Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Zack Blumberg
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Timothy Spurlin
Nicholas Tomaino
Erin White 
Ashley Zhang

FINNTAN STORER
Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St. 
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

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

T

he 2020 Democratic 
primary 
has 
been 
defined by a number 
of litmus tests. Many of the 
candidates in the progressive 
wing of the party, including 
Sen. 
Cory 
Booker, 
Sen. 
Kamala Harris, former U.S. 
Rep. 
Beto 
O’Rourke 
and 
others have been pushed to 
prove their progressive merits 
by stating their support for 
key progressive policies or 
process 
measures. 
Which 
policies 
constitute 
those 
litmus 
tests 
is 
important 
because they offer a signal 
about which issues Democrats 
will prioritize if they retake 
power in 2020. As of this 
writing, they are in support 
for some form of “Medicare 
for all” and the Green New 
Deal 
— 
the 
“superstar” 
policies. Different candidates 
are trying to add what they see 
as their unique contribution 
to that list. Booker introduced 
a baby bonds bill and Harris 
wants to expand the earned 
income tax credit through her 
LIFT the Middle Class Act. 
These candidates are trying 
to elevate the specific policy 
area they have expertise in to 
the level of “Medicare for all” 
and the Green New Deal. The 
policy most deserving of being 
promoted to superstar status 
is Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 
proposal for universal child 
care and affordable preschool. 
Warren’s plan guarantees 
that every American making 
less 
than 
approximately 
twice the poverty line will 
be able to send their child 
to 
government-sponsored 
day care and preschool for 
free. Families making more 
than that amount would pay 
for the service on a sliding 
scale tied to income, maxing 
out at 7 percent for the 
wealthiest. Warren’s proposal 
is 
important 
and 
timely 
because child care costs are 
high and rising — the median 
annual price is $8,320, more 
than half the cost of in-state 
tuition at the University of 
Michigan — and takes up 
between, according to some 
estimates, 9 and 36 percent 
of annual household income. 
Warren’s plan would also 
establish quality standards 
that all programs receiving 
government support would 
have to meet to address the 

poor state of preschools in 
the United States right now. 
To meet that plan, Warren 
proposes paying daycare and 
preschool instructors more 
like the teachers they are. 
The 
proposal 
is 
also 
important 
because 
the 
United States lags behind 
other countries in child care 
and 
preschool 
attendance. 
According to a 2015 report, 
the United States ranks 31st 
in 
3-year-old 
enrollment 
among the Organisation for 
Economic Co-operation and 
Development, a group of 36 
mostly rich countries. The 
United States needs real and 
dramatic 
early 
childhood 
education reform. 
Democratic 
candidates 
are supportive of expansions 
of early childhood education, 
but besides Warren, none 
has supported making child 
care universal. All the other 
senators running for president 
have signed onto a long-
running bill to double the 
number of children eligible 
for subsidized child care, but 
stop short of universality. 
Every Democratic 2020 
candidate should pledge to 
fight for Warren’s plan or 
some expansion of child care 
and preschool if elected, but 
they have not felt the need to. 
Voters and the media have not 
considered 
universal 
child 
care a priority for progressive 
candidates for president, but 
they should. 
One 
reason 
Warren’s 
policy 
has 
not 
achieved 
superstar status is because the 
research seems to show that 
early 
childhood 
education 
is not actually helpful for 
students. However, this line 
of research takes too narrow 
an 
approach. 
Early 
child 
education 
proponents 
cite 
that 
academic 
differences 
between 
children 
who 
participated 
in 
programs 
and 
those 
who 
did 
not 
are negligible as early as 
first grade. But this line of 
research 
is 
fundamentally 
flawed because it does not 
fully consider the long-term 
impacts of these programs 
on 
families 
or 
students. 
Studies that look at how 
access to reliable day care 
impacts students long-term 
have 
consistently 
shown 
favorable tangible impacts — 

