Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, September 13, 2019

Zack Blumberg
Emily Considine
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman

Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Magdalena Mihaylova
Max Mittleman
Timothy Spurlin

Miles Stephenson
Finn Storer
Nicholas Tomaino
Joel Weiner
Erin White 

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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

“ 

Some say the world will 
end in fire, some say in 
ice,” as poet Robert Frost 
once said. However, I believe 
there are three threats that 
will be humanity’s downfall: 
food, 
waste 
and 
blood. 
Unfortunately, the “friendly 
little bubble” around Ann 
Arbor is not enough to shelter 
the city from the plague of 
collegiate 
food 
insecurity, 
food waste and national blood 
shortages. At first glance, it 
may seem these public health 
threats belong in different 
categories and should inspire 
separate solutions. However, 
there 
is 
an 
intersection 
between all three of these 
issues that would provide the 
opportunity to create a single 
solution that could combat 
all three problems at once. In 
other words, I am betting that 
you can kill three plagues with 
one stone. Before I make my 
case for a solution, I figured 
I ought to break down each 
problem first. 
First 
and 
foremost, 
I 
understand that college is an 
investment for your future. 
However, it is ridiculous for 
an investor to go hungry in 
order to see a return on their 
investment. 
Nevertheless, 
according to a 2015 study by 
Nikki Kasper, “41.4 percent 
of U-M students had low 
to very low food security.” 
Low food security is defined 
by 
the 
U.S. 
Department 
of 
Health 
and 
Human 
Services as “the disruption 
of food intake because of 
lack 
of 
money 
and 
other 
resources.” 
Unfortunately, 
the 
University’s 
response 
to this issue has been less 
than urgent. In recent years, 
multiple 
food 
pantries 
on 
campus allowed students to 
scramble alongside hundreds 
of peers once a month to 
secure free food in what can 
only be called the actual 
Hunger Games. According to 
The Daily, starting in fall 2019, 
Maize and Blue Cupboard 
food 
pantry 
will 
begin 
offering daily distribution of 
nutritious food and produce 
at a permanent location on 
Central 
Campus. 
However, 
the question still remains as 
to whether these efforts alone 
can satisfy all the hungry 
students on campus.
Luckily, 
on 
a 
college 
campus, 
where 
there 
is 
scarcity there is also surplus. 

According to MLive, in the 
spring of 2018, Sava’s did not 
have enough dumpsters to 
hold all of its waste. It doesn’t 
take a master’s degree to 
understand that a good portion 
of that waste was leftover 
food. I recognize that not all 
food waste can be recovered 
safely. If food is no longer 
safe for human consumption, 
of course, a restaurant should 
responsibly dispose of it or 
compost it. However, not all 
food is unsafe for consumption 
when it is thrown away. It 
seems 
rather 
ironic 
that 
dozens 
of 
restaurants 
and 
cafes like Sava’s are throwing 
away food every day when they 
are just steps from a campus 
where more than 41 percent 
of students are food insecure. 
Sava’s is only one of dozens 
of local restaurants and cafes 
that benefit from the endless 
foot traffic the University 
of 
Michigan 
supplies 
to 
keep their businesses open. 
Consequently, it would be 
worth asking them to donate 
leftover food back to local 
students who need it the 
most and give it back it to 
the community that supports 
their bottom line. 
Beyond 
just 
food 
insecurity, there is also a 
constant 
need 
for 
blood 
donations. It seems that every 
summer there is a drought of 
blood donors, largely due to 
the fact that school is out and 
a great deal of students no 
longer make time to donate. 
According to a U-M Health 
Blog post, these “nationwide 
blood shortages … (leave) 
doctors 
and 
emergency 
room personnel without the 
resources for some surgeries 
and procedures.” 
In essence, students have 
the blood and empty bellies 
while 
local 
restaurants 
have the food and should be 
motivated by the prospect 
of giving back. I propose 
creating a digital platform 
that 
enables 
students 
to 
subscribe to reserve and pick 
up extra food that would 
otherwise go to the landfill 
from 
restaurants 
in 
Ann 
Arbor. 
Instead 
of 
money, 
however, the subscription fee 
for this service would be to 
donate blood regularly, every 
two months throughout the 
year and particularly during 
the summer and winter when 
blood 
shortages 
are 
most 

