Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, January 17, 2020
Alanna Berger
Brittany Bowman
Zack Blumberg
Emily Considine
Cheryn Hong
Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Mary Rolfes
Michael Russo
Timothy Spurlin
Miles Stephenson
Joel Weiner
Erin White
Lola Yang
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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
LEAH ADELMAN | COLUMN
Green home incentives
L
ike many homes rented
by students in Ann Arbor,
my
house
was
built
over 100 years ago. Due to the
antique, inoperable fire alarm still
attached to our kitchen wall and
the significant breeze felt near a
closed window, I cannot help but
wonder what level of care has been
taken in bringing this home into
the 21st century.
The temperature is dropping,
and the heating bills are rising.
My housemates and I crank up
our thermostat but often still
feel cold in our home. As an
environmentalist, it pains me to
think about all of the energy and
resources that go into heating
this home just to be lost through
our outdated windows and poor
insulation. Leaking windows are
the culprit for 25 to 30 percent of
heat loss in a home.
The 2012 Ann Arbor greenhouse
gases (GHG) inventory found that
the residential sector makes up 22
percent of Ann Arbor greenhouse
gas emissions. Over half of Ann
Arbor’s housing units are rentals,
which means that the energy
efficiency of these rental units has
a huge impact on the city’s overall
GHG emissions. A report shows
that energy efficiency upgrades
could reduce the United States’
emissions by half.
Landlords have no economic
incentives to improve the energy
efficiency of a home when renters
are
responsible
for
paying
electricity
and
water
bills.
This is problematic as it leads
to extremely outdated homes.
Replacing windows or appliances
are home improvement measures
that are not very invasive or
difficult. The payoff is long-term
for those paying the bill and for the
energy grid we are so reliant on.
However, if landlords cover
the costs of utilities and instead
incorporate them into monthly
rent
(which
some
landlords
do already), residents have no
monetary incentive to reduce
their daily usage. This is an issue
of competing split incentives. A
compromise is necessary so that
both parties have some incentive
to reduce energy waste for the
benefit of students’ wallets and
emissions reductions.
There should be some level
of accountability for landlords
while still leaving some financial
incentive for renters to limit their
usage. One option would be if
the management company was
required to pay the remainder of
our bill after it reaches a certain
maximum (in a deductible-style).
Another would be if it were
required to pay a percentage of
our utility bills. Or maybe the
state should raise the Michigan
energy improvement tax incentive
of 10 percent so landlords to want
to improve the efficiency of the
homes they manage.
Another way to hold landlords
accountable for the efficiency of
their homes would be to simply
require that the insulation and
appliances of a home meet a certain
energy standard, similar to how
homes must meet strict fire codes.
Just as there is an inspection of
fire safety standards, there could
be an inspection of efficiency
standards where records must
be presented to prove that, for
example, the windows have been
updated in the past 20 years. Like
fire hazards and asbestos, energy
inefficiency can be considered
a safety threat. While perhaps
more abstract, outdated homes are
indeed contributing to the safety
threat of climate change.
Living in an old house rather
than an updated apartment is
a dramatically less sustainable
lifestyle. Simply, the land use and
energy for a single-family home
outweigh that of a multi-family
dwelling unit. That being said,
the old homes of Ann Arbor give
the city its character and charm.
For me, living in one of these old
houses has been a wonderful,
unique experience.
There is something to be
said for the water usage in old
homes as well as energy usage.
Landlords
and
management
companies can update water
appliances
and
greatly
reduce the water usage of a
home. Low-flow faucets and
showerheads are an example.
Another is simply having a
dishwasher, which uses less
water
than
hand-washing
(unfortunately, my rental house
lacks a dishwasher, like many
in Ann Arbor). But, similar to
electricity use, there has to
be some financial incentive or
requirement for a homeowner
to want to spend on these water-
saving investments.
