Opinion

I

t has been 218 days since the 
first COVID-19 case on United 
States soil and there is still no 

organized national testing strategy. 
Despite being warned ten times by 
public health experts as early as Jan. 
18 about the threat the virus posed 
to our country, President Donald 
Trump 
and 
his 
administration 

failed — and are continuing to fail 
— to take the pandemic seriously. 
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top 
infectious disease expert for decades, 
claimed “no one is going to deny 
fewer lives would have been lost had 
the administration acted sooner. 
What’s been less clear amid all the 
chaos is that this global pandemic, an 
unprecedented catastrophe that has 
so far taken the lives of over 180,000 
Americans, is unfortunately also a 
microcosm of the climate crisis.”

Whenever there is a crisis, there 

are always those with reactionary 
politics who are quick to downplay 
the threat or even completely deny its 
existence. With the pandemic, that 
takes the form of anti-maskers, anti-
vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. 
By now everyone has seen at least 
one video of someone refusing to 
put on a mask inside a grocery store 
or shopping center. While it can be 
entertaining to watch grown adults 
scream and whine about having to 
wear a face-covering for 15 minutes, 
it does reflect extremely poorly on 
the political climate of the country. 

From “5G causes COVID-19” to 

“Bill Gates is tracking people with the 
vaccine,” the number of conspiracy 
theories gaining traction in the U.S. 
right now is incredibly dangerous. 
These 
theories 
may 
contribute 

to the skepticism surrounding a 
potential 
COVID-19 
vaccine; 
a 

recent Gallup poll found that one 
in three Americans would not get a 
free Food and Drug Administration 
(FDA) approved COVID-19 vaccine 
that is estimated to be ready for 
distribution in early 2021. The Mayo 
Clinic estimated that for contagious 
diseases the ideal percentage of the 
population to reach herd immunity 
is in the ballpark of 70 percent. If the 
Gallup poll ends up being accurate, 

the 65 percent of Americans that 
would be willing to be vaccinated 
for COVID-19 might not reach the 
percentage necessary for widespread 
immunity, causing the pandemic to 
drag on longer.

This same skepticism is seen 

in 
conversations 
about 
climate 

change, with conservatives arguing 
climate change is natural and global 
temperature always varies over 
time. Trump has even gone as far 
as to tweet in 2012, “the concept of 
global warming was created by and 
for the Chinese in order to make U.S. 
manufacturing 
non-competitive,” 

despite having signed a letter in 
2009 urging then-President Barack 
Obama to support a global climate 
deal. Surprising no one that pays 
attention to the future of the planet, 
NASA reported that 97 percent of 
climate scientists believe climate 
change is a man-made phenomenon. 
Many 
climate 
scientists 
have 

suggested a deadline of 2030 to stop 
global temperatures from rising 
more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 
degrees Fahrenheitper year, or the 
damage caused to the planet will be 
irreversible. 

Even with scientists emphasizing 

2030, 
neither 
of 
our 
current 

presidential candidates have a plan to 
hit that target. While Trump has no 
policies or plans on his website — and 
the Republican Party has even gone so 
far as to have no platform at all at their 
convention — Joe Biden does. His 
climate plan currently sets a date of 
2035 to implement a carbon-neutral 
power grid. Biden campaigned in 
the Democratic primary with the 
target date of 2050, but thanks to 
the advocacy and tireless work of 
Rep. 
Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez, 

D-NY, the Sunrise Movement and 
environmental activists nationwide, 
he has moved up the date to 2035. 
While it is certainly an improvement, 
it does not go far enough.

This inaction repeats a pattern all 

too familiar during the COVID-19 
crisis: politicians failing to listen to 
public health experts and take public 
health crises seriously. Esteemed 
scientists, trained experts, have 

provided 
political 
leaders 
with 

data and have pronounced their 
scientific opinions, but, amazingly, 
politicians refuse to act in a manner 
that meets the moment. Throughout 
the pandemic, we have seen a 
massive failure of government to 
act and actually provide help for the 
millions of Americans who have been 
devastated by an economy not seen 
since the Great Depression. Congress 
provided a one-time stimulus check of 
just $1,200 and then discontinued the 
previously-expanded unemployment 
insurance when it ran out a few 
weeks ago. 