likely to occur. If students 
don’t 
qualify 
as 
blood 
donors, perhaps they could 
donate their time at blood 
drives or solicit someone 
to donate in their name to 
satisfy 
the 
subscription 
fee. Restaurant employees 
could identify students who 
are active donors through a 
special discount card mailed 
to them every two months 
or a smartphone QR code 
sent to the students’ email. 
According to Kasper, some 
studies 
have 
found 
that 
limited free time and lack of 
transportation may also be 
barriers to food, so perhaps 
the digital platform could 
provide delivery to students 
for a small fee.
When it comes to public 
health issues, extra food 
pantries established by the 
University 
are 
not 
going 
to be enough. As a student 
body, we have the power to 
take matters into our own 
hands and problem solve. As 
a society, when we examine 
public 
health 
issues, 
we 
often section them off, try to 
isolate their specific causes 
and 
brainstorm 
solutions 
independent from each other. 
Such a practice is as outdated 
as the bubonic plague itself. 
When studying public health 
issues 
independently, 
it’s 
easy to fail to see the big 
picture 
or 
recognize 
how 
they can intersect. It’s kind 
of like trying to navigate to a 
new location by only looking 
at a fraction of the map. If 
most of your map is covered, 
then you are going to miss 
an intersection that could 
make it easier to get to your 
destination — which, in this 
case, is hungry students, less 
landfill waste and reduced 
blood shortages. The reality is, 
if you are willing to challenge 
conventional 
thinking 
and 
break the silos we keep around 
separate public health threats, 
you will find connections. 
Public health is far too complex 
an issue to try to isolate 
problems. 
Turns 
out 
that 
mapping out a social venture 
that can combat public health 
threats is as simple as finding 
the connection between public 
health problems. Who knows, 
maybe your next social venture 
is just an intersection away.

SONEIDA RODRIGUEZ | COLUMN

Collegiate food insecurity is the key to blood security

E

arlier this week, Maine 
made headlines as the 
state’s legislature passed 
a bill introducing a substantial 
electoral reform to the state’s 
presidential 
primaries 
and 
elections. The bill institutes ranked-
choice voting, a system that allows 
voters to rank their preference 
of candidates for a position and 
takes all of these preferences into 
account in the final result. In short, 
ranked-choice voting is likely to 
lead to elections that better reflect 
voters’ preferences, allow for more 
diversity of candidates and reduce 
vote-splitting. Recognizing this, 
Democratic parties in six other 
states have plans to implement 
measures similar to Maine’s in their 
upcoming presidential primaries.
Also, this month, the field of 
possible Democratic presidential 
nominees was effectively cut in half. 
Out of the 20 candidates present on 
the stage of the second debate, only 
10 met the requirements for polling 
and donations set by the Democratic 
National Committee to qualify for 
the third. With the Iowa caucus 
still far off, similar polling cut-offs 
are likely to be used by the DNC 
to further narrow the field in the 
future.
Watching these two events 
occur in tandem, it seems strange 
that the moves being made by 
Maine Democrats to reform actual 
elections haven’t been reflected 
in these debate qualifiers. In the 
weeks since the second debate, the 
polls used in the DNC’s cut-offs 
have served as a sort of pre-election, 
defining the candidates that voters 
will and will not get to choose in the 
future. And while the 10 candidates 
eliminated in this round were all 
unlikely to win, these polling cut-
offs will become much higher 
stakes as the field narrows. This 
is especially true for the “second 
tier” of candidates — those who are 
not frontrunners but have a shot at 
becoming one in the future. At this 
point, that’s essentially everyone 
other than former Vice President 
Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, 
I-Vt., and Sen. Warren, D-Mass. 
These candidates may be victims 

