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INDEX
Vol. CXXVIII, No. 105
©2019 The Michigan Daily

N E WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

O PI N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

S U D O K U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

CL A S S I F I E DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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GOVERNMENT

ALYSSA MCMURTRY 
Daily Staff Reporter

Panel discusses artificial intelligence in 
daily life at Dissonance Event Series

Speakers analyze social implications of digital innovation on humans, society

Writer talks 
history of 
educational 
integration

CAMPUS LIFE

Ford School book talk 
series hosts UC Berkeley 
Professor Rucker Johnson

ANGELINA LITTLE
Daily Staff Reporter 

See BILLS , Page 3

Follow The Daily
on Instagram: 
@michigandaily

Bills could 
affect free 
speech on 
campuses

Legislation would change 
guidelines for disinviting 
controversial speakers

MELANIE TAYLOR
Daily Staff Reporter 

An 
interactive 
audio-visual 
installation 
aiming to bring attention to opera singer 
Samuel Schultz’s healing after an alleged 
assault by School of Music, Theatre & Dance 
professor David Daniels was unveiled in the 
SMTD Soderquist Atrium this morning. The 
installation is comprised of three speakers 
playing recordings of Schultz sharing his side 
of the story and a rolling counter projection 
estimating Daniels’s pay by the University of 
Michigan since he was placed on administrative 
leave in August 2018.
Schultz’s allegations of rape against Daniels 
and his husband Scott Waltersin 2010 broke 
in a New York Daily News article published in 
August 2018. Daniels was placed on leave from 
the University later that month, shortly after the 
allegations became public. 
Further reporting by The Daily uncovered 
multiple attempts by Daniels to solicit sex from 
University students on Grindr, a dating app for 
gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. The 
Daily also found evidence the University was 
made aware of sexual misconduct allegations 
by University students against Daniels in March 
2018, though they awarded him tenure in May.
In an email to The Daily, University 
spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen wrote that 
Daniels is on paid leave.

michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Thursday, April 18, 2019

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Installation 
of art details 
healing after 
alleged assault

CAMPUS LIFE

Experience of man who accused 
prof. of misconduct unveiled in 
SMTD Soderquiest Atrium

CLAIRE HAO & 
SAMMY SUSSMAN
Daily Staff Reporters

When the baristas at Mighty Good 
Coffee formed a union last fall, they 
intended to stop their employers from 
discriminating against workers. Now 
the members of the Washtenaw Area 
Coffee Workers’ Association are nego-
tiating severance pay as the owners of 
the local specialty coffee chain prepare 
to shutter all of Mighty Good’s stores 
across the city by the end of August. 
The first location to close its doors will 
be the Main Street location in Kerry-
town, which is slated to close Friday.
An April 15 letter from Timothy 
Ryan, an attorney representing the 
chain’s owners, Nic Sims and David 
Myers, informed employees they were 
being terminated.
“Nic and David have concluded 
that they are not well suited to oper-
ate a retail operation,” the letter states. 
“They have found the experience to 
be overly stressful. It has created an 
unworkable burden on their relation-
ship and their family.”
On Tuesday, baristas at Mighty 
Good Coffee protested the termination 
notice, which informed some workers 
they would be losing their jobs in less 
than a week. The employees demon-
strated outside of Mighty Good’s loca-
tion on South University Avenue, which 
will close on May 5.
Mandy Gallegos, a barista at Mighty 

Good’s Arbor Hills store, which is set to 
close Aug. 31, said the workers wanted 
to draw attention to what was happen-
ing at the company.
“We’re trying to let people know that 
union-busting is a real thing,” Gallegos 
said. “The unfortunate part in all of this 
is that the Arbor Hills location will still 
be open, and so the unionized baristas 
will be working there, which will be 
very awkward for a lot of us.”
Sims and Ryan did not respond to 
multiple requests for comment. Mul-
tiple Mighty Good employees told The 
Daily the owners were not responding 
to any press inquiries.
The letter informing employees of 
Mighty Good’s intention to shut down 
all of its stores came exactly one week 
after the employees’ union filed an 
unfair labor practices complaint against 
the company with the National Labor 
Relations Board. 
Gallegos said the cause of the com-
plaint was due to the fact that Mighty 
Good Coffee was “short staffing their 
workers.”
“Recently, we filed a ULP — which 
is an unfair labor practice — against 
them due to short staffing us chroni-
cally for the past few months,” Gallegas 
said. “And after they got that ULP they 
sent us an email via the lawyer saying 
that they were closing up all four of the 

shops and laying off all of the employ-
ees.”
An initial letter informing Mighty 
Good of the complaint against the com-
pany was sent on April 9, according to 
the NLRB case docket.
One source close to WACWA, who 
asked to remain anonymous due to 
ongoing negotiations with Mighty 
Good, said the owners’ decision to close 
seemed to be related to the filing of the 
NLRB case.
“It could seem that way definitely,” 
they said. “That’s one of those things 
that you can never be certain about but 
you’ll pretty much always suspect.”
Gallegos said the union formed in the 
fall to bargain for better conditions and 
equal treatment after a fellow barista 
quit over accusations of racial discrimi-
nation, adding that Myers and Sims, 
the company’s owners, were not happy 
with the workers’ decision to form a 
union.
“We 
union-
ized 
because 
of a racial allegation against our work 
where one of our coworkers — a Black 
co-worker — was being underpaid com-
pared to all of our white co-workers, 
so we unionized so we could just have 
opportunity and equal treatment in our 
workplace — better working conditions 
— and unfortunately, they did not like 
that,” Gallegos said. “They thought it 

