Tuesday, April 21, 2020 — 3
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

FINANCE
From Page 1

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

 “So what we’re able to do is educate the public 

about creative arts that are happening inside 

prisons.”

In addition, students involved in PCAP 

organized correspondence to people who are 

incarcerated, among other forms of activism and 

engagement.

Executive 
board 
members 
for 
PCAP 

also created a mutual aid fund for formerly 

incarcerated people who are dealing with crises 

amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund has 

raised more than $14,000 and helped more than 

30 people so far. 

“It has been so successful and other students 

have been helping to fundraise for that effort to 

get the word out about it,” Krinitsky said. “It’s just 

been a really, really positive outcome.”

LSA senior Hannah Agnew served as president 

of PCAP’s student executive committee this year. 

According to Agnew, it was difficult for her and 

other students in the organization to find out they 

could no longer run the in-person workshops.

“The point of it is bringing joy into very difficult 

and dehumanizing spaces,” Agnew said. “It’s 

definitely a struggle of feeling really helpless about 

what we can do as a student org and knowing that 

we just have to sit back while a lot of the suffering 

is happening.”

Agnew worked to advance the organization’s 

mission by trying to help improve conditions 

for incarcerated people, who are at high risk of 

contracting COVID-19.

“The goals have shifted from finding support 

for our membership more so to finding support 

for the folks that we would usually be facilitating 

with inside,” Agnew said. “Right now, because 

we can’t engage in the community, (the goal) has 

really changed to how can we spread awareness 

about this issue? How can we find ways of rallying 

folks around the release of certain incarcerated 

populations during this difficult time?”

For smaller groups that are more focused on 

the campus involvement, such as Shift, having 

regularly scheduled meetings throughout the 

semester played a big role in maintaining a sense 

of community. 

According to co-director of Shift Julia 

Averbuch, Business and Engineering freshman, 

the group has about 40 students involved. The 

organization also has a house where the members 

would gather for meetings and where projects 

from past members are on display.

“It has a really homey environment,” Averbuch 

said. “Losing that was a big deal to a lot of our 

members because it was such a space a lot of 

people felt like was a second home to them.”

To try and maintain that environment, the 

group shifted to hosting weekly virtual meetings, 

where members could discuss their personal 

projects. In addition, members created a website 

to virtually display their projects, since they could 

no longer host their regular end of year showcase.

“We thought having something static, that 

stays as similar as it could to pre-COVID, would be 

really beneficial for the organization,” Averbuch 

said. “That way, not everything’s changed. Seniors 

aren’t missing out on the last couple months of 

their experience with this organization and new 

members are getting the full experience as well.”

The MJIA, which holds weekly meetings, 

has now moved to online communications to 

complete the process of editing their journal, 

which typically publishes once a semester. 

According to Public Policy senior Brooke 

Bacigal, who is editor in chief of the publication, 

the group was still able to get a majority of their 

editing process done in-person during the first 

half of the semester. However, rather than printing 

about 1,000 copies of the journal to distribute, 

as they usually do, they are running the entire 

publication online, printing only a few copies for 

writers of the journal. 

“Fortunately, there are a lot of collaborative 

ways that you can edit remotely,” Bacigal 

said. “(It’s) a very exciting process that’s super 

dependent upon feedback and engagement, which 

was difficult to be able to transpose to online work 

… but through Google Forms, videos, recorded 

videos and chat options through Slack, we’ve been 

able to keep up communication and engagement 

with our staff writers and allow for that tutorial 

process to continue.”

Since a majority of their funds go towards the 

printing of the journal, according to Bacigal, the 

general membership unanimously voted to have 

that funding allocated to COVID-19 relief. 

“We were able to buy, I think, close to 1,000 

masks and donate to a fund that is going directly 

to Detroit-based hospitals for personal protection 

equipment,” Bacigal said. 

While Bacigal said it was disappointing not 

to be able to print and distribute the journal 

around campus, she felt that current events have 

reinforced the need for the journal.