higher college attendance and 
graduation, lower drug use 
and arrest rates — as well as 
positive impacts on maturity.
The research shows that 
the 
benefits 
of 
universal 
preschool, while negligible in 
the classroom, are significant 
in other areas of children’s 
lives, at least in the short-
term. They allow parents to 
avoid child-care costs, such 
as hiring a babysitter, paying 
for expensive day care or the 
opportunity cost of a parent 
staying at home to take care 
of the child. With subsidized 
or free child care, traditional 
family 
income 
is 
more 
resilient because there will be 
more sources, creating a more 
stable home environment. 
But 
the 
benefits 
of 
child 
care 
extend 
beyond 
the 
children 
themselves. 
Universal 
child 
care 
and 
affordable preschool would 
serve to improve the gender 
pay gap. When children are 
not in school, women are 
far more likely to stay at 
home than men. Taking a 
break from work sets women 
back in the workplace and 
contributes to the gender pay 
gap. 
Both Booker’s baby bonds 
bill and Harris’ LIFT Act are 
trying to promote equity, 
but universal child care is a 
more comprehensive effort to 
promote equal opportunity. 
Progressives should support 
universal child care, and not 
just an expansion as most 
do, for moral and political 
reasons. 
Morally, 
every 
child should have access to 
early childcare’s long-term 
benefits and parents should 
not have to sabotage their 
careers due to expensive child 
care. Politically, pushing for 
ambitious solutions may make 
incremental progress more 
likely, as it has for health 
care 
coverage 
expansions. 
The litmus test dynamic of 
the Democratic primary is 
complicated and problematic, 
but voters and the media 
should brand the candidates 
that 
have 
not 
decisively 
supported 
universal 
child 
care as less progressive than 
those who have.

TIMOTHY SPURLIN | COLUMN

Reflections atop a dead mountain
R

ecently, I took a road 
trip down to 
West Virginia 
to 
learn 
more 
about 
mountaintop 
removal coal mining 
and tour the remains 
of a retired mine on 
Kayford 
Mountain, 
located in a rural 
area 
outside 
of 
Charleston, 
W.V. 
Mountaintop 
removal, as the name 
suggests, is a process of coal 
mining that involves rigging 
explosives to a mountaintop 
and blowing it up so coal 
companies can extract threads 
of coal hidden in the interior of 
the mountain. The results are 
devastating to the local ecology 
and topography, reducing the 
richly 
biodiverse 
area 
and 
leveling the mountain to a 
barren rocky landscape. My 
commitment to environmental 
activism guided my journey 
to see the horrible effects of 
coal mining firsthand, yet, my 
experience was not exactly 
what I had pictured it would be.
In fact, while the lifeless 
remains of the mountain itself 
were enough to depress anyone, 
it was the interaction with the 
local community that moved 
me more. The environmental 
implications of mountaintop 
removal coal mining, and coal 
mining in general, are well 
documented, however, the more 
insidious effect is the economic 
burden placed on the people 
living in these communities. 
West Virginia is a state that is 
somewhat dependent on coal for 
its economy. Coal built the state 
and its ongoing slow demise has 
devastated rural communities. 
The trip highlighted just how 
influential coal is to the people 
of West Virginia. Growing up in 
Michigan, I felt strong parallels 
between the coal mines of West 
Virginia and the auto factories 
of Flint and Detroit. In both 
cases local communities are 
wholly dependent on a singular 
employer and eventually are 
left with no viable safety net.
While on Kayford Mountain, 
my group encountered a local 
who lived on the mountain 
and coincidentally had a close 
personal 
tie 
to 
Michigan. 
After 
exchanging 
a 
few 
pleasantries, he told us in his 
thick Appalachian accent that 
he lived and worked in Flint for 
the better part of 25 years. He 
said that when he was young, 
the coal mine in his town shut 
down, so he packed up and 
headed north to work in the 
auto industry. He worked at 
a factory in Flint doing metal 
work until General Motors shut 
down some of its operations. He 
moved back to West Virginia 
and has been living on the 
mountain ever since.
The 
connection 
between 
Appalachia and the Midwest 
runs deeper than I could have 
thought. Larry Gibson, founder 
of the nonprofit Keeper of the 
Mountains, 
responsible 
for 
giving tours of mountaintop 
removal on Kayford Mountain, 
actually spent most of his life in 
northern Ohio. When GM shut 
down its plant in the 1980s, 
Gibson decided to move back 
to West Virginia and live in an 
area that his family had owned 
for 
a 
generation. 
Gibson’s 
culture and heritage are rooted 
deeply in a mix of Midwestern 