of the same problem that Democrats 
in Maine and other states are trying 
to solve with ranked-choice voting. 
In one of the polls used by the 
DNC to determine the candidates 
for the third debate, CNN asked 
respondents to indicate both their 
first choice for a nominee and 
the candidate that they are next 
most interested in hearing from. 
The results show an enormous 
discrepancy between voters’ first 
and second choices, revealing some 
candidates to be significantly more 
popular than they initially seem. 
For example, in April polling, Sen. 
Kamala Harris, D-Calif., garnering 
only 5 percent of first-choice votes, 
beat out the three frontrunners 
by being listed as 23 percent of 
voters’ less preferred choice. In fact, 
almost all candidates other than the 
frontrunners appear substantially 
more popular once second choices 
are taken into account, while Biden 
and Sanders seem to perform worse.
Essentially, this indicates that 
while most voters prefer Biden, 
Sanders or Warren as their top 
choice, many of them wouldn’t 
choose one of the other three 
frontrunners as their second choice. 
Another one of the qualifying polls 
confirmed this: Morning Consult 
explicitly asked supporters of the 
top candidates to indicate their 
second-choice preference. About 
half of supporters of the top three 
candidates did not list one of the 
other three frontrunners as their 
second choice.
This means that the results of 
subsequent polling cutoffs may 
be significantly different between 
traditional 
and 
ranked-choice 
voting mechanisms. While I wish 
I could tell you how the results 
would be different, the problem 
of ignoring voters’ second-choices 
is too entrenched to allow that. 
None of the polls used by the DNC 
published detailed results of voters’ 
second choices, and most of the ones 
I looked at didn’t ask about second 
choices at all. 
Ultimately, this problem extends 
beyond the cut-offs for the primary 
debates and into the way we cover 
and discuss elections. Polls aren’t 

just hurdles for candidates to jump 
over on their way to the debate 
stage. They are also one of the 
primary ways voters, politicians and 
commentators try to understand 
what is going on in elections. The 
results of polls can go viral, thrusting 
candidates into the spotlight and 
giving their prospects a boost, as 
happened when a single poll earlier 
this month contradicted all others 
by finding Warren tied with Sanders 
and Biden among Democratic 
voters. Furthermore, the campaigns 
themselves are influenced by polling 
data in developing their messaging 
and policy.
If polls ignore voters’ second 
choices, they can make some 
candidates, like Harris and Mayor 
Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., 
seem substantially less popular 
than they actually are (and others, 
like Sanders, more so). If polls 
only incentivize candidates to 
make attention-grabbing, radical 
statements to accumulate more 
first-choice followers, it may lead 
them to ignore building a broadly 
supported 
platform 
that 
will 
actually get people out to vote in the 
general election.
At a time when the Democratic 
party is increasingly fractured, 
and winning the general election 
has never seemed more important, 
these could be costly mistakes. 
The good news is that substantive 
change need not wait on the 
lengthy legislative processes faced 
by states like Maine attempting to 
institute ranked-choice policies in 
actual elections. The DNC could 
immediately 
require 
qualifying 
polls to ask more questions about 
voters’ second and third choices. 
Even if subsequent debate cut-
offs 
don’t 
use 
ranked-choice 
mechanisms, altering the polls 
alone would instantly deepen our 
understanding of the election and 
the public conversation about it. 
Doing so now, before the field 
narrows further, could shape the 
outcome of both the primaries and 
the general election.

Debate qualifying polls should use ranked-choice voting

Soneida Rodriguez can be reached at 

soneida@umich.edu.

ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMN

The Trump administration’s attack on reproductive rights

JARED STOLOVE | COLUMN

T

hese days, it feels like 
barely a week goes by 
without President Donald 
Trump’s administration enacting 
another barrier for women making 
personal family planning decisions. 
The most recent is somewhat dry 
and complicated but still undeniably 
dangerous for women’s health. 
In 1970, the Title X funding 
program was signed into law by 
President Richard Nixon. This 
program provides funds for clinics 
across America to help offer family 
planning and other reproductive 
health 
services 
to 
low-income 
communities. Forty percent of the 
people served by Title X funding 
receive their care through Planned 
Parenthood clinics. 
This, however, is about to change 
due to a new directive from the 
Trump administration. In February 
2019, the U.S. Department of Health 
and Human Services issued a new 
rule that bars any organization 
receiving Title X funding from 
referring 
patients 
to 
abortion 
providers. After months of court 
battles, this change has been allowed 
to go through. 
Planned Parenthood has likened 
this new policy to a gag rule and said 
that they cannot accept any more 
Title X funds if doing so will prevent 
them from referring their patients to 
abortion services. 
This withdrawal from Title X by 
Planned Parenthood is set to have a 
detrimental impact on low-income 
communities across Michigan and 
the United States at large. Planned 
Parenthood provides nearly 40 
percent of patients under Title X 
funding, delivering much-needed 
care to nearly 1.6 million Americans 
annually. 
Planned Parenthood of Michigan 
has said the loss of Title X funding 
will have a major impact on the 
state. Currently, 70 percent of Title 
X services in Michigan are handled 
by Planned Parenthood. The loss of 
Title X funds is estimated to impact 
42,000 Michiganders who receive 
low-cost 
health 
services 
from 
Planned Parenthood. This loss of 
care will be felt especially in certain 
counties, such as right here in 
Washtenaw County, where the only 
health care facility offering Title X 
coverage is Planned Parenthood.