Because of the failure at all levels 

of government, it comes down to 
communities to care for those who 
need it most. An example from New 
York City is “community fridges” 
that were set up in the low-income 
neighborhoods that were hit hardest 
by COVID-19 and the economic 
downturn. These fridges were free, 
accessible to anyone who needed 
food and stocked by neighbors, 
helping 
each 
other 
whenever 

community 
members 
had 
any 

leftovers. 

In the midst of all this economic 

and humanitarian failure, everyone 
wants to go back to a “normal,” 
which has caused the rush in 
reopening schools and corners to be 
cut in treatment approval. But this is 
a strategy that will lead to even more 
disastrous results if it is repeated 
with the climate crisis. Navigating 
these crises takes time and patience, 
and we must learn from past failures 
if we are going to stand any chance 
against what a disrupted climate will 
be throwing at us. The government’s 
handling of COVID-19 highlights 
the necessity to act urgently. 
Fortunately, Ann Arbor is leading 
by example having unanimously 
passed the A2Zero initiative last 
June. Cities like ours have begun to 
take the matter of future survival 
into their own hands and are finally 
treating climate change as the 
existential threat that it is. 

COVID-19 is a practice test for the climate crisis

ALEXANDER NOBEL | COLUMNIST

D

espite 
smears 
framing 

GEO as duplicitous and 
untrustworthy, a careful 

analysis of the timeline demonstrates 
that GEO has continually negotiated in 
good faith and it is the administration 
that has been operating recklessly.

On the evening of Sept. 7, the 

University of Michigan’s Graduate 
Employee 
Organization 
officially 

announced its intent to strike after 
fighting all summer for its platform 
of demands for a safe and just 
campus. University administrators 
immediately discredited GEO as 
hostile and noncompliant, responding 
with communication tactics that 
divert attention from the work 
stoppage platform in an attempt to 
sidestep any real engagement. At that 
moment, our movement entered public 
awareness and gained the solidarity of 
individuals and organizations across 
the country. For many, the intricate 
root system supporting this shoot 
of defiance remains invisible, but it 
should come as no surprise that this 
unrest did not develop overnight. The 
administration’s words ring hollow 
when we take a closer look at the 
timeline of events leading up to GEO’s 
decision to strike. This University’s 
administration has made a habit of 
sweeping the concerns of students, 
faculty and staff under the rug, 
prioritizing financial gain over the 
well-being of our community and the 
grossly mismanaged reopening plan is 
no exception. The difference is that the 
stakes of the current moment could not 
be higher. 

Beginning in late April, the 

administration gave GEO leadership 
the run-around in an effort to sideline 
good-faith negotiations. According 
to GEO Member Yael Kenan, the 
union’s attempts to engage with the 
University’s 
COVID-19 
reopening 

plans were bounced back and forth 
between the Rackham Graduate 
School 
and 
Academic 
Human 

Resources, who both threw up their 
hands and declared that our demands 
were 
outside 
their 
wheelhouse. 

They preempted any criticism of the 
University’s policies by declaring our 
critical ethical concerns beyond the 
scope of our bargaining contract. 
These included the universal right to 
remote work without documentation, 
policing and surveillance concerns 
and cutting ties with the United 
States Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement, among others. 

To add to the frustration, the 

University was determined to discuss 
its reopening plan without ensuring 
that graduate students had a seat at 
the table. “It would literally cost them 
nothing to include us,” says Kenan. 
Despite the fact that inviting a GEO or 
other graduate student representative 
to these meetings presented minimal 
risk or inconvenience to the University, 
Kenan says the administration refused 
point-blank to entertain our requests 
to this end. As the weeks passed, 
it became increasingly clear that 
bargaining was not going to yield the 
desired outcome. 

