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INDEX
Vol. CXXVIII, No. 91
©2019 The Michigan Daily
N E WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
O PI N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
S U D O K U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
CL A S S I F I E DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
michigandaily.com
For more stories and coverage, visit
CAMPUS LIFE
ANGELINA LITTLE
For The Daily
‘U’ Muslim community reacts after
active shooter scare interrupts vigil
Police response to reported threats disrupted commemoration of mass shooting
Journalist,
son discuss
struggle to
get asylum
GOVERNMENT
Knight-Wallace fellow
shares his experience of
mistreatment, threats
JULIA JOHNSTON
For The Daily
See HEALTH , Page 3
Follow The Daily
on Instagram:
@michigandaily
Dialogue
addresses
racism in
healthcare
Discussion focuses on
racial discrimination
faced by new mothers
MELANIE TAYLOR
Daily Staff Reporter
Jay Bochert earned both
his
master’s
degree
and
PhD in sociology from the
University of Michigan and
worked as a graduate student
instructor. He also spent
seven years in prison before
attending the University.
Bochert is a researcher
and quantitative analyst at
the Drug Policy Alliance, a
co-founder of the Formerly
Incarcerated College Gradu-
ates Network and an assis-
tant professor of sociology at
the John Jay School of Crim-
inal Justice.
Bochert continued by dis-
cussing the powerful sym-
bolic nature of the policy
which will require Univer-
sity employees to disclose
felony allegations. Bochert
examined how, while the fel-
ony disclosure policy itself
does not impact admissions,
the message the policy sends
could prevent qualified peo-
ple from applying. He also
noted that the University is
an influential school and it
could lead other universities
to implement similar poli-
cies.
“Aside from the people
who
decide
not
to
even
apply or decide that they are
never going to make it into a
school,” Bochert said. “And
there are lots of people who
just give up like that, there
are going to be loads of people
who are going to be affected
by the symbolic nature of this
change.”
Bochert graduated in 2016
and received many national
and school-specific awards,
including
the
Emerging
Diversity
Scholar
award
from the National Center for
Institutional Diversity, the
Mellon American Council of
Learned Societies Disserta-
tion Completion Fellowship
Doctoral Candidate Research
Grant, the Rackham Merit
Fellow and, most recently, a
certificate of recognition for
research mentoring.
Bochert said despite all he
accomplished on campus, the
new felony disclosure policy
sends a message the Univer-
sity does not value those with
a criminal background.
michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Thursday, March 21, 2019
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Disclosure
policy may
discourage
applicants
Professor examines implications
of Harvard discrimination lawsuit
ADMINISTRATION
Rule mandating staff reveal any felony
charges draws criticism, concern
EMMA STEIN
Daily Staff Reporter
Lawyer advised school during trial to determine if admissions process violated civil rights
NIKKI KIM
Daily Staff Reporter
On
Wednesday
afternoon,
around 100 students gathered in
Rackham auditorium to listen to
Julie Park, associate professor
at the University of Maryland
and author of “Race on Campus:
Debunking Myths with Data,”
discuss the implications behind
Students for Fair Admissions
v. Harvard, the lawsuit against
Harvard University to deter-
mine if the college violated the
Civil Rights Act by discriminat-
ing against Asian Americans
through their college admissions
process. Park was the consulting
expert for the trial, serving as
defense for Harvard.
Her talk comes amidst recent
controversy
surrounding
the
college admissions bribery scan-
dals in schools like University
of Southern California, George-
town University, Yale University
and Stanford University.
The talk was part of a larger
seminar series by the National
Center for Institutional Diver-
sity, aiming to invite scholars
who promote academic under-
standing of both historical and
contemporary issues about race,
oppression, power and how they
occur on campus.
Park’s choice to come to the
University of Michigan was in
part driven by her personal con-
nection to it. She explained that
she was inspired by the early
2000s University of Michigan
lawsuits and decided to pursue
what is now her current academic
path. Her research on the relation-
ship between affirmative action
and Asian Americans works to
question and debunk the myths
surrounding
Asian
Americans
through statistical data.
“We need to think about how
we fit into this broader landscape,
what our stories are and how they
might be used or exploited by
other if we don’t take own-
ership of our own stories,”
Park said.
She referenced one of the ear-
lier college admissions lawsuits:
the second Abigail Fisher case. In
2016, Abigail Fisher was one of the
plaintiffs challenging University
of Texas in a case investigating
admissions discrimination based
on skin color.
After the first Fisher case,
Edward Blum, president of SFFA
and the man leading the initiative
to eliminate all race-conscious
admissions, developed a website
called harvardnotfair.org. After
four failed cases where the plain-
tiffs were all white with B-average
grades, the anti-affirmative action
movement changed their strategic
course to focus on Asian Ameri-
cans with exceptional grades.
According to Park, Asian Amer-
icans make more sympathetic
plaintiffs than white students
with mediocre grades.