The student housing market
in Ann Arbor is such that this
house, built in 1901, will continue
to rent out each year, no matter
if efficiency updates are made or
not. After all, student housing
in Ann Arbor has reached 98
percent occupancy each year
since 2014. Even with high
rent prices and dreadful utility
bills, students will continue to
pay to live in my house built
over a century ago. The paint is
chipping, and the bathroom door
has no lock, but the thing about
this old house that really matters
is the functionality of it in the
new century.
Leah Adelman can be reached at
ladelman@umich.edu.
RAY AJEMIAN | COLUMN
Gender-neutral bathrooms aren’t for everyone
A
s transgender issues have
entered the forefront of
American
politics,
the
issue of public restrooms has been
contested in courtrooms across
the nation. Between 2013 and 2016,
almost half of states made efforts to
pass laws restricting transgender
people’s access to single-gender
facilities by their “biological sex,”
often with public schools as the
battlegrounds. With the debate
over where transgender individuals
should use the restroom becoming
more and more heated, many public
facilities have opted for the middle
ground: gender-neutral bathrooms.
Bathroom bills — the most recent
of which is the Kentucky School
Privacy Act — and gender-neutral
restrooms arose in response to
widespread social anxiety over
visibly trans people using gendered
restrooms. While the courts argued
with no verdict in sight, gender
non-specific bathrooms were the
easy solution. Rather than wholly
accepting or rejecting transgender
people,
gender
non-specific
bathrooms create a third space
where we can be ignored entirely. A
bathroom that welcomes all genders
eliminates the debate entirely.
The University of Michigan is
one of the countless colleges now
offering a gender-neutral bathroom
option for its students. Currently, the
Spectrum Center lists 102 “gender-
inclusive” restrooms in campus
buildings,
not
including
those
within the dorms themselves. The
term “gender-inclusive,” however,
is misleading. People of any gender
can use them, that is true, but that
doesn’t mean they are supposed to.
The issue: When anyone can
use a facility, anyone will. This is
how I find myself waiting for one
of Alice Lloyd Hall’s two single-
use
gender-neutral
bathrooms
to become available each night.
Unsurprisingly, with 520 students
living in the building, I’m rarely
fortunate enough to gain access to
a restroom when I need it. And yet,
I’m still luckier than the students
in the many halls with no gender-
inclusive showers or restrooms
whatsoever. For most, these single-
use restrooms are seen as a luxury.
They’re private, they’re cleaner,
they’re (typically) newer. But for
transgender students — the people
these restrooms are meant to
accommodate — it’s often a matter
of safety.
For transgender students who
pass as their gender, not being able
to use gender-inclusive restrooms
isn’t an issue, but this isn’t always
the case. Androgynous-looking or
mid-transition trans people may look
out-of-place in both male and female
restrooms. The state of Michigan
doesn’t have laws explicitly forcing
transgender
people
into
the
bathroom of their assigned sex at
birth, but because University housing
cards only give students access to
the restroom matching their legal
gender, students aren’t always able
to use the restroom they’d feel safer
in. A student who looks like one
gender (for instance, someone who is
far along in transition but can’t get a
legal gender change yet) is forced to
use the bureaucractically-mandated
restroom rather than the one
their appearance implies, causing
problems not just for the individual,
but everyone involved. Whether or
not people should feel threatened
by the existence of trans people in
gendered spaces, we know that they
do. If cis people weren’t afraid of
us, we would only have to deal with
the discomfort of feeling out-of-
place, not the fear of being treated as
predators. Trans people do not want
to make ourselves or others upset by
using the “wrong” restroom, but we
often aren’t given any other choice.
