The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, September 12, 2019 — 3A

Among 
the 
ethnicity 
designations 
available 
is 
the Middle Eastern/North 
African identity option. In 
2017, 
ME/NA-identifying 
students 
formed 
the 
#WeExist campaign, asking 
the University to add the 
ME/NA identity category to 
University documents. 
At the time, the University 
followed the U.S. Census, 
which 
does 
not 
have 
a 
ME/NA 
identity 
category. 
Thus, 
ME/NA-identifying 
individuals can only mark 
themselves as white or other, 
which 
many 
— 
including 
Public Policy senior Arwa 
Gayar, co-present of the Arab 
Student Association — feel 
do not accurately represent 
their identity. 
“There 
was 
something 
uneasy about putting white, 
and I didn’t want to put 
African American because 
I 
don’t 
want 
to 
co-opt 
the 
experience 
of 
Black 
Americans,” Gayar said. “So I 
always put ‘other’ and always 
felt like my identity was 
forgotten and overlooked.”
Though 
the 
Common 
Application and the Coalition 
Application 
— 
the 
only 

applications 
used 
by 
the 
University for undergraduate 
admissions 
— 
include 
a 
ME/NA identity option, it 
falls under the white racial 
category. 
Accordingly, 
ME/NA identity data has 
historically 
been 
reported 
under white identity data.
Since its inception, the 
campaign 
has 
succeeded 
in moving the University 
to 
disaggregate 
ME/NA 
identity 
data 
from 
white 
identity 
data 
on 
internal 
University documents, such 
as on surveys, undergraduate 
admissions applications and 
Rackham Graduate School 
admissions applications.
The 
email 
explained 
some students may find the 
extended 
ethnicity 
data 
they 
shared 
during 
the 
admissions process already 
entered in Wolverine Access. 
The email also noted the 
new process gives students 
“greater flexibility in their 
identification.”
University 
alum 
Jad 
Elharake, a founder of the 
#WeExist 
campaign, 
said 
using admissions applications 
to 
collect 
ethnicity 
data 
is the most efficient and 
effective, as every student 
at the University must fill 
out the form. He expressed 
excitement 
for 
the 
new 

extended ethnicity process 
on 
Wolverine 
Access, 
which he sees as a means to 
collect 
potentially 
useful 
supplemental data on the 
student population. 
To Elharake, however, the 
new 
ethnicity 
designation 
process is also critical for 
better 
understanding 
the 
University’s faculty and staff 
population, for which there 
is no mechanism such as 
admissions applications to 
collect ethnicity data. 
“It’s great that this collects 
extended 
ethnicity 
data 
for students, but the more 
important takeaway is this 
process collects this data for 
faculty and staff,” Elharake 
said. “This was a big push for 
us early on … We wanted to 
know how faculty members 
and staff identify as ME/
NA.”
With this data, Elharake 
said, statistical analysis could 
be done on a variety of topics, 
such 
as 
potential 
racial 
discrimination 
in 
hiring 
and trends on promotions 
and appointments. The data 
could also illuminate issues 
of representation, such as 
how many staff and faculty 
of a given identity there are 
across different units, and 
if the makeup of faculty and 
staff reflects the student 

population. 
“If you don’t have data, 
you can’t defend your needs 
and 
the 
issues 
of 
your 
community,” Elharake said. 
“You might not even know 
some of the issues that are 
happening.”
LSA senior Silan Fadlallah, 
founding sister and president 
of 
Epsilon 
Alpha 
Sigma, 
the first Arab sorority in 
the United States, was also 
a leader in the #WeExist 
campaign. She noted the data 
could help the University 
better understand how to 
fund 
ME/NA 
groups 
on 
campus. 
“It gives the University an 
idea of how many of us there 
are, and how they should allot 
their resources,” Fadlallah 
said. “If you see there is this 
racial category not being 
accounted for, once you do 
account for us, you’ll further 
be able to assess where your 
funding should go, and how 
you should support these 
students.” 
Gayar 
also 
expressed 
excitement for the process 
and said she hopes to see 
the 
data 
used 
to 
better 
understand the disparities 
between various University 
communities. However, she 
worried about the possibility 
of the data being misused. 