and 
Appalachian 
values 
of 
hard, honest work. 
While on the tour, 
Bill 
DePaulo, 
an 
environmental 
lawyer and member 
of Keeper of the 
Mountains, 
told 
stories 
about 
what 
inspired 
Gibson to start the 
nonprofit. 
Back 
before mountaintop 
removal coal mining 
started, Kayford was the lowest 
point in the surrounding peaks 
of the Appalachian Mountains; 
however, 
coal 
companies 
stripped down the surrounding 
summits and the once beautiful 
and rich landscape became flat 
and dead. When coal companies 
tried to buy Gibson’s land, 
his 
charitable 
organization 
instead managed to designate 
his property as a public park 
via a land trust agreement, 
thus protecting it from further 
mountaintop 
removal 
and 
allowing public tours.
As one might expect, this 
angered the coal companies 
operating in the area, and 
they did everything in their 
power to scare Gibson away. 
According to DePaulo, when 
Keeper of the Mountains first 
started operating on Kayford 
Mountain, 
coal 
companies 
would send people to intimidate 
tourists and environmentalists 
by shooting into the air or 
emptying a revolver clip into 
vacant trailers. While on the 
tour, I walked past a trailer that 
still had bullet holes scattered 
throughout 
the 
exterior. 
Sometimes 
the 
intimidation 
turned 
to 
actual 
violence. 
DePaulo told a story of how one 
morning, Gibson had woken up 
to find his dog had been killed 
and strung up on his front 
porch. While there was no note, 
the timing and circumstances 
heavily suggests that someone 
from the coal companies was 
responsible.
While 
absolutely 
tragic, 
Gibson’s story is not an isolated 
incident. Coal and fossil fuel 
industries have a proven history 
of intimidation and violence, 
and have played an active role 
in spreading misinformation 
about their practices. In the 
1920s, coal companies created 
an army to fight a movement 
of miners wanting to unionize, 
resulting in what historians 
have coined the coal wars. 
Their 
size 
and 
checkbooks 
give them absolute power over 
their workers, residents and 
politicians. When talking with 
DePaulo 
about 
the 
politics 
of the region, he stated aptly 
that “there is no Republican 
or Democratic Party in West 
Virginia — just the coal party.”
A pillar of President Donald 
Trump’s 
2016 
presidential 
campaign 
was 
saving 
coal. 
As things stand today, he has 
completely failed to do so. The 
coal industry likes to propagate 
the idea that renewables and 
environmental standards are 
responsible for the closure 
of mines, but this is a gross 
oversimplification 
of 
the 
problem. Natural gas is about 
60 percent more efficient than 
the oldest coal plants in terms of 
electricity generation, and is far 
more cost effective, making it 
coal’s biggest remaining threat. 
As for the rapid loss of jobs in 
the region, coal companies 

themselves are also to blame. 
While miners’ employment has 
been rapidly decreasing, overall 
coal production has remained 
relatively constant primarily 
due to mechanization. It is 
evident that the coal industry 
and lobbyists want to frame 
environmentalists as the enemy 
of miners to cover up their own 
influence in their misfortune. 
The fact of the matter remains: 
Coal is a dying industry.
Driving 
through 
the 
mountains 
and 
seeing 
the 
burdens firsthand reminded me 
that our rhetoric surrounding 
the 
transition 
away 
from 
coal should change as well. 
The negative effects of coal 
on human health, from both 
mining 
and 
burning, 
in 
addition to the environmental 
implications, are well-proven. 
If we are to seriously make 
any progress in limiting the 
effects of climate change, the 
transition away from coal and 
fossil fuels must be swift. Often 
we talk about environmental 
justice for the communities 
that are most affected but have 
the least power or capacity 
to do anything about it. This 
needs to apply to the forgotten 
coal miners of Appalachia as 
well. Can we blame unemployed 
miners for wanting to keep 
their jobs, put food on the 
table or send their kids to 
school? They too are victims 
and deserve justice in the fight 
against fossil fuel. The blame 
for their circumstances falls 
on the politicians, Republican 
and Democratic alike, who 
allow fossil fuel money to 
influence their decisions and 
who contribute to incendiary 
misinformation campaigns.
Organizations, 
nonprofits 
and 
startups 
have 
opened 
in 
the 
region, 
dedicated 
to training coal miners in 
new, more applicable skills 
for a modern economy. The 
renewables sector has already 
been outpacing coal in total 
jobs as well as job growth, 
providing 
an 
opportunity 
to 
train 
unemployed 
coal 
miners in wind turbine and 
solar production, as well as 
installation. West Virginians 
have a deep-rooted cultural 
connection to energy — many 
talk proudly about Appalachia’s 
history 
of 
powering 
the 
nation just as Midwesterners 
talk 
about 
the 
automotive 
industry — and this provides 
an opportunity for them to hold 
onto that culture while helping 
the environment instead of 
harming it.
While programs like these 
are beneficial, there is still 
much work to be done in order 
to help struggling communities. 
Most important among these is 
the need to keep big fossil fuel 
money out of the politicians’ 
pockets, at the local, state and 
national level, who actively 
work against the transition 
to renewables. Promising the 
coal industry will come back 
is deceitful and damaging, and 
only prolongs the inevitable. 
As long as politicians continue 
to accept lobbying money and 
influence from the fossil fuel 
industry, they are only going to 
continue to hurt the very people 
they are elected to represent.