While
individual
incidents
at the University have not been
publicized, 21.3 percent of trans and
genderqueer U-M students reported
being a victim of nonconsensual
sexual contact, surpassed only by
undergraduate cisgender women
at a rate of 26.9 percent. However,
the same survey also found that
only 42.1 percent of trans students
thought campus officials would take
a sexual misconduct report seriously,
the lowest rate of any group, and
a mere 23.5 percent expected an
investigation of said misconduct
would be fair (all other groups had
rates over 40 percent). Perhaps most
startling is the manner in which
these assaults occur. When the
results are broken up by the use of
physical force, inability to consent
or both, trans students are the only
group that solely reported physical
force as a tactic. Concurrently, an
AAP study of transgender teens
found that the risk of sexual assault
was higher for students who had
restricted restroom access at school.
Public restrooms are far from the
only reason trans students are being
assaulted, but they are an undeniable
factor in the trend. At the very least,
restrooms serve as a venue for the
act.
Gender-inclusive
bathrooms
are meant to be a safe haven for
transgender students, but it’s this
very inclusivity that often renders
the spaces useless. They were
designed to push trans people out
of gendered bathrooms for the sake
of cisgender society’s comfort — the
safety of trans people was merely
a fortunate byproduct. And, sure
enough, these restrooms made
to make cisgender people more
comfortable are so often used by
them out of a preference for privacy
at the expense of their trans peers’
well-being.
Having access to safe restrooms
is especially vital on college
campuses because many students
have no access to private restrooms.
Those who live in the dorms
almost invariably have to shower
there, too. There is nowhere else
for transgender students to go if
their residence hall lacks a gender-
neutral restroom, or if the few in
their building are always occupied.
Creating safe restrooms for
trans
and
genderqueer
U-M
students requires individual action
as well as the implementation
of large-scale change by the
University. Trans students need a
gender-neutral restroom option,
regardless of which residence
hall they live in. We need an
appropriate number of restrooms
for the size of the building, or
gender-neutral bathrooms with
stalls to accommodate more than
one student at a time. However,
these efforts will be useless unless
cisgender students are willing to
acknowledge why these changes
are being made in the first place.
It is easy to forget that restrooms
labeled “gender-inclusive” have
an intended audience, and it is even
easier to ignore it when the privacy
of a single-use room is so tempting.
By thinking twice before taking
advantage of a vacant restroom, you
can make someone else’s day safer.
Ray Ajemian can be reached at
rajemian@umich.edu.
VALENTINA HOUSE | COLUMN
Language in a poltically correct 2020
T
he First Amendment of the
United States Constitution
is unabridged freedom
of speech and expression — even
ahead of our right to bear arms.
Today, more than 200 years later,
there are virtually no laws limiting
speech, but there are thousands of
federal and state laws governing
actions. Not to worry. Every day,
an angry mob of underqualified
commentators is imposing limits on
speech and thought more powerful
than any law ever contemplated
by our founders. Say the wrong
word, think the wrong thought
and the mob will shame you into
submission and silence, ensuring
you will always watch your tongue
and “speak right.”
“Speak right” is a term I use to
explain the following phenomenon:
similar to George Orwell’s famous
term “NewsSpeak,” peers and
commentators
act
as
political
correctness police who pressure
people to “speak correctly.” Under
this cultural norm, the wrong
word or phrase can leave a person
permanently marked as “bigoted”
even if their values and actions
prove otherwise. In the book
“1984,” nonconformists would be
jailed for critical speech, and yet
pressure can work just as well to
shame people into silence. With
“speak right,” words speak louder
than actions.
Many believe President Donald
Trump has utilized racially-coded
rhetoric, so he’s racist. Never mind
that the first piece of legislature
he supported — the First Step Act
— passed criminal justice reforms
that benefited the Black community
more than any other demographic.
Due to his work in the economy,
Black unemployment under his
administration is at an all-time low.
What is racist about those actions?
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has
not been subject to the same level of
scrutiny for her political speech. It
went largely ignored, for instance,
that in 1996, Clinton referred
to young black criminals as
“superpredators.” More startlingly,
I’d argue, is that actions taken by
the Clintons were detrimental
to the black community. The
Clintons supported a crime bill
which
held
harsh
provisions
for the incarceration of drug
traffickers and disproportionately
affected Black citizens — in
seven states, 80 to 90 percent
of imprisoned drug traffickers
were
Black.
