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Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 5

COVID-19 reported at Brown Jug as semester began

The Brown Jug, a popular

student restaurant and bar on
South University Avenue, has
reported at least six positive
COVID-19 cases among staff since
late August.

A server, who requested to

remain anonymous due to fear of
retaliation from their employer,
told The Daily six employees
tested positive for COVID-19 in
the past month. Both the server
and the restaurant’s owner, Perry
Porikos, confirmed these cases.
The entire staff was then tested
for COVID-19 — those tests came
back negative.

The Brown Jug then shut down

from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8 after a
cluster of cases emerged among
employees on Aug. 28, according
to Porikos. He said he immediately
contacted the Washtenaw County
Department of Health and shut
down the restaurant for deep
cleaning on Aug. 30. He also told
all employees who tested positive
to quarantine, following health

department protocol.

“I decided for the benefit

of everybody to shut it down,”
Porikos said. “You know, informed
the health department right away.
They informed me that, listen,
legally, (you don’t have to) shut
down.”

However, the server said the

restaurant did not close while the
employees were awaiting results
from their tests between Aug. 20
and Aug. 30.

“The problem is, with this

testing … when (management) says
‘OK, everyone has to get tested,’
you don’t close, everyone still
comes into work, even if they’re
waiting on test results,” the server
said.

Nate, a bar manager who asked

to only use his first name for
privacy concerns, said he was the
first to get a positive result back
for COVID-19 on Aug. 25 after
going in for a test four days earlier.
He said he felt sick the day before
and took off from work, and then
got tested.

“The earliest (positive case)

was actually mine,” Nate said. “I

was like, ‘I’m not gonna come in
for a shift, I don’t feel right, I felt
weird.’ So I actually didn’t come in.
I tested positive on the 21. I wasn’t
even in contact with anybody. I got
it from an outside person.”

Nate said another employee

later tested positive who, days
earlier, had tested negative. The
employee had worked nearly every
shift in between the test days, so
the entire staff got tested again,
Nate said. From that group, four
more came back positive.

“One of the workers was

asymptomatic the whole time, but
that person was working almost
every shift,” Nate said. “Everyone
got scheduled to get tested, and
the second person that came back
positive, we were like, well, the
rest of you are probably going to
test positive as well. It was only
five of us altogether that got it, and
that’s when we shut everything
down.”

Nate said he believes The

Brown Jug is doing everything it
can to protect its staff and patrons
from COVID-19.

“We’ve been cleaning, self-

quarantining, getting checked,”
Nate said. “I mean, there’s not
much more we can do. Everything
is
sanitized
after
touching

everything, capacity is limited.
We had a line outside the other
day and it was aimed away from
our patio. And we can only control
people as much as we can control

people.”

The server said all employees

were told to wear masks at all
times and usually left tables open
to maintain social distancing and
wiped down menus and tabletops
with a bleach solution.

However,
the
server
said

employees did not always follow

these precautions. On weekend
nights and during other peak
hours, employees did not have
time to clean menus or enforce
social-distancing limits, they said.

JULIA RUBIN

Daily Staff Reporter

Read more at
MichiganDaily.com

MaryAnn Sarosi, an attorney

in Washtenaw County, sat at
her desk one day in early April,
combing through court files
while preparing for a case. She
eventually stumbled across data
that caught her eye: criminal
court
cases
revealing
vast

racial disparities in Washtenaw
County’s legal system.

She said the task at hand

— sifting through data to get
statistics on racial inequities
— seemed daunting at first,
but nationwide revolts against
police
brutality
reinforced

her commitment to seeing it
through.

“We lamented for a long

time that these things weren’t
transparent,” Sarosi said. “And
then I realized, well, they are on
the court records, on the court
website. It would be tedious,
but we could do these by hand,
and we started doing by hand.
And then after George Floyd
was murdered, we realized,
‘Oh, we really got to do this. We
really got to do this on a broader
scale.’”

The numbers Sarosi found

reveal large gaps in the treatment
of different racial groups in
the county’s criminal justice
system. According to a report
documenting
her
findings,

prosecutors charge people of
color more often than they do
white people. The extent of the
disparities
varies
depending

on the felony category. For the
felony category of suspended
license,
prosecutors
charged

people of color 22 percent more
than white people. For the
category of “Weapons - Felony
Firearm,” people of color were
charged 1,150 percent more often
than white people, meaning POC
faced charges at a rate 12.5 times
that of their white counterparts.

In 10 of the 11 categories,

prosecutors filed more charges
against people of color, on
average, than white people,
ranging from a 12.8 percent to
62.9 percent difference. People
of color also received more
convictions per case, on average,
than white people in 10 of the 11
categories.

The report was a team effort.

After initially combing through
the files with her colleague
Rev.
Joe
Summers,
Sarosi

teamed up with Linda Rexer,
retired
executive
director

of the Michigan State Bar
Foundation and Alma Wheeler-
Smith, former representative
in the Michigan State House
of
Representatives,
to
form

Citizens for Racial Equality
in Washtenaw — a group that
collects and analyzes felony case
records from the county court’s
website to explore whether and
to what extent racial disparities
exist in the county’s charging
and sentencing practices.

In
August
2020,
CREW

published the report online
detailing their findings after
scraping through thousands of
cases on the court’s website.
The analysis covers more than
3,600 court cases in 11 felony
categories — including capital
and non-capital felonies — from
2013 to 2019.

According
to
the
report,

Washtenaw County prosecutors
have
broad
discretion
in

deciding whether or not to
charge someone with a crime
and what kind of charges to
bring.