I

t 
was 
with 
great 
disappointment that we 
read University President 
Mark 
Schlissel’s 
interview 
with The Michigan Daily, 
published on March 11 under 
the headline “Schlissel: ‘We 
are very much a confederation 
of 
three 
campuses.’” 
In 
his 
comments, 
Schlissel 
defended 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan’s 
failure 
to 
sustainably 
and 
equitably 
fund our Dearborn and Flint 
campuses. Unfortunately, he 
did not address the concerns 
of many students, faculty, 
non-instructional staff and 
community members whose 
very livelihoods are at stake.
It’s impossible to overstate 
the severity of the funding 
gap between the Ann Arbor, 
Flint and Dearborn campuses. 
Despite the fact that Dearborn 
and Flint students pay about 80 
percent of the tuition that Ann 
Arbor students pay, their per-
student funding is drastically 
lower than that — 23 percent 
and 25 percent, according to 
our research. This means that 
their students receive about 
one quarter of the resources 
that Ann Arbor provides to 
its students for instructional 
support, financial aid, health 
services and more. Rates of 
student debt are similarly 
staggering.
As a percentage of average 
family income, Flint students 
take on almost 3 times as 
much debt as Ann Arbor 
students, 
and 
Dearborn 
students take on twice as 
much. The Diversity, Equity 
and Inclusion initiative and 
Go 
Blue 
Guarantee 
that 
this 
University 
rightfully 
champions exist only on the 
Ann Arbor campus.

These 
disparities 
persist 
while the University sits on 
a massive surplus of funds. 
Every year since 2007, the 
University, according to data 
we’ve compiled, has had a 
surplus of more than $182 
million – which is more than 
the entire General Funds of 
Flint or Dearborn.

Schlissel has the power 
and funding to rectify these 
disparities. However, in his 
interview, 
he 
stated 
that 
addressing these inequities is 
impossible due to worries over 
campus autonomy and the 
different characters of each 
campus. We appreciate his 
considerations for preserving 
the unique missions of the 
Dearborn and Flint campuses. 
But 
without 
increased 
funding, 
those 
missions 
cannot be met effectively. We 
see no contradiction between 
respecting 
the 
autonomy 
of the three campuses and 
equitably funding each.
We, the One University 
Coalition 
comprised 
of 
members 
from 
the 
Flint, 
Dearborn 
and 
Ann 
Arbor 
campus 
communities, 
are 
offering to sit down with 
Schlissel to discuss our needs, 
the platform we have proposed 
to address them and how we 
might achieve them while 

respecting the autonomy of 
each campus. Striving for 
equity in Dearborn and Flint 
will increase opportunities 
for 
Michigan’s 
residents 
and 
allow 
the 
University 
of Michigan to emerge as a 
national leader in enhancing 
diversity, 
equity 
and 
inclusion initiatives in higher 
education. By reallocating a 
relatively small portion of the 
Ann Arbor campus budget — 
or simply using a small part of 
the University’s multi-billion-
dollar endowment — Schlissel 
and the Board of Regents have 
the opportunity to drastically 
transform the lives of students 
and faculty on the Dearborn 
and Flint campuses. Instead, 
the University is choosing 
to 
forgo 
that 
opportunity 
and silo the budgets of these 
campuses entirely.
The University of Michigan 
cannot 
truly 
create 
an 
environment 
of 
diversity, 
equity and inclusion if it 
fails to support the Flint and 
Dearborn campuses it calls 
home. 
Like 
Schlissel, 
we 
believe that this university is 
home to the Leaders and the 
Best — and Leaders and the 
Best can do better than this.
On 
behalf 
of 
the 
One 
University Campaign Steering 
Committee,
-Ian 
Robinson, 
 
President 
of 
the 
Lecturers’ 
Employee 
Organization 
(AFT-Michigan 
Local 6244)
-Daniel 
Birchok, 
Assistant 
Professor of Anthropology, U-M 
Flint
-Austin Ogle, Undergraduate 
Student, U-M Flint
-Jordan Yunker, Undergraduate 
Student, U-M Dearborn

The Leaders and the Best can do better than this

Timothy Spurlin can be reached at 

timrspur@umich.edu.

SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN

Solomon Medintz can be reached 

at smedintz@umich.edu.

A new progressive litmus test? Universal child care

IAN ROBINSON AND DANIEL BIRCHOCK | OP-ED

TIMOTHY
SPURLIN

“It’s impossible 
to overstate the 
severity of the 
funding gap between 
the campuses”