“I think the Arab and 
Muslim community has had 
a history of being surveilled 
by security institutions and 
political institutions,” Gayar 
said. “While it’s difficult 
to imagine U-M using their 
data like that, I still think 
we 
should 
be 
cautionary 
and make sure data on our 
population is treated like data 
from any other population.”
With the new extended 
ethnicity 
process, 
the 
information could be useful 
for other ethnicity groups as 
well. LSA senior Dim Mang, 
co-chair 
of 
United 
Asian 
American 
Organizations, 
said 
she 
would 
like 
to 
see 
extended 
ethnicity 
data address the needs of 
underrepresented 
Asian 
American ethnicity groups 
who, according to Mang, are 
often overshadowed by larger 
groups in analysis of general 
Asian-Pacific 
Islander 
American identity data. 
“There’s this inclination 
to serve the needs of really 
big groups, like Chinese-
Americans, 
Korean-
Americans, which is really 
important, but I feel like 
there’s lots of smaller subsets 
of 
Asian 
Americans 
who 
often really feel neglected 
in conversations about their 
own 
communities,” 
Mang 

said. “I hope they try to use 
this data to figure out what 
those 
communities 
need 
while looking at what our 
community needs as a whole 
at the same time.”
However, Mang noted the 
process is voluntary. She 
speculated this may lead to 
data not reflective of the 
entire student population. 
“I think it’s interesting 
that it’s voluntary, because 
then how emblematic of the 
student body are your results 
actually going to be?” Mang 
said. “So I don’t know how 
effective it will be, but I do 
think it’s important for the 
University to do something.”
Overall, while Fadlallah 
said she finds the extended 
ethnicity 
process 
a 
good 
start, she said she hopes the 
University continues making 
efforts 
to 
increase 
the 
visibility and representation 
of 
ME/NA-identifying 

students. 
“At this point I feel like 
the University is just now 
starting to understand we 
are here,” Fadlallah said. 
“It’s about time that they do, 
and that they start moving 
forward and talking with the 
students on campus to see 
what they need.”

ETHNICITY
From Page 1A

“You can see close 
up what it means to 
give the government 
power to take another 
human being.”

“The majority of people 
will immediately say that 
the stereotype of refugees 
is that they are possible 
terrorists,” Kutmah said. “Yet 
these stereotypes are often 
linked to the far-right. The 
(predominant) 
stereotype 
of refugees is on that we all 
buy into: the stereotype that 
they are weak, that they are 
helpless, they are victims. 
The story we propagate is 
that these other people that 
look different than us … need 
us to help them.” 
Kutmah said she wants 
refugees 
to 
be 
seen 
as 
individuals 
who 
have 
potential, not victims that all 
share the same story. 
“What if we saw their 
potential?” 
Kutmah 
asks. 
“What 
if 
we 
saw 
each 
refugee as having individual 
potential, the same way we 
ask a kindergarten teacher to 
see each student to imagine 
their dreams?”
Dr. 
Odessa 
Gonzalez 
Benson, assistant professor 
of social work, and her team 
have partnered to do research 
with 
a 
migrant 
based 
organization that deal with 
mothers of missing migrants. 
The organization hopes to 
eventually pull from its oral 
history and data to create a 
website and an exhibit with 
the mothers as the main 
storytellers. 
“We want to feature the 
story of them as advocats,” 
Benson 
said. 
“So 
these 

mothers are the leaders of 
the movement that’s calling 
on 
Italian 
and 
Tunisian 
governments to find solutions 
to their missing sons.” 
Benson quickly introduced 
refugee and the president of 
the Bhutanese Community 
of Michigan, Dilli Gautam to 
speak about his experiences. 
Gautam focused not on his 
experience 
as 
a 
refugee 
but rather his experience 
as a mentor. He related a 
particular story of a young 
man named John who had 
only been in America for six 
days when Gautam met him. 
“Any newcomer, I ask him 
to write down my phone 
number a few times on a 
piece of paper so they can 
remember it … and call me if 
they need anything outside 
school,” Gautam said. “It 
was a challenge at first to 
teach him how to hold a pen, 
how to place a piece of paper 
on a table and how to write 
numbers correctly.”
Guatam received a phone 
call at one in the morning 
from an unknown number. 
It was a man who had found 
John wandering the streets 
and the only thing John could 
tell him was Gautam’s phone 
number. Gautam picked him 
up and drove him to the high 
school. Apparently, John had 
gotten lost buying milk for 
his brother. 
“Imagine how his parents 
must have felt.” Gautam said. 
“Imagine 
how 
vulnerable 
John must have felt.”
Guatam said John joined 
the 
Marines 
and 
Gautam 
believes 
John’s 
enlistment 

is a perfect example of how 
refugees can stand up for 
themselves and for others 
when shown proper guidance.
Once 
the 
panel 
had 
concluded 
their 
talking 
points, the audience made 
comments 
and 
asked 
questions. 
One 
audience 
member in particular asked 
why mental health was not 
discussed more. All four of 
the panelists agreed mental 
health should be a large part 
of the resettlement process. 
 
