Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, April 9, 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

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Managing Editor

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MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 
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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

These frustrations culminated 
in a seven-hour sit-in at the 
Fleming Administration Building 
following the March 15 Global 
Strike for Climate, after which, 
at the sit-in, 10 students were 
arrested for trespassing. Student 
organizations on campus, such as 
Climate 
Actio366.n 
Movement, 
Students for Clean Energy and 
others, have continued to pressure 
the administration and Schlissel to 
commit to more aggressive goals 
for carbon neutrality as well as 
to increase engagement with the 
student body.
We applaud the climate activism 
taking place on campus, especially as 
the institutional processes Schlissel 
implements further our mistrust 
of the University administration. 
There is historical precedent for our 
apprehension of University climate 
action. In 2015, the Greenhouse Gas 
Reduction Committee released a 
report detailing how the University 
can meet its sustainability goals, but 
most recommendations have been 
ignored by the University’s Board of 
Regents. Both the 2015 commission 
and the current commission are 
toothless simply because they are 
merely recommendations. The only 
way to ensure action is a binding 
commitment.
But our skepticism is not 
just based on the past. The 
current 
administration 
and 
commission have not earned our 
trust. We are suspicious of the 
commission because it does not 
have appropriate representation. 
Corporate executives from DTE 
and Consumers Energy each have 
full voting rights on the commission 
— the same number of votes as the 
entire student body. For us, this 
represents a serious conflict of 
interest because, as our primary 
energy 
provider, 
DTE 
stands 
to profit from the University’s 
continued dependence on fossil 
fuels. We understand DTE and 
Consumers Energy need to be a part 
of the conversation because they 
have expertise in transitioning from 
fossil fuels to renewables, but they 
do not need to be voting members. 
It would be more reasonable for 
them to serve in an advisory role 
instead. Furthermore, while there 
are two corporate executives on the 
commission, there are no faculty 
representatives for environmental 
justice despite many experts on 
the issue from the School for 
Environment and Sustainability.
We are also suspicious of the 
commission because Schlissel is not 
harnessing the advice of experts to 
make the right decisions about the 
University’s carbon footprint. The 
primary way Schlissel has done 
this is by stopping the commission 
from discussing two of the essential 
components of carbon neutrality: 
the expansion of the Central Power 
Plant and the University endowment 
investment in fossil fuels. Though 
the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change made clear that 
the world needs to cut global carbon 
emissions in half by 2030 in order to 
avoid catastrophic effects of greater 
than 1.5 degrees Celsius warming, 
the University has ignored this 
urgent report, opting instead to 
start construction on an $80 million 
expansion of the Central Power 
Plant. The University claims that 

expanding our natural gas profile 
will reduce emissions via energy 
efficiency, but in reality this decision 
will bind us to fossil fuels for years 
to come. The expansion ignores the 
latest science that questions that 
reasoning, as methane leaks are a 
significant externality of natural gas 
production. Methane has a higher 
global warming potential than 
carbon dioxide, making it unclear 
if the CPP expansion will help the 
University get to carbon neutrality. 
The commission should be allowed 
to recommend that the University 
halt the CPP expansion.
Furthermore, the commission 
should also be empowered to 
recommend that the University 
divest from fossil fuels. Though the 
University does not advertise how 
much of its endowment is invested 
in natural resources such as fossil 
fuels, numbers from the 2017 
Report of Investments put the total 
investment in natural resources at 
$925 million. The University should 
consider its investments in fossil 
fuels as part of its carbon footprint. 
Consequently, 
Schlissel 
should 
empower the commission to talk 
about the endowment’s role in the 
climate crisis. In fact, recent trends 
show investment in renewables can 
yield high returns as the renewable 
sector is outpacing traditional fossil 
fuels.
The University has shown 
reluctance toward acting in the best 
interest for the community at large. 
For example, in 2000, when the 
University divested from tobacco 
companies, the final vote from the 
Board of Regents was four in favor, 
two abstentions and one against, 
despite tobacco representing less 
than .25 percent of the endowment’s 
investments. 
The 
only 
other 
example of the University divesting 
was in 1988 due to apartheid in South 
Africa. Other than those examples, 
the University has largely avoided 
engaging in dialogue surrounding 
divestment, including the climate 
fight.
In order to create more effective 
change, 
the 
University 
should 
include more than just one student 
on the commission and in the 
planning and development of a more 
environmentally-conscious campus. 
The University has consistently 
denied requests for a commitment 
to carbon neutrality by 2030, even 
though student support has been 
rapidly increasing. One way to 
integrate the student body into its 
decision-making 
process 
would 
be to give students more powerful 
voting rights on a committee that has 
a central role in working alongside 
the University to combat carbon 
emissions. The student group would 
need to be diverse and have a deep 
understanding of environmental 
justice, 
since 
marginalized 
communities around the world 
are disproportionately impacted 
by climate change. The University 
needs to serve its students, and the 
only way to do that is for the student 
body to be at the forefront of this 
fight.
Students have repeatedly asked 
the University to take real climate 
action, and the University should 
listen and act accordingly. The 
threat of climate change is dire 
and the University’s actions do not 
reflect its urgency and severity. 

