Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, October 7, 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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T

he nearly three years 
of 
Donald 
Trump’s 
presidency 
have 
been 
an absolute whirlwind. From 
sexual assault accusations to the 
Sharpie scandal, there hasn’t 
been a second for us to catch 
our breath. Every time a scandal 
happens, people call for Trump’s 
impeachment. Yet, he seems to 
get past each scandal relatively 
unharmed. 
That 
was 
until 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 
D-Calif., who had previously been 
hesitant to bring impeachment 
to the table, decided enough 
was enough and announced a 
formal 
impeachment 
inquiry 
into President Trump (though 
he is still relatively unharmed). 
This came after a whistleblower 
complaint 
that 
Trump 
had 
allegedly pressured Ukrainian 
President Volodymyr Zelensky 
into investigating former Vice 
President Joe Biden and his son 
Hunter Biden. He also allegedly 
threatened to withhold aid to 
Ukraine should Zelensky not 
comply. While the impeachment 
inquiry should be exciting news 
to many Democrats, they should 
also be concerned.
There are two main reasons 
Democrats are excited about the 
news of a possible impeachment, 
with the first being their pure 
disdain for Trump. More than 
200 House Democrats have a 
burning desire to see Trump 
kicked out of office. Presidential 
candidate 
former 
Rep. 
Beto 
O’Rourke, D-Texas, hammered 
Trump as being “sick” and 
“unfit for this office.” The only 
problem is that calling someone 
unfit isn’t a good enough reason 
for impeachment. Each party 
will claim that a president of 
the opposing party is unfit — 
that is party politics. However, 
pressuring a foreign leader to dig 
up dirt on a presidential candidate 
and his son may be the straw that 
breaks the camel’s back, and it 

ultimately made Pelosi fold on 
pushing off impeachment. 
The 
other 
reason 
many 
Democrats want to see Trump 
impeached 
is 
because 
doing 
so would set a precedent. If 
Democrats 
do 
not 
pursue 
impeachment, 
then 
Trump’s 
illegal 
actions 
will 
become 
commonplace. One of the most 
dangerous 
things 
in 
politics 
is precedent. If Trump can do 
something illegal, what stops the 
next president from taking the 
same course of action? 

While many Democrats may 
be gung-ho about impeachment, 
they should be extremely wary 
of pushing ahead. I believe it 
is incredibly important for the 
Democrats to not allow a precedent 
to be set, but there is a much more 
present danger of impeachment. 
Should the Democrats in the 
House succeed in bringing up 
charges of impeachment, Sen. 
Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his 
colleagues in the Senate would not 
convict Trump and remove him 
from office. It would be totally off-
color for McConnell. He blocked 
President 
Barack 
Obama’s 
Supreme Court appointee and has 
blocked numerous bills that have 
recently passed in the U.S. House, 
including election security bills 
and gun control legislation. In 
order for the Senate to convict 
Trump and remove him from 
office there would need to be a 
two-thirds majority in the Senate. 
In this political era, it’s rare to 

get senators on the same page 
for simple things, so it would be 
virtually impossible to get enough 
of them to agree on something as 
polarizing as convicting Trump. 
What 
would 
a 
failed 
impeachment 
mean 
for 
Democrats? Well, for starters, 
the public appearance of the 
Democratic 
party 
would 
be 
tarnished. 
An 
impeachment 
without 
conviction 
would 
validate Trump’s claim that the 
continual calls for impeachment 
were a giant witch hunt. The 
bigger problem for Democrats 
would be the energy boost that 
Trump’s base would receive: His 
rallies would be bigger, and his 
donations would skyrocket. It is 
not hard for one to imagine the 
rhetoric Trump would come up 
with after not being convicted. 
There would be endless name 
calling 
and 
hateful 
Twitter 
rants in all caps. Giving Trump 
momentum into an election year 
would be a very costly mistake 
for the Democrats. It could end 
in disaster for the party with 
Trump getting elected again 
in 2020. All it takes is to go on 
Twitter to already see how his 
base is reacting. Many of them 
are claiming that it’s all a lie 
and the Democrats are trying to 
steal the election, including the 
presidency.
Democrats have consistently 
said the main goal of 2020 is 
defeating Trump. While many 
see impeachment as one of the 
possible avenues to do that, I do 
not view it as the ideal pathway 
to Democratic success. If the 
Democrats really want to turn 
the country around, they should 
beat Trump outright in the 
2020 general election and avoid 
the chaos of a failed Trump 
impeachment, and the inevitable 
division that will arise with it.