While abortion opponents have 
accused Planned Parenthood of 
playing 
politics 
with 
women’s 
health, the real fault lies in the 
hands of the Trump administration 
for implementing this dangerous 
law, knowing full well the negative 
impact it will have.
Despite Planned Parenthood’s 
warnings about the potential loss 
of Title X funding following the 
gag rule, the Trump administration 
pushed ahead with this policy, 
leaving Planned Parenthood no 
choice but to back out. 

The importance of Planned 
Parenthood 
being 
allowed 
to 
refer patients to abortion services 
cannot be overstated, especially 
given the recent rise in misleading 
crisis pregnancy centers. Crisis 
pregnancy centers are organizations 
that push false narratives to try 
to coerce women into not having 
abortions. In 2015, The National 
Abortion Rights Action League 
witnessed this firsthand during an 
undercover investigation of crisis 
pregnancy centers in California. 
NARAL reported workers at the 
crisis pregnancy centers telling 
patients patently false information, 
including that abortion is linked to 
breast cancer and infertility, neither 
of which is true. 
These centers often advertise 
online and make it seem as if they 
are impartial organizations. For 
women dealing with the stress of an 
unwanted pregnancy, it can be hard 
to determine which organizations 
are legitimate abortion providers 
and which are not. 
This action is another example 
of 
the 
Trump 
administration 
putting partisan politics ahead of 
the health of Americans. Whether 
it be attempting to defund Planned 

Parenthood or this new directive, 
this administration has been 
relentless 
in 
chipping 
away 
reproductive health care. 
This 
laser-like 
focus 
on 
restricting reproductive health 
care is emblematic of the rapidly 
changing 
Republican 
party. 
Republican 
President 
Richard 
Nixon signed this legislation into 
law, but that has not stopped the 
Republicans of today from gutting 
the law. As the Republican party 
becomes more conservative, we 
see ordinary people who simply 
want control of their bodies caught 
in the crosshairs. This is especially 
true with Title X funding, which 
has helped so many people. 
The funds used from Title 
X provide services desperately 
needed by so many Americans, from 
birth control to cancer screenings. 
In fact, a 2010 study concluded that 
the Title X program was highly 
effective and prevented 2.2 million 
unintended pregnancies, 99,100 
cases of chlamydia and 410 HIV 
infections. These numbers prove 
the importance of these services 
and the sheer backwardness of the 
Trump administration’s new rule.
As students, we cannot sit by as 
millions of Americans lose their 
access to this critically important 
care. Though Planned Parenthood 
is committed to making up for this 
major loss of funding, this will be no 
small feat, especially in Michigan. 
Currently, Planned Parenthood 
is “deprioritized” for receiving state 
funding. If you feel strongly that this 
is not all right, then write to your 
state representatives, get involved 
with abortion groups here on 
campus and, most importantly, vote, 
not only in the presidential election 
but also in down-ballot races. 
Here in Michigan, many of our 
fellow citizens are at risk of losing 
their care. This cannot stand. 
We must continue to raise our 
voices against this new policy and 
advocate for the state of Michigan 
to allocate more funds to help make 
up the difference in Title X funds. 
This is the only way to ensure all 
Michiganders have access to the 
health care they deserve. 

Isabelle Schindler can be reached 

at ischind@umich.edu.

Jared Stolove can be reached at 

jstolove@umich.edu.

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This administration 
has been relentless 
in chipping away 
reproductive health 
care