In expanding the CPP, failing to 
commit to carbon neutrality and 
expanding our investments in fossil 
fuels, the University is failing to 
be a leader on clean energy. The 
University has branded itself as 
an institution dedicated to solving 
global problems; students flock 
here to learn the skills necessary 
to change the world. When the 
administration works against the 
values and goals of the students, 
when the Board of Regents ignores 
the University’s own research on 
climate change and when students 
peacefully protesting are arrested 
rather than heard, prospective 
applicants notice. The University 
can still be one of the leaders in 
the climate movement. By taking 
steps to prevent further harm to 
the environment, the University 
can rebrand itself as an institution 
committed to sustainability.
We recognize that transitioning 
to true carbon neutrality by 
2030 will be a challenge, but in 
our eyes, the University has a 
moral imperative to lead. The 
University can and should be a 
leader. Considering we are one of 
Michigan’s largest employers, we 
have a significant carbon footprint. 
However, this also means we have 
the greatest potential to reduce 
such residual impacts. Moreover, 
those who have felt and will feel 
the impacts of climate change 
first — marginalized communities 
around the world — are less able 
to address the crisis than we are. 
We have the power to lead because 
our endowment, at nearly $12 
billion, is one of the biggest in the 
nation, and just added a record $5 
billion. If the University, a public 
research institution accountable to 
its stakeholders, cannot meet the 
objectives set out by the IPCC, no 
one can.
We want to express our 
feelings 
of 
mistrust 
toward 
Schlissel as it pertains to his and 
the 
administration’s 
handling 
of climate policies based on 
historical evidence of mishandling, 
avoiding 
and 
lagging 
behind 
on climate issues. Despite his 
attractive, 
promising 
rhetoric 
surrounding climate change and 
the commission, little has been 
done or is known about how the 
University plans to take the lead 
and enact a just transition to true 
carbon neutrality. Not only are we 
behind other schools in committing 
to carbon neutrality, we are lagging 
on one of the most serious global 
issues of our time and the future. 
We demand the University become 
more transparent in their plans by 
giving students more power in the 
internal committee or more access 
to open, unfiltered conversations. 
We must be proactive in creating 
true, effective changes that will 
not only brand the University as 
a progressive and bold campus, 
but as one that acts with a moral 
interest in mind rather than profit. 
Furthermore, we call on student 
activists to sustain the energy 
that they’ve exhibited recently 
via protesting, organizing and 
demanding serious action. If we 
continue with this movement, and 
if the University decides to invest in 
its students’ future, we can actually 
make a difference for generations to 
come.

ABBIE BERRINGER | COLUMN

What is tolerance?
A

ccording to the Merriam-
Webster Dictionary, the 
number 
one 
definition 
of tolerance is: “the capacity to 
endure pain or hardship,” followed 
by “a sympathy or indulgence for 
beliefs or practices differing from 
or conflicting with one’s own.” Yet, 
when I hear the word “tolerance” 
thrown around on our campus, it 
rarely feels like we are talking about 
the textbook definition of tolerance 
at all.
In fact, it often seems that when 
someone is asking you to tolerate 
their opinions these days, they are 
telling you to affirm them. As a 
conservative, when I respectfully 
disagree on issues such as abortion, 
gun rights, universal health care or 
free higher education, I am often 
told that my opinions are invalid, 
insensitive or bigoted. On a college 
campus as liberal as the University of 
Michigan, with 90 percent of voters 
at campus polling places voting 
for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a 
university president who openly 
applauded this while condemning 
students who may have voted 
for Donald Trump, it seems that 
disagreeing on such contentious 
issues is simply unacceptable.
While I have come in contact 
with this sort of problem many 
times on campus, a bright and 
shining example occurred just the 
other day when I volunteered to 
help table at an informative pro-
life event on the Diag sponsored by 
Students for Life and co-sponsored 
by Young Americans for Freedom 
and the Network of Enlightened 
Women. While standing at the table 
and engaging in thoughtful debate 
with someone who disagreed with 
us, a female student walked up to 
us and simply said, “What’s up, 
c**ts?” After this initial exchange, 
she continued to stand there 
while refusing to engage with us, 
before asking another student if 
he’d “like to get away from these 
motherfuckers?” before eventually 
storming off, flipping us off and 
yelling, “Fuck you!”
One would hope that this 
sort of experience is a rarity. One 
would also hope this individual 
represents a minority of college-
aged youth seemingly incapable 
of defending their ideologies with 
logic and intellect, who resort to 
petty insults and profanity. But 
this sort of interaction is actually 
not that rare at all. It seems that 
the mentality of the modern leftist 
movement — that their ideas are 
all together infallible — has led to a 
stark entitlement that they should 
never have to be challenged, and 
when they are, the challenges are 
automatically 
illegitimate. 
For 
example, as a political science 
student I have heard from other 