However, they found that 
sometimes the nations which 
they migrated to do not list 
mental health as a priority 
even for their own citizens. 
LSA senior Noor Saleem 
assisted Belgrade with the 
research. 
Saleem 
is 
also 
a refugee and spent her 
time translating English to 
Arabic when meeting with 
the individuals engaged in 
the research program. She 
was most surprised by how 
different everyone’s stories 
are. 
“Personally, I am a refugee, 
so 
I 
have 
been 
through 
many life events so I have a 
background of both knowing 
how to feel as a refugee,” 
Saleem said. “But to them 
when I was asking them 
questions, they were telling 
their stories and each one has 
a specific story that’s very 
uniques to them and that was 
very special about it. Before 
I was kind of generalizing 
‘Oh, 
refugees, 
they’ve 
all 
been through a lot.’ But no, 
everyone has a certain degree 
and certain tolerance of what 
they can handle.’”

REFUGEES
From Page 1A

“It’s 
really 
tied 
into 
people’s perceptions of harm,” 
Schulenberg said. “That is, 
how much harm do you think 
someone’s doing if they vape 
frequently or regularly, and 
when perception of harm goes 
up, it goes down, and vice 
versa, when perceptions of 
harm go down, use goes up.” 
Schulenberg 
noted 
the 
trends identified in the study 
might shift given the recent 
spate of high profile injuries 
connected to vaping that left 
users hospitalized.
“What’s happening the past 
couple of months, it’s kind of 
going against it, people do see 
it as a big thing,” Schulenberg 
said. “But, you know, our data 
were collected in 2017-2018, 
before 
all 
these 
tragedies 
with people ending up in 
emergency rooms because of 
vaping.”
LSA 
junior 
Blaine 
Thompson 
said 
he 
was 
frustrated by Whitmer’s ban, 
citing the lack of streamlined 
policy-making. 

“Targeting 
and 
banning 
an entire industry on the 
basis of a shaky hypothesis 
is juvenile, to say the least,” 
Thompson 
said. 
“On 
top 
of that, going around the 

elected 
representatives 
of 
the state by declaring a state 
of 
‘emergency’ 
is 
wildly 
tyrannical.”
Thompson 
went 
on 
to 
express discontent with the 
Trump 
administration’s 
decision to follow Whitmer’s 

lead. He said a ban negatively 
impacts 
individuals 
who 
use the products to break 
their addiction to cigarettes 
without the artificial tobacco 
flavor. 
“It’s so premature and it 
does nothing but hurt the 
people that use it for what it’s 
designed for but happen to 
hate the fake tobacco flavor,” 
Thompson said. 
Schulenberg 
concluded 
with a warning. While vaping 
may seem like a harmless 
pastime, 
the 
threat 
of 
a 
lifetime of addiction looms 
constantly over any and all 
users. 
“The thing with nicotine 
is 
that 
it’s 
addictive,” 
Schulenberg said. “And I can 
imagine people want to try 
vaping. There’s a buzz around 
it, and it seems to be culturally 
sanctioned – it’s legal, if 
you’re 21 or some places 18. 
And so what’s the big deal? 
The big deal, in addition to 
what we’re seeing with all 
these 
tragedies 
— 
people 
ending up in emergency rooms 
— is that it’s hard to get away 
from nicotine once it’s got a 
hold of you.”

E-CIGS
From Page 1A

“I 
could 
sense 
it’s 
because they had been 
made to be afraid that 
there’s some people so 
evil we can’t put them 
in prison because they 
would kill other people,” 
Prejean said. 
Ashley 
Lucas, 
Prison 
Creative 
Arts 
Project 
director at the University 
of Michigan, introduced 
Prejean 
at 
the 
event. 
Lucas 
commended 
Prejean for her advocacy 
on the issue.
“My 
friend, 
Sister 
Helen 
Prejean, 
is 
a 
Louisiana 
nun 
from 
the Congregation of St. 
Joseph, and it is my belief 
that she has done more for 
the 
national 
movement 
to end the death penalty 
than any other person 
in U.S. History,” Lucas 
said. “Those who know 
her work feel a kind of 
reverence one can only 
feel for holy people … 
Sister Helen fills me with 
a kind of awe that I feel 
for very few people.”
Prejean 
discussed 
coming of age in the 
1960s, 
as 
the 
Second 
Vatican was addressing 
the 
Catholic 
Church’s 
place 
in 
the 
outside 
world. She recounted her 
experience 
of 
dressing 
up in the clothing of 
widowed women to go out 
and explore the world.
Additionally, 
Prejean 
described the experience 
of watching her pen pal be 
executed as her spark-