Additionally,
while
white
unemployment
rates fell to record lows under
Clinton’s administration, Black
unemployment
rates
were
consistently twice as high and in
some years, even higher.
Whereas we speak in a stream
of consciousness, our actions are
thought out and deliberate and
therefore should be evaluated with
more weight. However, people’s
speech is the subject of a lot of
criticism today. People fail to realize
that those who are politically
correct can be just as bigoted,
if not more so, than those who
aren’t. The real concern attached
to political correctness is the
lack of transparency. People may
think one way and speak another.
In fact, as controversial as it is,
a politician’s racist gaffe should
probably be more worrisome than
a kid whose vocabulary includes
racist slang.
I’d argue that the former is
more likely to be conscious of what
they’re saying so when they have a
speech mishap, it probably reflects
their true beliefs because they
said precisely the thing they were
trying to avoid. Politically incorrect
people — on the other hand—are
less conscious of what they’re
saying, so when they say something
bigoted, it may be reflective of their
bigoted notions, but it may also be
due to nurtured ignorance. While
ignorance can’t and shouldn’t
be excused, I believe a lack of
knowledge is less malicious than
true racism, sexism, etc.
The term “political correctness”
by its nature does little to expose
racist people and is more often used
to censor or silence people. When
one’s character is truly pure, they
shouldn’t have to worry about what
they might say. Actions will always
shine through and mirror one’s
character.
In a creative writing class, I
saw political correctness stunting
creativity firsthand. My friend
was eager to share a piece he had
worked on for a long time. The
piece, a romantic short story,
centered around a heterosexual
relationship. My professor spent
the majority of class ripping my
friend’s story apart because the
female part didn’t have as many
lines or vivacious characteristic
traits as the male counterpart. He
noted my friend’s piece fell into a
trope and decided that was pretty
much all there was to it.
In my final piece, my professor
flagged the word “they” when
referring to Mexicans, which he
deemed insensitive and directed
me to a list of politically incorrect
terms. As a Mexican-American
myself, it felt as though my
intentions were being completely
overlooked. It seemed that the
words my friend and I chose were
more important than what the
story told — my friend’s overall
story wasn’t sexist, nor was mine
racist.
It is hard to be politically
correct in a world where “they”
can’t be used. Political correctness
in
general
is
subjective
—
some consider Black to be the
appropriate term, while others
deem
it
offensive,
preferring
African American. It is more
fruitful to look beyond the terms
to people’s underlying intentions.
Moreover, creative works can
be good even if they aren’t
progressive. The establishment of
political correctness encourages
uniform, progressive works. If an
author can’t write a book without
a progressive plot, we may end up
with a lot of princess-and-princess
fairytales but no way of knowing
whether those authors actually
supported homosexuality or just
needed to check off a “politically
correct” box.
Even though we may need more
roles like these, they shouldn’t be
placed by default because it may
be blatant they were incorporated
as an afterthought and weren’t
uniquely developed. My professor
would’ve liked if my friend added
more female lines. If afterwards
he did, however, it might suggest
that dominant female roles are
unnatural and therefore, have to
be forced. Underneath the blanket
of political correctness, there’s no
way of knowing whether notions
of equality and justice were
actually realized or if they were
forced into submission.
The end result of political
correctness is always an approved
form of speech (“speak right”) but
not always a better set of actions.
Free speech should be adamantly
preserved if we want to progress as
an equal and just society. The fear
of being politically incorrect does
nothing to shift people’s notions,
but everything to silence true
beliefs. The only way to combat
ignorance is to let people speak
freely and convince them of their
ill-guided conceptions.
Valentina House can be reached
at valhouse@umich.edu.
KAAVYA RAMACHANDHRAN | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT KAAVYAR@UMICH.EDU
In a creative writing
class, I saw political
correctness stunting
creativity firsthand.