students in my classes that there 
“is not room for people like me in 
America anymore,” “small town 
conservatives 
don’t 
want 
our 
intelligence,” “conservatives have 
small minds,” “most white people 
are racist” and “conservatives hate 
women.” Additionally, in my four 
years at the University, only one of 
my professors has openly identified 
as right of center and most of my 
professors 
have 
either 
openly 
identified as liberal or made clearly 
liberal statements in class. This 
problem is only compounded by 
the “safe space” mentality that has 
gripped so many college campuses 
to date and allowed young liberals to 
think they deserve to be “shielded” 
and “protected” from opposing 
opinions by their university, which 
means the University affirms that 
this sentiment is true.
From 
my 
experience, 
the 
political left on this campus does 
not try to be tolerant of my political 
beliefs. They don’t feel that they 
need to listen to the reasoning for 
my beliefs or respect my culture and 
values. They don’t have to be tolerant 
of my notion of small government, 
the sanctity of life at conception or 
my interpretation of the Second 
Amendment. In fact, they get to 
call me names, yell, protest, and use 
the common scapegoats of “ists” 
and “isms” to dismiss legitimate 
intellectual conversation.
They don’t have to engage in 
debate with contentious political 
speakers on the other side of the 
political spectrum, either. They 
wish to shut them down, be shielded 
from them by safe spaces and deny 
their rights to free speech. When 
conservative speaker Ben Shapiro 
came to campus on March 12, 
for instance, counter protesters 
met to organize a protest that 
goals included distracting from 
Shapiro’s message by “diverging 
attendees’ attention through live 
entertainment.” 
Comments 
by 
members in attendance included 
people calling him a “right-wing 
bigot.” At the event, Shapiro 
explicitly said that anyone who 
disagreed could come to the front 
of the line for questions, as he does 
at every event, and yet there was 
not one question challenging any 
of his beliefs. Even though as a 
conservative, I agreed with much 
of what he was saying, I don’t agree 
with all of his opinions and I was 
disappointed that he did not face 
any intellectual challenges at a 
supposedly esteemed, intellectual 
campus.
While 
certain 
levels 
of 
extremism 
must 
certainly 
be 
condemned, like arguments for 
racial supremacy, this piece speaks 
to the alarming number of people on 
the left who are labeling almost all 

views contradictory to their own as 
intolerable. They say the right “hates 
women” when we push back against 
abortion, without hearing the 
complex moral, biological, as well 
as philosophical reasoning behind 
why many conservatives are pro-
life. Furthermore, if the left truly 
believes these accusations to be true, 
then shutting them down with logic 
and intellectual debate should be no 
problem at all. At the very least, they 
could use the opportunities to do so 
to prove to their base, and those who 
are on the fence, why their ideas 
are superior. They can’t do any of 
these things if all they wish to do is 
shutdown any debate at all.
As a graduating senior, I hope 
that in the future my conservative 
classmates feel more open to 
state their political ideology in 
classes and therefore have more 
opportunities to debate peers on the 
other side of the aisle. That is why I 
challenge the left movement on this 
campus. If they truly think their 
solutions will work, if they truly feel 
we conservatives are misguided, 
they should use intellectual debate 
among 
peers, 
professors 
and 
speakers on opposite sides of the 
aisle to actually defend their ideas 
instead of using catchphrases and 
profanity to try and shut us down. 
I challenge them to rise to the 
occasion of true tolerance, which 
isn’t forcing someone to affirm your 
beliefs, but accepting that in a free 
democratic society, the marketplace 
of ideas allows us to disagree. 
When they say, “love trumps hate” 
I challenge them to mean it and to 
ask themselves if they truly believe 
that conservatives really represent 
“hate.”
This 
doesn’t 
mean 
they 
can’t vehemently disagree as 
we vehemently disagree with 
them. Rather, it simply means 
coming to the intellectual table 
with a level of respect worthy of 
such a prestigious institution of 
learning. It means coming to a 
place where the opportunities to 
bring in speakers, host debates and 
engage in ideas that cover the full 
spectrum of American politics are 
virtually endless. My fear is that 
the left has truly gone so far as to 
believe the average conservative 
doesn’t deserve as much. My hope 
as a conservative on this campus 
is that with intellectual debate, 
the left will realize that we are not 
all racist, sexist or bigoted. I hope 
that people on both sides of the 
aisle will be able to challenge their 
own biases and assumptions in a 
way that benefits campus political 
life and discourse.

