The 
Bastians 
sold 
kettle corn at local events 
and markets but made a 
breakthrough 
when 
they 
started selling at Minnesota 
Vikings trainings. 
“They loved it enough that 
the sales and marketing team 
came over the next day and 
offered as a contract to be the 
kettle corn of the Vikings, 
with the caveat that it costs a 
grand,” Dan Bastian said. “We 
were excited that we could 
make some inroads, realizing 
that if we got connected with 
the Vikings that will help 
build our outreach to other 
potential customers. … We 
would pop right outside the 
stadium … and have lines of 
people. And that’s when things 
kind of started to change for 
us.”
While moving into retail, 
the Bastians found a space for a 
popcorn targeting women. The 
brand focuses on using clean 
ingredients and empowering 
female 
consumers, 
aiming 
to encourage them to have 
a positive relationship with 
food. 
“We went in 2004 and we 
looked at what was popcorn 
called,” Angie Bastian said. 
“At the time on grocery store 
shelves popcorn was Vick’s, 
Orville, Dale and Thomas, 
Harry and David, Cracker 
Jack. This is my punch line. 
I said every time, I said to 
Dan, ‘Where are the popcorn-
women on the shelf?’ So, we 
named it Angie’s, created a 
small label and started out 
with just a plain cellophane 
bag with a label on it and 
started to sell in stores.” 
Angie said she felt the 
company 
truly 
disrupted 
the popcorn and snacking 
industry 
when 
it 
began 
working with salespeople and 
marketers to target female 
consumers. 
While 
snacks 
targeting men were permissive 
and those marketed toward 
children 
and 
adolescents 
were playful, Angie Bastian 

said snacks targeting women 
assumed they were on diets 
— a marketing technique she 
wanted to avoid. 
“Our sales team said, ‘Why 
don’t we just do it?’ ‘Angie’s 
Nearly 
Naked’ 
or 
‘Angie’s 
Skinny’ or something like 
that, because that’s what was 
happening in the marketplace 
at the time,” Angie Bastian 
said. “I’ll just say at that point 
there were 72 trademarks for 
food with the word ‘skinny.’ 
And I just said, ‘You know 
what? I don’t want to do that, 
like, we are not going to do 
that.’”

In the wider food industry, 
Angie 
Bastian 
added, 
advertising 
and 
marketing 
toward 
women 
is 
either 
hypersexualized or focused 
on dieting. Her goal was to 
remove the barrier between 
women and snacking built up 
by marketers. 
“Women and food were 
depicted in a couple of ways, 
and one of those ways was a 
‘moment of conflict,’” Angie 
Bastian said. “If a woman is 
going to eat, it’s conflictual 
for her, or it’s sexualized for 
her, and we are not like this. 
This is going to be food for 
women every day: normal, 
natural.”
Business graduate student 
Georgia 
Cassady, 
one 
of 
the vice presidents of the 
Marketing Symposium, said 
her team wanted to focus 
on finding a disruptor in the 
consumer-packaged 
goods 

industry. The Business school 
emphasizes 
the 
Consumer 
Packaged 
Goods 
industry 
for 
marketing 
recruiting, 
she said, but the industry 
is sometimes perceived as 
stagnant and slow-moving. 
“A lot of people think it’s an 
industry that’s just chugging 
along,” Cassady said. “Tech is 
the big thing these days, but 
we wanted to remind people 
that 
there’s 
opportunity 
for change and disruption 
within CPG and all types of 
marketing, regardless of the 
industry you’re going into. 
… Since we’re all going to be 
managers after our MBAs, 
how can you continue to 
disrupt and challenge the 
status quo?” 
Cassady said the Bastians 
were 
able 
to 
disrupt 
a 
seemingly stagnant industry 
like snacking while providing 
an empowering brand for 
women. 
“Right 
when 
you 
think 
that snacking, and especially 
popcorn, 
that 
there’s 
not 
much more you can do, that 
there’s so many people in the 
industry, these people came in 
with a brand that was entirely 
new,” Cassady said. “One of 
the big things was that Orville 
Redenbacher, SmartPop, they 
were all kind of masculine. So, 
they came in with this really 
feminine brand and that was 
really different.” 
Dan 
Bastian 
said 
BOOMCHICKAPOP’s 
early 
success 
came 
from 
long 
hours of work and dedication 
to the brand, along with 
fast adaptation to obstacles 
they faced entering the CPG 
industry. 
“I think so many people 
get stuck on needing to nail 
it, perfect it,” Dan Bastian 
said. “For us, just continuing 
to move forward was what 
worked for us. Our success 
lies oftentimes in the fact that 
we move fast. We didn’t take 
shortcuts, but we would adjust 
on the fly, and if we made 
mistakes or had challenges, 
we would revisit and fix it and 
keep moving forward.”