The combination of exclusion and 

relentless filibustering found GEO with 
little choice remaining but to withhold 
labor. The first public mention of the 
intent to go on strike in the event that 
our platform would go unaddressed 
appeared in The Michigan Daily 
on Aug. 31, and GEO leadership had 
notified 
uncooperative 
University 

administrators of this possibility 
many times in the weeks and months 
preceding as alternative options began 
to be exhausted. In light of all this, a 
panicked email from Provost Susan 
M. Collins at 11:17 p.m. that night made 
the utterly absurd claim that they have 
“only learned today” of GEO’s intent 

to strike. It reveals that she and her 

fellow administrators are thoroughly 

out of touch with what is going on 
with their students, or else willing to 
lie through their teeth in an attempt 
to save face. Either option is equally 
damning. 

Overwhelmingly, the University’s 

response has mischaracterized GEO’s 
decision to strike, our demands and 
prior steps GEO had taken to avoid 
the strike. The rhetoric used in both 
internal and external coverage of the 
protests, rallies and work stoppage 
has sought to paint the University 
administrators 
as 
victims 
who 

have been working tirelessly with 
unreasonable graduate students, only 
to be blindsided when they supposedly 
learned on Labor Day, Sept. 7, that 
labor stoppages would commence 
the next day. Yet at that point, GEO 
leadership had already spent months 
engaging in a fruitless and infuriating 
dialogue with the University. This 
is by no means a new problem: The 
University’s 
decentralization 
of 

decision-making consistently obscures 
who is responsible for a given issue, 
rendering failures in communication 
and enforcement common. 

One deceptive statement is that the 

University is “not aware of any graduate 
student who is being required to teach 
in person against their expressed 
preference.” Collins made this claim 
in her email on Labor Day, and it has 
been cited repeatedly as evidence that 
the rationale behind this strike has no 
foundation. Unfortunately, it simply is 
not true. Graduate Student Instructors, 
who will remain anonymous out of 
fear of retribution, have come to GEO 
expressing concerns about in-person 
work, including scenarios in which 
the student was assigned a teaching 
placement requiring in-person work 
despite explicitly requesting a remote-
only assignment. Without a universal 
right to work remotely, we cannot 
guarantee that all are in a secure 
position to make the appropriate 
decision for themselves free of the 
threat of retaliation. The situation is 
further complicated by the fact that 
Collins’s claim is based on a survey 
conducted in early July when the fall 
reopening plan was not yet public. 

Moreover, that survey had tiers 

for who “deserved” remote work 
based on subjective values. It is not a 
valid measure of how GSIs and other 
instructional staff currently feel about 
in-person teaching. GSIs have told us 
they feel coerced into “volunteering” 
for in-person work out of a sense 
of altruism, given the University’s 
messaging 
regarding 
in-person 

teaching as a “shared responsibility,” 
or fear of retaliation from their faculty 
and departments. This is especially 
true for masters’ students, who do not 
have funding guarantees and express 
severe concerns about retaliation. 

If everyone who wants to work 

remotely is already allowed to do so, 
then the University should make it 
a policy since it supposedly would 
not change anything. Meeting this 
demand is low-hanging fruit, yet the 
administration has not offered the 
universal right to remote work nor 
provided reasoning beyond baseless 
assurances that it is unnecessary. 
Their reticence belies their true 
concern: that the option for universal 
remote work would likely result in 
fewer in-person classes. Universal 
remote work is only one of many 
planks in the GEO strike platform; 
the 
discourse 
presented 
diverts 

attention from the others while 
appearing to discredit the platform as 
absurdly positioned and divides our 
community.