Impeachment isn’t all fun and games

KIANNA MARQUEZ | COLUMN

The importance of color in our world

JONATHAN VAYSMAN | COLUMN

D

uring a meeting for a 
student 
organization 
I’m involved in, we had 
an icebreaker activity 
that asked, “Would 
you rather be color-
blind or lose your 
taste 
buds?” 
After 
pondering the idea for 
a couple of seconds, I 
walked to the side of 
the room representing 
the latter, where the 
minority 
of 
people 
stood. 
I 
justified 
losing my taste buds 
because 
theoretically 
losing 
my ability to see color was 
unimaginable. For me, there’s a 
powerful emotional significance 
to the various colors that I see 
every day. Colors reflect mood, 
purpose and the uniqueness 
of living and nonliving beings. 
I believe it’s ultimately our 
responsibility to recognize that 
diminishing color from our lives, 
such as in the natural spaces 
around us and in the people 
among us, means diminishing 
our ability to mold a society 
whose functional potential can 
be powerfully multidimensional 
and far-reaching.
The presence of color in our 
surrounding 
environments 
serves as an untold essential 
contributor 
to 
our 
mental 
health. A 2006 study confirms 
that spending time in nature 
can counteract the toxic stress 
that occurs in our daily lives 
because 
viewing 
stimulating 
natural scenes can create a 
pleasurable experience for the 
brain. Another study discovered 
that plant life can have similar 
biological influences on the body 
as aromatherapy, a phenomenon 
essentially 
built 
on 
the 
collective leverage of the visual, 
olfactory and touching senses 
with each other. When placed in 
a workspace with a multicolored 
personality in its greenery and 
abundant sunlight, employees 
demonstrated 
a 
15-percent 
increase in reported well-being. 
Unknowingly, we are uplifted 
by the dynamic structure and 
presentation of nature in ways 
that are generally unobservable 
on a minuscule level, yet we 
would likely feel a dramatic 
change if these characteristics 
of nature ceased to exist.
While ensuring the presence 
of green space can be the first 
step towards using nature to 

improve 
our 
livelihood, 
it’s 
worth noting that the green 
space must be well kept in 
order to have these 
positive 
influences 
on 
our 
behavior. 
In 
other 
words, 
the 
pleasurable 
and 
therapeutic 
effects that viewing 
nature 
can 
have 
are 
best 
conveyed 
when 
the 
nature 
looks 
natural 
and 
unaffected by man-
made 
destruction. 
A Time Magazine article about 
the psychological effect of green 
spaces mentions Dr. Andrew 
Lee’s 
commentary 
on 
their 
functionality as social spaces: 
“If a green space is difficult to 
get to, has poor lighting or is not 
clean, it may be seen as unsafe 
or inaccessible and probably 
wouldn’t 
boost 
a 
visitor’s 
mood.” With that being said, it’s 
important to let the behaviors 
of diverse and flourishing plant 
life carry on naturally and that 
we minimize drastic alterations 
to allow them to fulfill their 
abstract healing potentials.