I

n case you were living under 
a rock, these past weekends 
had a number of college 
basketball 
games. 
I could not watch 
all of them, but the 
ones I watched were 
action 
packed 
and 
enjoyable – and they 
weren’t just enjoyable 
for those of you who 
can’t stand Duke. Per 
USA Today, the four 
coaches (Bruce Pearl, 
Tom Izzo, Chris Beard 
and 
Tony 
Bennett) 
who made it to the Final Four 
took home a combined $1 million 
in bonuses alone. The four of 
them still make gobs of money 
even without bonuses factored 
in — Virginia’s coach makes 
a total of about $4.15 million, 
Auburn’s coach had a salary of 
$2.6 million for the 2018-2019 
season Michigan State’s coach 
made $3.7 million for the 2018-
2019 season, and Texas Tech’s 
coach made $2.8 million for the 
2018-2019 season. The players, 
who I assume are the reason 
we watch these games, made a 
total of zero dollars in bonuses, 
which 
combines 
with 
their 
lucrative zero dollars during the 
season as well as their lucrative 
endorsement deals (which also 
net them zero dollars) for a grand 
total of zero dollars. Quite a 
difference, isn’t it?
In fiscal year 2017, the NCAA 
made over a billion dollars per 
their financial reports. Colleges 
also make boatloads of money 
off of their players, whether 
it be through ways that are 
ostensibly ethical, like licensing 
and deciding what shoes players 

can wear (with occasionally 
disastrous results), or through 
more blatantly unethical means, 
such as not allowing 
students 
to 
enter 
into 
likeness-based 
endorsement deals or 
even admit that they 
play college sports. 
And what do students 
get in exchange for 
enabling 
showers 
of 
gold 
for 
their 
colleges, coaches and 
conferences? 
Free 
Wi-Fi. One need not 
be a scholar of deals to see that it 
is an inordinately raw one and it is 
something decent people should 
want addressed for the sake of 
fairness.
There are several ways to go 
about addressing this – from 
paying athletes directly, allowing 
them to enter into likeness-
based 
endorsement 
deals 
or 
giving them a share of revenues. 
Athletes 
deserve 
to 
make 
money on top of their athletic 
scholarships for a number of 
reasons. Usually the hours that 
are put in are comparable to a 
full-time job (40 hours a week) 
and as a result, it can become 
more difficult to have spending 
money. Secondly, they should 
be allowed to sign endorsement 
deals with whatever brands they 
choose and should absolutely 
be free to license their likeness 
— there is no good reason that 
the league should be able to 
profit off athletes if the athletes 
themselves 
cannot. 
Lastly, 
athletes generate a lot of money 
for their institutions. There are 
some people who disagree with 
paying athletes because they 

receive scholarships, but I believe 
this is mistaken. While they do 
get scholarships, that funding is 
not remotely equivalent to the 
amount of money they generate 
for the NCAA. From SBNation, 
the back of the napkin math 
goes like this: The NCAA got 
$857 million for the broadcast 
rights to this tournament (from 
Turner Broadcasting, if you were 
wondering) and there are 68 
teams each with 13 scholarship 
spots 
for 
a 
total 
of 
884 
scholarship players and, while 
no one knows the exact value of 
a scholarship, it could probably 
be pegged from $30,000 on the 
low end to $50,000 on the high 
end. Multiplying the number of 
scholarships by the high value 
of a scholarship (and assuming 
high end costs), one gets $44.2 
million in total scholarship 
money given to NCAA players. 
Five percent of $857 million 
is $43.75 million. The total 
compensation from schools to 
players is just over five percent 
of the money the NCAA gets 
from the broadcast licensing of 
this tournament. One need not 
be a Marxist to think that this 
distribution is skewed unfairly.
Coaches, 
conferences 
and 
schools are all pivotal parts of 
the game. However, at the end 
of the day, we tune in to see the 
players, and it is time that they 
get something commensurate 
with the wealth they create for 
those above them. They have 
been geese laying golden eggs 
for far too long and deserve 
equitable treatment.

ANIK JOSHI | COLUMN

Why we should pay college athletes

 Anik Joshi can be reached at 

anikj@umich.edu

Abbie Berringer can be reached at 

abbierbe@umich.edu.

FROM THE DAILY

“Leaders and the Best?” Prove it.

I

n recent weeks, there has been a surge in student activism surrounding 
the University of Michigan’s policies and commitments on climate action 
and carbon neutrality. In October, University President Mark Schlissel 
announced the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality, with a directive to 
create a plan for the University to go carbon neutral. However, the move has been 
met with frustration from students on campus who feel the commission lacks the 
strength, transparency and experience to enact effective change.

ANIK
JOSHI