Furthermore, 
the 
University 

administration 
claimed 
that 
it 

only had $1.3 billion available for 
COVID-19 response — a claim later 
undermined by an independent audit. 
GEO’s COVID Caucus wrote an open 

letter to the administration that was 
signed by more than 1800 individuals 
and major student organizations 
and presented to administrators on 
May 8. It was dismissed out of hand 
on the grounds that the requests 
were 
not 
“financially 
feasible.” 

GEO repeatedly sought financial 
transparency around the response, 
and on May 13, the administration 
was presented with a second petition 
circulated by the Huron Valley Area 
Labor Federation that also called for 
greater transparency. This time the 
administration did not even deign to 
respond.

By May 28, the independent audit 

of the University’s finances revealed 
a sum of approximately $6.7 billion 
was in fact available for COVID-19 
response and could easily cover all 
of the necessary spending required 
to meet our COVID-19 related 
demands. Once again, this came as 
a disappointment but not a surprise. 
Despite this institution’s routine 
deployment of scarcity narratives to 
justify austerity policies, the evidence 
from the independent audit revealed 
that this is simply not the case.

The Board of Regents were charged 

with oversight of various committees 
that 
drafted 
reports 
on 
safely 

reopening the University in the midst 
of the pandemic. The Coordinating 
Committee on Instructional Planning 
drafted a report on reopening on May 
29, and about a week later, on June 8, 
the Ethics and Privacy Committee 
finalized 
their 
own 
report 
on 

reopening. It is worthwhile to note 
that the decision to open campus 
preceded the formation of the Ethics 
and Privacy Committee: “We were 
not tasked with assessing the ethics 
of whether or not to reopen. Instead, 
we were asked to assess the ethics of 
different measures that might be used 
if we reopened,” one member of the 
committee explained in an internal 
email to the authors.

As such, their report highlights 

issues 
like 
the 
inadequacy 
of 

symptom-based 
screening 
alone, 

which would fail to catch the 
25%-40% of those infected who 
never develop symptoms, and the 
necessity of “testing (for viral RNA 
or proteins) to determine prevalence 
of the infection, identify infected 
individuals who are symptomatic 
or asymptomatic carriers, identify 
contacts, 
and 
inform 
necessary 

mitigation 
is 
essential 
to 
an 

organized response to the COVID-
19 pandemic.” That same member 
reports being disappointed in the 
decision to reopen, but still “willing 
to give them the benefit of the doubt 
at that relatively early stage that 
all needed safeguards would be in 
place.” The member gave credit to 
the administration for forming the 
committee at all, though it was clear 
they were strictly advisory.

But as the summer wore on, 

the University doubled down on 
its reopening plan even as the 
national 
situation 
deteriorated. 

During the month of July, University 
President Mark Schlissel responded 
noncommittally to personal emails 
from at least one member of the 
EPC as well as a collectively-written 
follow-up letter that strongly implied 
reopening was no longer feasible. 
Ultimately, he brushed them aside by 
stating he appreciated their concern, 
but the University intended to 
proceed with reopening anyways.

ERIN WHITE
Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

ELIZABETH LAWRENCE

Editor in Chief

BRITTANY BOWMAN AND 

EMILY CONSIDINE

Editorial Page Editors

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Alexander Nobel can be reached at 

anobel@umich.edu.

GEO MEMBERS | OP-ED
GEO strike gains momentum despite smears

Ray Ajemian

Zack Blumberg

Brittany Bowman
Emily Considine
Elizabeth Cook

Jess D’Agostino
Jenny Gurung
Cheryn Hong
Krystal Hur
Min Soo Kim

Zoe Phillips
Mary Rolfes

Gabrijela Skoko

Joel Weiner
Erin White

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

ELIZABETH LAWRENCE

Editor in Chief

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Wednesday, September 16, 2020 — 8
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Photo courtesy of GEO members

Many members of GEO contributed 

to the writing of this article but insist 

that they are not speaking on behalf 

of the organization. The authors can 

collectively be reached at geo.oped.

adhoc.committee@gmail.com.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com
I

n 
a 
classic 
scene 
from 

Spongebob Squarepants, Mr. 
Krabs opens the door of the 

Krusty Krab to find Plankton and his 
vast army of green, redneck relatives. 
Krabs, not realizing what the mob 
surrounding his restaurant is, asks 
Plankton, “You planted grass?” The 
obvious condescension with which 
Krabs poses the question implies 
that he doesn’t find a massive ring of 
grass around his place of business to 
be threatening. Krabs, however, had 
never visited suburban America.