starting 
moment 
and 
changed 
the 
trajectory 
of her life into one of 
advocacy.
“You can see close up 
what it means to give 
the 
government 
power 
to take another human 
being,” Prejean said. “A 
conscious, 
imaginative 
human being whose been 
in his cell for 20, 30 years 
and then being taken out 
and 
to 
his 
execution. 
Once you see it, it’s that 
fire in your soul and you 
can’t unsee it.”
Community 
member 
Jane 
Van 
Slembrouck 
said Prejean’s discussion 
of finding fire in life 

specifically 
resonated 
with her. 
“I loved the way she 
talked about finding that 
moment of fire in your 
life,” 
Van 
Slembrouck 
said. “A moment that’s 
transformative. 
Some 
kind of experience that 
you can clearly define a 

before and an after. For 
her, it was the moment of 
witnessing the execution, 
but I think she was trying 
to say each of us should 
seek out those moments 
when we feel fire in us 
and take that forward 
into our lives.”
During 
a 
question-
and-answer 
portion 
following 
the 
talk, 
Prejean emphasized the 
importance of bringing 
women into conversations 
— especially in places 
where 
women 
have 

historically 
been 

underrepresented, 
like 
the Catholic Church.
“When we look at the 
health of the church and 
what is happening with 
the priests, we see that 
we are not at all a healthy 
church,” 
Prejean 
said. 
“We need the wisdom of 
women.”

University 
alum 

Mia 
Hutchinson, 
who 
participated 
in 
PCAP 
while 
enrolled 
as 
a 
student, also emphasized 
the 
importance 
of 
supporting prisoners as 
they are often voiceless in 
society.
“People in prison are 
looked upon as lying on 
the outskirts of society, 
and I think they aren’t 
given much attention from 
the 
everyday, 
average 
person,” Hutchinson said. 
“The more people stand 
up and rally around these 
people who don’t have a 
voice at all, it can really 
shed 
a 
light 
on 
their 
situation.”

SOCIAL JUSTICE
From Page 1A

At 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan, students were 
troubled over the news. 
White Claw Hard Seltzer 
has become a staple around 
the 
University 
campus, 
whether in the hands of 
students being arrested for 
underage drinking during 
a game day or being passed 
around in their decorative 
white case at a day party.
LSA 
senior 
Max 
Lederman 
said 
he 
was 
expecting White Claws to be 
popular during the school 
year, but was not prepared 
for just how prominent they 
would be on campus. 
“Coming 
off 
of 
the 
summer I definitely knew 
that 
White 
Claw 
was 
gaining a lot of popularity,” 
Lederman said. “But I had 
no idea that when I came 
to Michigan it was going to 
be as widely consumed as 
it has been. Like I’ve seen 
it at every tailgate, every 
pregame that I’ve been to. 
People are just really sippin’ 

on them.” 
Lederman, whose favorite 
flavor of the drink is ruby 
grapefruit, said he thinks 
White Claw is a lighter 
substitute for beer, which 
he finds harder to drink. 
“It’s a nice alternative to 
drinking beer, just because 
when you drink beer you 
get really full. It makes your 
stomach upset, but you can 
drink a lot of White Claws,” 
Lederman said. “They’re 
also just refreshing.”
 
Information 
senior 
Rachel Rothstein, who also 
prefers the ruby grapefruit 
flavor, agreed White Claw 
provided a better alternative 
to hard liquor.
“I think that it’s an easy 
drink that tastes good, so 
you can drink slowly and it 
still has the same effect,” 
Rothstein said. 
Rothstein said since her 
friends have been buying 
the drink in bulk, she feels 
her 
community 
at 
the 
University would be directly 
affected by a shortage. 
“In my house, everybody 
drinks White Claw, and 
if I didn’t know about the 

shortage from the news, I 
would have no idea because 
people in my house buy at 
least seven packs a week,” 
Rothstein said. 
However, 
according 
to 
Robert Kesto, owner of Ann 
Arbor’s Champion’s Party 
Store, U-M students have 
nothing to worry about. 
Kesto said they have more 
than enough of the spiked 
seltzer and don’t expect to 
run out any time soon. 
“We have not run out, and 
we’re a busy store,” Kesto 
said. “Welcome Week is the 
busiest week of the year, 
and we didn’t run out, so I 
don’t think we will ever run 
out.”
Kesto actually remarked 
that Natural Light Seltzer 
has been just as popular 
lately and has been taking 
some sales away from White 
Claw.
“In my store, Natty Light 
has taken half of their 
sales,” Kesto said. 
Either way, it might not 
be a bad idea for students 
to stock up while they still 
can. 

CLAW
From Page 1A

“Targeting and 
banning an entire 
industry on the basis 
of a shaky hypothesis 
is juvenile, to say the 
least.”