“There were a lot of Black and
Latinx applicants with better
grades who didn’t get in,” Park
said.
KARTIKEYA SUNDARAM/Daily
Julie J. Park, associate professor of education at the University of Maryland, presents a lecture at the Research & Scholarship Seminar Series:
Affirmative Action, Asian Americans, and the Harvard Case at Rackham Auditorium Wednesday afternoon.
Wednesday
evening
the
International House Ann Arbor
hosted “Asylum Journey: 10 Years
in the Immigration System,”
featuring Knight-Wallace Fellow
Emilio Gutiérrez Soto and his son,
Oscar Gutiérrez Soto, who spoke
on their experiences immigrating
to the United States from Mexico.
The event was organized by the
University of Michigan Center for
Latin American and Caribbean
Studies, the Interfaith Council for
Peace and Justice and Washtenaw
Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant
Rights (WICIR).
Gutiérrez
Soto,
speaking
through a translator, recounted his
experience facing persecution by
the government as a journalist in
Mexico. After facing surveillance
and the destruction of his home
by the military in Mexico, he
entered the United States with his
son in 2008. Since immigrating,
the Gutiérrez Sotos have been
detained in ICE facilities twice,
most recently for eight months in
2017. His application for asylum
was recently denied, and his
attorney filed an appeal to the U.S.
Board of Immigration Appeals.
DESIGN BY SHERRY CHEN
See FELONY, Page 3
See LAWSUIT, Page 3
Students awoke Friday morn-
ing to news of mass shootings in
two mosques in New Zealand,
killing 50. The next day, dur-
ing a vigil to commemorate the
lives lost in New Zealand, police
officers ran into the crowd urg-
ing people to flee the Diag, where
the vigil was being held. Shortly
after, the University issued an
emergency alert telling students
to “run, hide, fight”, alleging that
an active shooter was on campus.
Though the situation was eventu-
ally resolved and confirmed to be
a false alarm, many students spent
over two hours in hiding from
what they believed to be a lethal
threat.
When Public Policy senior Zoha
Qureshi, vice president of external
affairs for the Muslim Students’
Association, first heard about the
attacks in New Zealand, she felt
“numb.” She did not want to read
the stories or see the video circling
the Internet. She suppressed the
news and went to sleep, hoping it
was not true. It was not until the
next morning that Qureshi was
forced to confront the reality of
the tragedy.
“That’s when I started to feel
like, ‘Oh my god. No. I can’t believe
this is happening,’’” Qureshi said.
News of New Zealand shoot-
ings affected Qureshi more than
any other story in what she sees
as a constant influx of tragic news
and gun violence plaguing her
newsfeed.
According to Qureshi, this
attack was more personal than the
others.
“I just remember every time a
mass shooting happens, I always
worry like, ‘Oh my God. What will
I do if it hits a community close
to home?’” Qureshi said. “Every
mass shooting is a terrible situa-
tion, right, but I was always just
hoping it would of course never
happen again but then never enter
a mosque or never affect a com-
munity that’s close to me, but then
it did.”
LSA junior Silan Fadlallah, stu-
dent coordinator for the Islamo-
phobia Working Group, echoed
Qureshi’s sentiments. Fadlallah
could not wrap her mind around
how someone could be so hate-
ful in the face of her community’s
peace and hospitality.
“It really did get to me, and I did
get emotional at one point because
even though I’m not a super, super
practicing Muslim, I do definitely
consider myself spiritually Mus-
lim,” Fadlallah said. “It was just
difficult for me to really challenge
myself to process the fact that
Islamophobia is so, so real.”
After some initial grieving,
both
Qureshi
and
Fadlallah
sprung into action to console the
University Muslim community,
also awash in fear and shock.
Muslim Student Association orga-
nized a DPSS security presence
for their upcoming Jumu’ah ser-
vice, the same Friday prayer that
had been disrupted by the attacks
in New Zealand.
See SCARE , Page 3
See ASYLUM , Page 3
The 29th annual Martin Luther
King Jr. Health Sciences Lecture
and Community Dialogue com-
menced this Wednesday at the
University of Michigan School
of Nursing. Entitled “Disparities
Dialogue on Maternal Health and
Care: Being a Black Woman Giv-
ing Birth in the U.S.: A Maternal
Health Crisis,” the event focused
on inequity in maternal health-
care.
Approximately 100 people at-
tended the event, including stu-
dents, who made up a majority of
the attendees, as well as faculty,
staff, alums and community mem-
bers. The discussion was part of a
series of held by the Martin Luther
King Jr. Health Sciences Program
with the purpose of improving eq-
uity in healthcare.
Dr. Lenette Jones, assistant pro-
fessor at the School of Nursing and
one of the organizers of the event,
said she hoped the conversation
would provide a space for students
to think critically with experts.
“I think for all the MLK events
we had this year, we really had in
mind the students,” Jones said.