“The 
entire 
circumstances 
surrounding 

COVID-19 have really pushed the reason why 

we have this journal, in a lot of ways,” Bacigal 

said. “It’s giving an additional challenge, but still 

allowing people to share their voice.”

Daily Staff Reporter Iulia Dobrin can be reached 

at idobrin@umich.edu. 

COVID-19
From Page 1

“In the months ahead, we may have to 

take additional measures to address growing 

consequences of the pandemic,” Schlissel 

said. “For instance, work that is available 

now under the current conditions may not be 

available in future months. We also must keep 

in mind the operational and resource needs 

when we are able to ramp back up. This will 

depend on state orders and federal guidelines, 

and it’s important to note that it won’t be like 

flipping a switch.”

Earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Debbie 

Dingell, D-Mich., announced the University’s 

Ann Arbor campus would receive a total of 

$25,244,052 in emergency grants to cover 

“significant” financial losses due to the 

COVID-19 outbreak. Of that, a minimum of 

$12,622,026 will be allocated for emergency 

financial 
aid 
grants 
to 
students. 
The 

University of Michigan-Dearborn will receive 

$6,989,129, with minimum of $3,494,565 

going toward emergency financial aid grants 

to students.

While the status of in-person classes 

resuming in the fall semester is still unknown, 

talk of canceling on-campus instruction has 

become more frequent among university 

administrators as coronavirus infections 

grow. Schlissel noted in his email that there 

are no clear answers on the status of fall 

classes, but he hopes in-person courses will 

be able to resume.

“We’re already working to plan for a more 

gradual return to normal activity, informed 

by strong public health guidance,” Schlissel 

wrote. “I remain cautiously optimistic that we 

will be able to deliver a public health-informed 

Fall semester on our three campuses.”

Daily Staff Reporter Jasmin Lee can be 

reached at itsshlee@umich.edu

“The first few might be positive, then the next 

ones are negative,” Rollins said. “It’s really hard 

to switch emotions … these calls only last five 

minutes, so to connect with them in that time was 

definitely a challenge.”

Third-year Medical student Majd Mokbel also 

volunteers at the Detroit Health Department and 

makes some of the 800 outgoing calls informing 

people of their test results every day.

“People have a varied range of emotions 

when they’re told their results — excited, happy, 

relieved with the negative results and acceptance 

and being scared with the positive,” he said. “But 

pretty surprisingly, many people we have talked 

to have been brave about their results.”

Second-year 
Medical 
student 
Rebecca 

Goldberg, who was rotating around Henry 

Ford Hospital, has also found a way to support 

the hospital’s response to COVID-19 remotely. 

Goldberg is a lead on the patient outreach 

initiative, which involves calling Ypsilanti Health 

Center patients who are not currently enrolled 

in the online health portal and helping them 

navigate the system to access video visits online.

“For me, it was kind of a no-brainer (to help 

out),” Goldberg said. “To be able to help patients 

in trying times like these, that’s how I’d rather 

spend my time any day.”

Third-year Medical student Tom Hester was 

rotating with Dr. Theodore Iwashyna in the 

Veterans’ Affairs Center when Iwashyna realized 

that a shortage of staff to care for patients would 

become a large issue. This led to the conception of 

the role of a Respiratory Therapist Extender. 

Hester and a team of four other classmates 

have been trained to provide basic respiratory 

care like patient assessments, oxygen rounds and 

restocking equipment so that the therapists can 

focus their efforts on patients on ventilators.

“Our job is to alleviate the workload of the 

respiratory therapists, so they can focus on 

treating the critically ill,” Hester said. 

The plan moving forward is to share the 

concept with other institutions in an effort to 

crowdsource continued improvements to the 

program. 

Quintin Solano, a member of student council 

and second-year Medical student, had been 

working the Pediatrics rotation at Michigan 

Medicine from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. and had seen the 

respiratory ICU being set up in the weeks leading 

up to the pandemic. After a discussion with 

the Student Council President Ali Hammoud, 

he realized the shortage of personal protective 

equipment had to be addressed.