Michielssen 
and 
her 
team 
created 
the 
project 
for 
an 
entrepreneurial creativity course 
taught by University lecturer Eric 
Fretz. He said his assignment had 
no set guidelines other than it 
must be “cool,” take all semester to 
complete and must change people’s 
lives in some way. In the past, he 
has received final products ranging 
from a concert at Necto Nightclub to 
a robot that takes the trash out.
Fretz said he isn’t surprised the 
pact has gone “viral” on campus — 
he’s heard other faculty members 
discussing the pact, though he is 
not surprised it has gone “viral” 
on campus. He said he has also 
had friends with backgrounds in 
computer science reach out with 
interest in the project, often offering 
insight into the security of the 
website.
Fretz said he expected the 
questionnaire to either end up 
with 200-500 participants or break 
5,000, but once it started spreading 
around campus, Fretz knew it 
wouldn’t stop.
“Once it becomes a thing, 
everybody talks about it, and then 
everybody wants to do it,” Fretz 
said. “That was that hump I knew 
they would have to get over, but 
I figured it would happen pretty 
quickly.”
Michielssen 
and 
her 
group 
have watched their creation turn 
into the talk of campus over the 
last three weeks. Since the results 
came out, private Facebook pages 
where students post about U-M 
campus life, like UMich Memes 
for Wolverteens and Overheard at 
umich, have been inundated with 
content about the pact.
One poster made a poll to see if 
people participated and, if they did, 
how they felt about their match. 
Another created a meme about 
being a senior matched with a 
freshman.
For Michielssen, logging onto 
social media means seeing a barrage 
of posts about her team’s creation, 
which she said she finds hilarious. 
However, not all participants 
were excited about their results. 
Several heterosexual participants 
reported being matched with people 

who identify as the same gender, as 
well as people being matched with 
their siblings or cousins.
LSA sophomore Natalie White, 
who found the pact through her 
roommates, said she felt swept 
up in the excitement of the mass 
engagement across. Because all of 
her roommates were filling it out, 
she decided to as well, but her match 
was not what she was expecting.
White identifies as a heterosexual 
woman, meaning she would be 
interested in matching only with 
heterosexual men, yet her match 
was also a woman. She reached out 
to the email the results were sent 
from and was told someone must 
have inserted the wrong gender 
or sexual orientation, which made 
White question if she had completed 
the questionnaire incorrectly.
“We all got our matches, and I 
went to look, and I was matched to 
someone named Rachel, and I was 
like, ‘Okay, that’s not usually a guy’s 
name,’” White said. “I was pretty 
sure it was a girl, so I looked her 
up on Instagram and it was a girl. 
… I don’t know if I screwed up and 
she was actually looking for girls, 
because I feel like maybe I deprived 
someone of finding their Michigan 
lover.”
Michielssen 
said 
her 
team 
received emails similar to the 
one White sent and immediately 
checked the algorithm. She said 
they found no errors and concluded 
that people either completed the 
questionnaire 
for 
their 
friend 
and entered the wrong sexual 
orientation as a joke, or people could 
have simply clicked the wrong 
option by mistake.
She noted the algorithm used 
MCommunity, an online resource 
for finding contact information 
for members of the University 
community, to verify participants 
were undergraduate students. She 
said this worked for most cases, but 
in some circumstances, they were 
unable to verify their grade level.
Additionally, 
Michielssen 
said approximately 8 percent of 
participants were not matched, 
the 
majority 
of 
which 
were 
heterosexual female students.
Public Health junior Renata 
Terrazzan was one of the female 
students who did not get matched. 
When the creators sent out an email 
to all participants early on in the 

