
on something in class. It is 
another thing entirely to miss 
out on what is happening 
around you.

This sounds like something 

that may have an easy solution 
— simply just putting one’s 
laptop away or phone down 
should do the trick. But in a 
society in which we are so 
dependent on technology, is 
that even really feasible? I 
have, along with many college 
students, become entirely too 
accustomed to living with the 
ability to access information 
whenever and wherever I 
want and a transition away 
from 
such 
could 
prove 

difficult.

My 
struggle 
to 
pay 

attention has taken away my 
ability to live in the moment.

Growing up, my mom’s 

response to being on phones 

was always, “Live in the 
moment” — and she was 
right. Due to the reality that 
my 
brain 
is 
consistently 

multi-tasking, I cannot fully 

appreciate what is 
going on around 
me.

Within 
the 

last few months, 
I 
came 
to 
the 

determination that 
taking 
a 
social 

media hiatus would 
cut back on my 
technology 
usage 

and allow for me 
to participate more 

fully in what is happening 
in the present, instead of 
viewing life through edited 
squares and filtered posts. 
While this worked for some 
time, my dependence on not 
necessarily just my phone, 
but 
access 
to 
distraction, 

remains. I still use my phone 
just as often as I would have 
beforehand, 
maybe 
just 

approaching 
social 
media 

with more of a second thought 
than before.

This leads me to pose the 

question: How can I live more 
in the moment and move 
past this persistent need to 
always be doing something? 
Can I, with the prevalence 
of interconnectedness, take 
a step back and just be? I do 
not know. I could put my 
phone away, use it less or 
not bring my computer to 
class as a means to ensure I 
pay full attention, but would 
these disciplined choices be 

drawbacks in a society in 
which usage of technology is 
almost expected?

With 
these 
resolutions 

come the fear that, without 
technology, I will fall behind. 
I will not be caught up on the 
latest piece of news, what 
is going on with friends or 
family or even the weather. 
I will not be fully equipped 
to 
manage 
my 
day-to-day 

without the possibility to 
be efficient and juggle the 
differing expectations. This 
anxiety that I could always 
be doing something else takes 
away from focusing on one 
thing and doing it well. 

While I understand this 

might not pose an issue for 
everyone, many of us seem 
to live in this frantic manner 
in which technology is an 
omniscient presence — an 
accessory to our being. This 
has caused a counteraction, 
with many, some ironically on 
social media, saying that they 
are going to “unplug.” This 
movement away has become 
in vogue, but is it possible?

Moving forward, living in 

the moment will be a priority. 
I can do so much more if I 
figure out how to silence the 
noise of constant distraction 
or the temptation to check 
my phone in class or at work. 
I can be without having to 
think about the next thing. 
I want to be able to sit and 
have a conversation, read a 
book or finish something for 
school without having the 
urge to try and accomplish 
numerous things at once. I 
want to be able to rid myself 
of the inability to be present 
that technology has created 
by firmly establishing myself 
within a singular moment. 
I cannot pay attention — 
and maybe I should start by 
putting my phone down first.

Protect our parks

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. 
Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 
to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to 

tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

Samantha Szuhaj can be reached at 

szuhajs@umich.edu.

TIMOTHY SPURLIN | COLUMN

SUBMIT TO SURVIVORS SPEAK

The Opinion section has created a space in The Michigan 

Daily for first-person accounts of sexual assault and 

its corresponding personal, academic and legal 

implications. Submission information can be found at 

https://tinyurl.com/survivorsspeak2019.

Disconnecting to combat distraction

SAMANTHA SZUHAJ | COLUMN

I 

am writing in response 
to The Michigan Daily’s 
coverage of the incident 

on Saturday. While I really 
appreciated 
the 
care 
and 

sensitivity with which the 
writers approached this topic, 
as well as the discussions of the 
ways the incident particularly 
affected Muslim and minority 
students, I have to take issue 
with one detail — the way The 
Daily presented the role of 
word-of-mouth 
information 

during 
the 
events. 
While 

misinformation and the spread 
of rumors should, of course, 
generally be discouraged and 
in this particular case such 
rumors did more harm than 
good, I don’t think it is wise 
to discourage students from 
texting their peers and friends 
during potentially dangerous 
situations. In the absence of 
official news, which, like all 
sources of human knowledge, is 
fallible, these fleeting rumors 
and texts are all we have. On 
Saturday we didn’t need them, 

and now we condemn them. But 
imagine a day when we do 
— 

when there is a real dangerous 
situation and official sources 
are not responding. Word-of-
mouth 
information, 
despite 

its easy and frequent misuse, 
could mean life or death in a 
real active shooter situation. 
As the famous proverb says, 
better safe than sorry 
— and 

better confused and scared 
than dead.

EKATERINA MAKHNINA | LETTER TO THE EDITOR

JOIN OUR EDITORIAL BOARD

Our open Editorial Board meets 
Wednesdays 7:00-8:30 PM at our 

newsroom at 420 Maynard St. All are 

welcome to come discuss national, state 

and campus affairs.

How can I live more in 

the moment and move 

past this persistent 

need to always be 

doing something? 

SAMANTHA

SZUHAJ

SUBMIT TO OPINION ABOUT THE EVENTS ON SATURDAY

If you felt impacted by the circumstances surrounding 

the false reports of a shooting on Saturday, we 

encourage you to submit an Op-Ed to The Michigan 
Daily. You can send any writing to Joel Danilewitz 
(joeldan@umich.edu) and Magdalena Mihaylova 

(mmihaylo@umich.edu). 

Ekeaterina Makhnina is a freshman 

at the University.

We collectively 

need to do a better 

job of caring for 

these lands

TIMOTHY
SPURLIN

Communicating through crisis