Not only can dynamic natural 
spaces be attributed to the health 
of the people who experience it 
every day, but these spaces can 
also be indicative of the health 
of the environment these people 
live in. When the color of an 
area is changed from natural, 
earthy tones to a modern white, 
eccentric slate or abysmal black 
alongside human intervention 
in the area, this more often than 
not suggests the poor quality of 
the environment in this area. 
For instance, a Rice University 
review of marine life in the 
Caribbean comments on the 
importance of the multicolored 
coral reefs for the quality of 
their 
surrounding 
marine 
ecosystem. The varying vibrant 
colors of the coral reefs are able 

to reflect sunlight differently 
to protect them from damage. 
In 
addition, 
their 
colors 
attract 
various 
species 
of 
fish for mating and shield 
them from predators, which 
ultimately contributes to the 
livelihood of all surrounding 
sea life. 
As a result, these coral reefs 
are contributing to the quality 
of their surrounding marine 
environment by allowing the 
many organisms within this 
environment to carry forth 
their every day behaviors that 
contribute to their survival 
and future evolution. In the 
many areas around the world 
that are suffering from coral 
bleaching, the loss of color in 
these natural spaces suggests a 
loss of ability for these spaces 
to provide for the evolution 
of the organisms in them, 
and thus the distress that is 
placed on the quality of these 
environments.
It’s 
also 
important 
to 
realize that almost nothing 
functions as well as it could 
when the parts of the system 
don’t think or act diversely 
and don’t represent different 
functions that ultimately allow 
the multidimensional system 
to perform. It’s not surprising 
that 
some 
connoisseurs 
of 
capitalism 
and 
exploitation 
neglect 
the 
importance 
of 
diversity in nature, just as 
they neglect the importance of 
diversity in people. However, 
it’s imperative to acknowledge 
and act upon the idea that 
diversity in function and in 
representation is essential to 
the progression of mankind. 
While we waste time debating 
if these marginalized groups 
— 
naturally 
and 
socially-
constructed — of our world 
are important enough to care 
about, we are ignoring a slow 
obliteration that is curtailing 
the outcome of their future 
permanently. The expansion 
of diversified characteristics 
is 
inevitably 
beneficial 
for 
our health, the health of our 
environment and the health 
of our society. We shouldn’t 
choose to ignore our ability to 
acknowledge color in its many 
visual and metaphysical forms 
if we have the choice.

Kianna Marquez can be reached at 

kmarquez@umich.edu.

Jonathan Vaysman can be reached 

at jvaysman@umich.edu.

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JOEL WEINER | COLUMN

Prison reform in America is far overdue
I

n October 2013, The Vera 
Institute of Justice organized 
a tour of prisons in Germany 
and the Netherlands 
with 
the 
intent 
to 
educate 
American 
delegates 
about 
the 
systems of incarceration 
in other countries. The 
condition 
of 
prisons 
in these countries was 
surprising to Americans 
because they were so 
different from our own. 
The guards treated the 
prisoners with dignity 
and respect by talking with them 
out of a genuine interest in what 
they had to say. The policies of 
those prisons also generated a 
culture of independence and 
self-reliance: 
Prisoners 
were 
allowed to make their own meals 
and wear their own clothes. In 
addition, to give prisoners a sense 
of purpose and to prepare them 
for life outside the prison, every 
incarcerated person was required 
to have a job.
Those are practices prisons 
in the United States should seek 
to emulate. The treatment of 
inmates in our detention centers 
is abhorrent. Last year, the 
American Civil Liberties Union 
called three prisoners to testify 
in a federal case against the state 
of Mississippi. The inmates, who 
were held at East Mississippi 
Correctional Facility, described 
horrifying 
sanitary 
conditions 
and decrepit facilities, such as 
plumbing problems so severe that 
fecal matter would come out of 
showerheads in bathrooms and 
drains in cells, and the kitchen 
would be infested with roaches. 
Prisons in the U.S. are also 
severely 
understaffed. 
Every 
position from guards to mental 
health specialists are in short 
supply. In St. Clair Correctional 
Facility, an infamously violent 
prison in Alabama, a mentally ill 
inmate said his monthly check-ups 
were usually only about five to 10 
minutes long. Guards are few and 
far in between, allowing ample 
time for violence and injustice 
to proliferate. Sometimes, to get 
guards’ attention, inmates will 
create emergency situations like 
lighting fires or cutting their 
wrists. 
The lengths to which prisoners 
will go to access a corrections 
officer demonstrate that America 
does not have enough guards 
keeping prisons functional. Since 
prison staff are the sole authority 
over prisoners’ wellbeing, they 
ought to be reasonably accessible, 