process noting many heterosexual 
women might not get a match, 
Terrazzan said she had a feeling she 
might fall into that category.
“When I first got the email about 
700 girls (not being matched), I was 
like, ‘Oh, of course it will be me,’” 
Terrazzan said. “Then it was, and I 
just thought it was kind of tea and a 
good story.”
Michielssen 
attributed 
this 
mainly to an imbalance in the 
number of heterosexual male and 
female participants. She also noted 
the purpose of the questionnaire is 
to find potential future spouses for 
participants, so if a large number 
of students of a particular gender 
and sexual orientation were not in 
the participant pool, it would make 
sense for there to be no match.
While she wanted everyone to 
find someone through the pact, 
Michielssen cautioned participants 
not to take the results to heart. She 
reminded people the questionnaire 
is for a back-up person to marry in 
20 years, not to be the participant’s 
next significant other.
“I really want to remind people 
that this is a marriage pact, and it’s 
not meant to be taken too seriously,” 
Michielssen said. “In no way, shape 
or form are we trying to set people 
up right now. Our whole goal of 
this was if you’re single in 20 years, 
and you’re lonely, well, this is your 
person.”
She said her team hopes to do 
a similar questionnaire next year, 
though they still have to work out 
the logistics as two team members 
are graduating. For Michielssen, 
this has become almost like a part-
time job, with her team putting 
in multiple hours each day on the 
questionnaire since the beginning 
of the semester.
As for the team’s grade on the 
project, the jury is still out. The 
project lasts until the end of the 
semester, so right now Michielssen 
and her partners are working on 
responding to any issues people 
run into, gathering feedback from 
participants 
and 
preparing 
a 
presentation.
When all is said and done, 
Michielssen said she is hoping they 
get an A.
“I hope all of campus is crossing 
their fingers for us,” Michelssen 
said.

“Being 
a 
journalist, 
there’s kind of a pipeline 
for work. You have to 
contact 
the 
units, 
and 
then you have to figure it 
out,” Reel said. “You have 
to film it, and you have to 
write it. You have to, if 
you’re doing video editing, 
do 
basically 
everything 
yourself. There’s a deadline 
because this is journalism, 
so I got pretty good at 
prioritizing projects and 
task management.” 
Panelist 
and 
nursing 
student 
Warren 
DeLong 
went 
straight 
into 
the 
Navy 
after 
high 
school 
and served in a hospital 
in 
Okinawa, 
Japan. 
He 
said being in a foreign 
country without his family 
at 19 years old helped him 
develop as a person. 
“My first duty station was 
Naval Hospital in Okinawa, 
Japan, and I loved it,” 
DeLong said. “When you’re 
living in a foreign country, 
as a 19-year-old, it’s not 
hard to find fun, new, 
exciting things. I really 
liked the people I worked 
with … and they guided me, 
they mentored me, and they 
got me on the path that I 
am today started taking 
college classes.” 
Engineering 
graduate 
student Ian Carter attended 
the event and told The 
Daily that discussing the 
different types of military 
careers 
emphasized 
the 
diverse opportunities the 
military offers.
“My favorite thing is 
that they all had different 
experiences, and I think 
that 
is 
important 
to 
highlight when you are 
talking about people in the 
military,” Carter said. “You 
can have a Marine that was 
a journalist and you can 
have a Navy corpsman that 
was working in a hospital. 
The variety of stories really 
help to highlight to regular 
civilians that the military 
is really a profession and 