was retaliation, and we’ve been work-
ing toward our union contract for the 
past few months with them, with the 
Mighty Good owners and their lawyer.”
Nya Njee was the barista who quit. 
She worked at Mighty Good for two 
years, but said she left after she discov-
ered she was being paid less than her 
white coworkers. 
In an interview with The Daily in 
August, Njee said her wages did not 
increase while she worked at Mighty 
Good despite receiving complementary 
performance reviews. Njee said she 
realized something was “kind of weird” 
when she mentioned not getting a pay 
raise to her owner and manager and 
they looked like “deer caught in head-
lights.”
“It just kept staying with me and it 
was bothering me the whole time and 
so when I found that my coworkers, 
like junior coworkers, some of whom 
didn’t have any coffee experience, had 
gotten raises before me, I was immedi-
ately like, well, that’s interesting since 
I’m literally the only Black woman 
in the whole company, and it was 
just unfortunately pretty obvious 
as soon as I heard that my junior 
coworkers — non-Black coworkers 
— were receiving raises before me,” 
Njee said.

DESIGN BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

On 
April 
9, 
legislators 
introduced 
two 
bills 
into 
the 
Michigan 
House 
of 
Representatives 
that 
could 
impact free speech on college 
campuses. 
The first of the two bills, 
called the “Campus Free Speech 
Act,” could affect the number 
of public areas for free speech. 
If a demonstration or exercise 
goes against the four justifiable 
reasons to limit free speech, 
which are demonstrators who 
are deemed a public threat, 
other platforms for expression, 
assembly and distribution of 
literature can still occur and 
the campus has no free speech 
zones. If all of these criteria 
are met, public universities will 
have the right to intervene.
Currently, the University of 
Michigan is not legally allowed 
to ban speakers who use “hate 
speech” from their facilities 
unless they pose a threat to 
the community. In February, 
the University concluded that 
housing staff are not allowed 
to remove hate speech from 
student doors.

 See SMTD, Page 3
See COFFEE, Page 3

Wednesday night, more than 
100 people attended a panel dis-
cussion titled “Understanding 
the Social Implications of AI.” 
The panel, part of the Disso-
nance Event Series, was held in 
the Michigan League.
Organizing 
Committee 
Member Sol Bermann, chief 
privacy officer and interim 
chief information security offi-
cer for the University of Michi-
gan, explained Dissonance lies 
at the intersection of many dif-
ferent areas of study.
“Dissonance is what I like 
to call a grassroots faculty and 
student effort to take a multi-

disciplinary approach to issues 
at the confluence of technology, 
policy, privacy, security and 
law,” Bermann said.
Bermann said Dissonance 
makes an effort to incorporate 
perspectives from many dif-
ferent schools and organiza-
tions housed at the University. 
He listed LSA, the College of 
Engineering, the School of Pub-
lic Health, the School of Public 
Policy, the Medical School and 
the Law School as a few of the 
many past participants.
“As we were putting the 
series together, we wanted to 
get a range of perspectives,” 
Bermann said. “We didn’t just 
want it to be coming from a pro 
perspective or a con perspec-

tive. When you put the pro and 
con together you get a sort of 
clash: dissonance.”
Bermann said he believes 
the University provides the 
unique capacity as a world-
class research institution to 
pull in-house speakers together 
and provide informative panels 
such as the panel on Artificial 
Intelligence. He explained Dis-
sonance focuses on issues that 
relate to current events, a cat-
egory in which he believes AI 
falls.
 “AI is increasingly a known 
commodity in your daily life, 
but do you even think about it 
anymore?” Bermann said. “Do 
you think about the way you’re 
seeing the things you see on 

Amazon, or on Facebook, or on 
the news? Do you think about 
who’s presenting those things 
to you? Do you think about 
what it means to have autono-
mous vehicles versus having the 
responsibility of driving a car? 
Do you think about the algo-
rithms and how transparent 
they are or aren’t because those 
algorithms, again, are influenc-
ing our daily life.”
Bermann said because col-
lege-age students are on the 
cusp of the “digital age,” never 
having known a time before cell 
phones or the Internet, they are 
less likely to question the merits 
of AI.

See AI , Page 3

See EDUCATION , Page 3
KEEMYA ESMAEL/Daily
Information professor Kentaro Toyama speaks at the University Information and Technology Services-hosted event titled “Dissonance: Social 
Implications of Artificial Intelligence” at the Michigan League Wednesday evening.

Spilling the
Beans

Union created after discrimination 
claim fights for severance pay 
following local coffee chain closure

LEAH GRAHAM
Daily News Editor

Wednesday, 
Rucker 

C. 
Johnson, 
associate 
professor at the Goldman 
School 
of 
Public 
Policy 
at 
the 
University 
of 

California, 
Berkeley, 

spoke to approximately 50 
students about his new book, 
“Children of the Dream: Why 
School Integration Works.” 
The talk was held at the 
Ford School of Public Policy 
as a part of the Book Talks 
@ the Ford School series. 
Johnson’s book, published 
Tuesday, 
advocates 
for 
school 
integration 
as 
a 
policy critical to promoting 
equality.
Public 
Policy 
Dean 
Michael 
Barr 
introduced 
Johnson, emphasizing the 
relevance of his book to 
current policies. 
“We’re really at a critical 
moment in many ways in 
our 
country’s 
history 
as 
policymakers 
and 
others 
debate not only the future of 
public education but really 
the kind of society we want 
to live in,” Barr said. 