“I like the idea of being able to help our 

colleagues who are going to be on the frontline, 

and help give out the equipment that they need,” 

Solano said.

After seeing Michigan Medicine’s social 

media push for personal protective equipment 

donations, Solano and a number of his fellow 

classmates began volunteering to help count, 

inventory and repackage the donations in a way 

that would allow the hospital to actually use the 

supplies.

“Donations were just flooding in from hospital 

laboratories, 
University 
laboratories, 
local 

businesses, hair salons, nail salons,” Solano said. 

“(As medical students) our hope is, you know, to 

be in the clinical environment, but if we can’t, 

then we’re gonna do everything we can outside of 

it to help everybody (in) there.”

In addition to his presidency of the Student 

Council, Hammoud is also co-director of the 

M-Response Corps, a medical student-led 

initiative to fight the COVID-19 crisis. From 

providing remote prenatal care to delivering 

groceries, students have found a multitude of 

ways to contribute. Hammoud said he sees this 

time as an opportunity to get as many students 

involved without coercion.

“We put together a survey that we sent out to 

all students before students were sent out. We just 

got so many students who are like, please don’t 

make us leave (to go home). We want to serve. We 

want to help,” Hammoud said.

Hester said he was inspired to see how his 

fellow classmates mobilized to support the health 

care system during this state of emergency.

“There are so many ways to help with the 

pandemic response that doesn’t involve patient 

care, (and) those ways are just as important,” 

Hester said. 

Daily Staff Reporter Varsha Vedapudi can 

be reached at varshakv@umich.edu

ORGANIZATIONS
From Page 1

Political campaigns balance policy, fundraising

Politicians up for re-election must decide whether to focus on outreach or legislation in the time of COVID-19

During the COVID-19 crisis, the state and 

national governments have been attempting to 

work together to provide medical supplies and 

implement shelter-in-place guidelines to slow 

the spread of the virus. Yet with the general 

election less than 200 days away and the 12th 

Congressional District primary only 106 days 

away, the congressional campaigns in the 

state of Michigan are faced with the difficult 

decision of whether to start fundraising or to 

stay focused on the coronavirus pandemic.

Campaigns have had to get creative during 

the pandemic as they move online. With 

door-to-door organizing out of the question 

and gala fundraisers unable to take place, the 

question becomes: How do candidates bring in 

donations?

In March, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, 

D-Mich., who is facing a primary opponent in 

August, told The Daily campaigning was not 

her priority and her primary focus continues 

to be on serving Ann Arbor residents during 

the pandemic. While speaking with The Daily 

on Wednesday, she said she is still committed 

to serving and communicating with her 

constituency. 

“I am not focused on fundraising right now. 

I think we need to be focused on killing this 

virus once and for all,” Dingell said. “I’m trying 

to make sure (constituents) know about the 

issues, that we’re educating them. Reaching 

out to people. Getting people that I work with 

to do neighbor checks, to check on people in 

their community, to reach out to seniors that 

feel alone.”

Dingell acknowledged that she will need to 

get back on the campaign trail.

“At some point, I’ll have to start to campaign 

again because the primary is in August,” Dingell 

said. “But I have not felt it was appropriate or 

the right thing to do and therefore, I’m not. I 

will at some point, but I won’t right now.”

Solomon Rajput, the 27-year-old medical 

student who is challenging Dingell in the 

Democratic primaries in August, has moved 

his entire campaign online. He said it’s a 

challenging time to fundraise when the U.S. 

is experiencing a surge in unemployment and 

the economy is headed toward a recession. In 

order to keep his grassroots campaign afloat, 

the millennial progressive has taken to social 

media for fundraising. 

“We are on our Twitter, Instagram and 

Facebook regularly,” Rajput said. “We’ve been 

making fundraising ads over social media and 

posting on them just making really small, small 

dollar ads, like $5.”

Additionally, using these social platforms, 

the Rajput campaign also contacts people 

individually by sending them direct messages 

explaining his campaign platform and sending 

them a link to donate to the campaign.

JULIA FANZERES

Daily Staff Reporter