that you can accomplish 
other things.”
During the discussion, 
panelists 
also 
talked 
about 
adjusting 
to 
University 
housing 
on 
campus. 
Engineering 
student Stefany Escobedo, 
panelist and president of 
the 
University’s 
chapter 
of 
Student 
Veterans 
of 
America, said she had to do 
her own research to find out 
whether she was eligible 
for graduate housing. 
“I did not know because 
I was so old, that I could 
be in graduate housing as 
an undergraduate. And it 
took — it was the first year 
— after the first year, year 
and a half maybe, that I 
was reading through the 
policies and procedures of 
housing for some reason,” 
Escobedo said. “And that’s 
when I saw if you’re out of 
high school for six years 
or something, then you 
can 
apply 
for 
graduate 
housing. And I said, ‘Why 
did nobody tell me?’ That 
was very frustrating for me 
because instead of moving 
around 
from, 
like, 
this 
little room and my summer 
storage to this apartment 
that cost $1,400 and that 
was really far away from 
North Campus.”
Business 
sophomore 
Michael Geraci attended 
the event and told The 
Daily it was helpful to 
hear positive and negative 
perspectives of being in the 
military. 
“I 
thought 
it 
was 
interesting to get insight 
from enlisted and active 
duty people,” Geraci said. 
“I’m not contracted with 
ROTC (Reserve Officers’ 
Training 
Corps) 
yet, 
which means I don’t have 
a commitment with it. I’m 
still kind of considering 
that 
option, 
and 
I’m 
considering what route I 
would want to do. I also 
like hearing the negatives, 
too. You get the positives 
shoved down your throat, 
and I wanted to get a whole 
perspective.” 

Other students, like Public 
Policy 
senior 
Nicholas 
Tomaino, urged CSG to ensure 
they were surveying all groups 
on campus to get an accurate 
read of the political dynamics 
on campus. 
“The University of Michigan 
is 
a 
premier 
research 
university in the state of 
Michigan, and obviously it’s 
important to have some sort of 
relationship with our elected 
representatives,” 
Tomino 
said. “It’s a respectable thing 
to be doing. It’s incumbent on 
the CSG president to seek out 
the perspectives of various 
communities across campus 
whenever he/she aspires to 
speak on behalf of the entire 
student body.”

Tomaino 
said 
Gerstein’s 
statement 
should 
have 
specified whether students on 
campus unanimously agreed 
that the Higher Education Act 
was the best solution to solve 
the college affordability crisis.
“While I’m sure that there 
is near-unanimous consensus 
that college affordability is an 
important issue for folks on 
campus, I’m largely skeptical 
that there is near-unanimous 
consensus 
on 
the 
Higher 
Education Act being the most 
effective method for solving 
it,” Tomaino said.
Gernstein 
said 
in 
his 
conversations 
with 
student 
stakeholders at the University, 
the 
dialogue 
was 
largely 
centered on improving campus 
affordability. He said there 
wasn’t a specific survey on how 
the entire student population 
felt. 

“I would say that among 
the 40,000 students we have 
on campus, a good majority, 
a large amount of students 
would say at least the campus 
affordability is an issue that 
exists here at the University 
of Michigan and in higher 
education across the country,” 
Gernstein. “And so, I didn’t 
have specific polling numbers 
to show that the entire student 
population 
thinks 
campus 
affordability is a large or larger 
issue, but just in terms of 
campus advocacy, and what the 
dialogue has been on campus 
around campus affordability 
the last couple of years and 
institutional barriers to access 
for low socioeconomic status 
students.” 
Communications 
director 
of the University’s chapter of 
College 
Democrats 
Camille 
Mancuso, Public Policy junior, 

commended CSG’s support of 
the Higher Education Act.
“College 
inaccessibility 
and unaffordability is a crisis 
faced by students all across 
the country, and that crisis is 
amplified at the University of 
Michigan. College Democrats 
is excited to see a commitment 
to solving this crisis in our 
Central Student Government,” 
Mancuso wrote. “The Higher 
Education Act is a step toward 
increasing college access for all 
students--specifically for low-
income 
and 
undocumented 
students. It is both important 
and necessary that our Central 
Student Government President 
reflect the interests of students 
by advocating for the Higher 
Education Act.”
The Daily reached out to 
the College Republicans for 
comment several times but 
received no response. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Friday, November 15, 2019 — 3A

VETERANS
From Page 1A

BOOK TALK

MONICA BABITS/Daily
Philip Larson, program coordinator for University of Michigan Veteran and Military Services, leads a discussion following a showing of the 
movie “Lioness” as part of Veterans Week in the Michigan League Thursday.

CSG
From Page 1A

POPCORN
From Page 1A
PACT
From Page 1A

“For us, just 
continuing to 
move forward 
was what worked 
for us. Our success 
lies oftentimes in 
the fact that we 
move fast.”