I 
was 
recently 
tasked 
with 

mowing a lawn in my neighborhood 
in East Lansing, Mich. Due to some 
particularly dry weather this summer, 
the lawn in question was not Spartan 
green. While I was rubbing my eyes to 
remove the irritating bits of dead grass 
that the lawnmower was coughing up, 
I realized that lawns are nothing but a 
total waste of time and resources.

Before you, dear reader, assume the 

role of the armchair psychologist and 
pin my newfound hatred of grass on 
my distaste for the chore of mowing 
lawns, know that my grudge against 
the lawn isn’t just personal. The cost 
of maintaining a whole yard’s worth 
of grass, in terms of water, space and 
time is a burden not just upon my 
fellow lawn tenders and me, but upon 
society and the environment.

While we have grown accustomed 

to seeing grass just about everywhere 
and might think that it belongs in as 
many places as we see it, the truth is 
that for grass to keep its deep green 

color and plush springiness, it needs 
quite a bit of water — more than 
many American climates tend to 
provide in the summer. As a result, 
Americans use nearly 9 billion 
gallons of water per day to keep their 
lawns healthy, per Environmental 
Protection Agency estimates. For the 
average household, some 30 percent 
of water used is allocated to outdoor 
usage, primarily thirsty lawns. In 
certain regions, especially the West 
and Southwest, that figure can be 
closer to 60 percent. Considering the 
frequency with which that region 
experiences droughts — like the one 
responsible for California’s current 
crop of wildfires — using that much 
water to make sure your yard has 
a nice, luscious layer of grass on it 
seems inherently wasteful. And when 
one considers that those droughts are 
going to become even more common 
in upcoming years thanks to our 
friend climate change, it becomes 
worse than wasteful: It becomes 
irresponsible.

What do we need grass for, 

anyway? We cover most of our lawns 
with it, but how is all of that space 
used? Most of the time, it isn’t. A 
graduation party here or a Fourth 
of July cookout there might allow 
a grassy yard to be used to its full 
extent. But those events could be 
enjoyed on a nice brick patio or even 
at public parks, which might see 
increased use, interest and funding 
if Americans abandon the false idol 
of the grassy yard and turn to more 

efficient spaces to satisfy their only 
occasional desires for large outdoor 
gatherings. 

Some grass holdouts might look 

beyond these types of private, yet 
sizable gatherings to justify their 
lawns. “What about the children?” 
they’ll ask. “Where are they supposed 
to frolic and play?” And I’ll respond: 
“What about them? They’ll enjoy 
the trip to the park as much as the 
playtime itself, and besides, most 
of them would rather be playing 
Fortnite anyway.”

Where would all of this space — 

previously hogged by the vertically-
challenged villain known as grass 
— go, you ask? Well, I have a fancy 
new word for you: xeriscape. This is 
a school of landscaping design that 
prescribes the use of native plants 
in place of grass. These plants aren’t 
usually the kind you can walk on, 
but in exchange for the lost space, 
you get a garden that is much more 
interesting to look at and, because 
they’re native, much more suited to 
survive on the amount of water that 
comes out of the sky than a mat of 
boring old grass.

If 
xeriscaping 
still 
sounds 

unappealing, 
maybe 
you 
will 

find 
another 
alternative 
worth 

examining: getting rid of the front 
yard altogether.

Don’t be a grasshole

EVAN DEMPSEY | COLUMNIST

Evan Dempsey can be reached at 

evangd@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

