Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, January 17, 2020

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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our outdated windows and poor 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to extremely outdated homes.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. 