but because there are so few of 
them — the South Mississippi 
Correctional Institution has an 
inmate-to-guard 
ratio of 23 to one — 
and 
because 
they 
only respond to the 
most desperate calls 
for 
help, 
inmates 
are largely left to 
deal with problems 
themselves. 
There 
are a few reasons 
why there are so few 
guards. The first is 
that 
most 
people 
simply do not want to work in 
prisons because guards are paid 
low wages for brutal work, like 
breaking up fights. The average 
salary is $44,000 per year, and 
correctional 
officers 
are 
the 
second most likely profession to 
be non-fatally assaulted on the job. 
In addition, many prisons house 
inmates far above their capacity — 
in 2013, more than 17 states were 
holding inmates above capacity. In 
Illinois, for instance, prisons were 
at 151 percent capacity.

Another reason for the harsh 
conditions in prisons stems from 
their design. The belief that all 
criminals must be isolated from 
society has lead to prisons being 
some of the most secluded parts of 
civilization, from their geography 
to their architecture. Prisons are 
often built in remote locations, 
where few people ever travel. 
This is mainly for public safety, 
but it also leads to a startling lack 
of oversight. The most interaction 
many Americans have with prisons 
is passing them on the highway, 
so few people ever see what lies 
beyond the barbed wire fences. 
Even when government agencies 
inspect prisons, they sometimes 
warn prisons in advance of their 
arrival, giving the staff time to 
prepare. This startling lack of 
oversight has to be addressed. By 
instituting policies that would open 
the system up to more scrutiny, we 
can ensure that prison guards do 
not mistreat inmates.
This obviously does not mean 

dangerous, 
violent 
offenders 
should be in close contact with 
the general public. But any 
effective reform would, however, 
entail fundamentally changing 
the structure of detention centers 
to offer inmates more agency 
and 
autonomy, 
thus 
helping 
the incarcerated acclimate to 
conditions similar to those they 
will be released into. That will 
make the transition to life outside 
of prison easier, helping them stay 
out of trouble.
At the center of prison reform 
is ending mass incarceration. 
The morality of unnecessarily 
incarcerating 
people 
aside, 
having fewer people in prisons 
would make the job of prison 
guards easier because they would 
have fewer inmates to watch, and 
it would prevent more violence 
from breaking out.
These changes would not just 
improve the living conditions 
of prisoners, they would make 
the entire corrections system 
far 
more 
effective 
because 
emphasizing 
rehabilitation 
over punishment would bring 
down our recidivism rate, which 
is 
when 
released 
prisoners 
reoffend. Studies demonstrate 
that vocational programs and 
educational 
opportunities 
in 
prisons decrease the likelihood of 
rearrest after release by over 50 
percent. Since the criminal justice 
system 
should 
help 
inmates 
become productive members of 
society, the recidivism rate ought 
to be one of the most telling 
statistics of its success. As such, 
rehabilitation programs should 
be at the forefront of prison 
reform.
The issues in U.S. prisons are 
not just a problem for prisoners, 
they are a reflection of our 
country’s morals. We as a society 
are collectively responsible for 
their treatment, meaning the 
despicable state of corrections 
facilities is a failure on our part. 
As a nation that cherishes liberty, 
we ought to treat the removal of 
our esteemed freedoms with the 
utmost seriousness. We should be 
deeply disturbed at the current 
conditions of those we incarcerate 
and take actions for change. By 
decreasing the incarceration rate, 
increasing the number of guards in 
prisons and investing in education 
and vocational programs, our 
corrections centers can become 
better for inmates, prison staff 
and the country.

Joel Weiner can be reached at 

jgweiner@umich.edu.

Color in our 

surrounding 

environments serves 

as an untold essential 

conributor to our 

mental health

While the impeachment 

inquiry should be 

exciting news to many 

Democrats, they should 

also be concerned

JOEL
WEINER

At the center of 
prison reform 
is ending mass 
incarceration

KIANNA
MARQUEZ