Washtenaw County judges

also have wide volition in
determining the length of a
sentence and choosing whether
to accept a plea agreement or to
sentence a person to probation,
jail or prison.

“While
we
found
racial

disparities
among
individual

judges, CREW did not find that
the Washtenaw County Circuit
Court, as a whole, demonstrated
a pattern of racial disparity in
its sentencing of our community
members across all eight case
categories
we
studied,”
the

report read. “That is not to say,
however, we found no instances
of disparity across the court.”

The data showed 44.1 percent

of people of color convicted of
homicide were sentenced to life
in prison, compared to only 27.3
percent of white defendants.
Additionally,
most
of
the

judges “contributed to a wide
racial disparity in the average
minimum/maximum
sentence

in armed robbery cases.”

The report also highlights 23

instances in which individual
judges were found to issue
harsher sentences or whose
sentences
showed
racial

disparities.

Several former University of

Michigan student-athletes joined
lawmakers in Lansing, Mich. to
announce legislation to extend
the statute of limitations on
certain sexual abuse cases and
reform governmental immunity.
Standing on the steps of the
Capitol Building, the survivors of
alleged abuse by late University
doctor Robert Anderson called for
systemic change to hold predators
accountable.

The “Empowering Survivors”

legislative
reform
package
is

co-sponsored by state Rep. Ryan
Berman, R-Commerce Township,
and state Rep. Karen Whitsett,
D-Detroit.

Berman
described
the

legislation as a necessary step
to empower survivors of sexual
abuse and assault. If passed, the
two bills would reform Michigan’s
statute of limitations to create a
one-year window from the time
the laws are passed for survivors
of criminal sexual assault to sue
if their abuse happened under
the guise of medical care or if
the abuser was in a position of
authority such as a medical doctor.
The package would also alter the
state’s governmental immunity

law to prevent universities from
mischaracterizing sexual assault
to avoid lawsuits.

“This type of behavior must be

stopped, as should the legal tactics
used to protect these institutions
from lawsuits when abuse occurs,”
Berman said. “Our purpose today is
simple: Survivors must be allowed
to pursue justice as they see fit.
It’s my privilege as a legislator and
citizen to have the opportunity to
help these people who are sent to
college as teenagers, our best and
our brightest, only to be abused
and ignored. Well, I say, no more.”

The
allegations
against

Anderson
span
decades.
In

February 2018, former University
student-athlete Tad DeLuca, who
participated in the announcement
Wednesday
morning,
accused

Anderson of sexual misconduct at
a press conference in Southfield,
Mich.
Other
former
student-

athletes later came forward with
their own stories of abuse.

The University has since set up

a hotline number for survivors and
sent letters to thousands of former
student-athletes about the alleged
sexual misconduct. That effort
has expanded to include the more
than 300,000 former students
who were on campus during
Anderson’s tenure from the middle
of the 1960s to the early 2000s. A
judge ordered the University in
August to inform those students of
litigation involving Anderson.

Jon
Vaughn,
who
played

running back for Michigan in 1989
and 1990 before spending four
years in the NFL, said as a student
he trusted the University would
give him the best care. Instead,
he said he was frequently abused
during medical appointments.

At the press conference, Vaughn

said he now has trouble going
to the doctor or placing trust in
doctors after what happened
with Anderson. He called on the
Michigan state legislature to pass
the bills to help protect other
survivors.

“It has also become very clear

that the University of Michigan
knew,” Vaughn said. “They made
a choice not to protect us. Instead,
the
University
enabled
our

abuser.”

DeLuca, a former wrestler,

described the difficulty he has had
dealing with the alleged abuse he
endured as a student in the 1970s.
He added that his coaches knew
because he wrote them a letter
in 1975 telling them about his
experiences with Anderson.

DeLuca said serial predators

and the people who enable them
should not be allowed to “run
out the clock” on the statute of
limitations to avoid prosecution.

“Serial sexual molesters and

their
accomplices
should
be

subject to perpetual overtime,”
DeLuca said. “Why should an
institution like the University of

Michigan be allowed to hide the
conduct long enough so they can
hide behind the law and never
have to answer for the abuse
they allowed for all these years?
It makes no sense and it must
be changed. The University of
Michigan failed to be the Leaders
and the Best.”

Dr. John Lott, who played

football from 1979 to 1983 and
is now a licensed clinical social
worker, also spoke. Lott said
he had to endure exams from
Anderson every year, which took a
toll mentally.

Recent testimony revealed a

former University of Michigan
vice
president
overturned
a

decision to fire Anderson in 1979.
In a court deposition, Thomas
Easthope, former vice president
of the Division of Student Life,
accused former Athletic Director
Don
Canham
of
ignoring

allegations against Anderson and
allowing the doctor to assume an
influential role in the University
Athletic Department. The school
is facing various lawsuits over
Anderson’s alleged abuse.

Outside law firm WilmerHale

is
conducting
an
external

investigation into the allegations
against Anderson on behalf of the
University.

Legislation prompted by ‘U’ doctor
looks to alter statute of limitations

Former University of Michigan student-athletes hold a press conference
with lawmakers in Lansing on Wednesday in support of reform package

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily

Republicans challenge Whitmer’s pandemic response in Michigan Supreme Court on September 9th.

Report reveals
racial gaps in
county criminal
justice system

Local attorneys compile statistics on
disparities in sentencing, prosecuting

Read more at
MichiganDaily.com

LEAH GRAHAM &

ARIA GERSON

Managing News Editor
& Daily Sports Writer

Read more at
MichiganDaily.com

Popular Ann Arbor bar shut down from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8 after a cluster of cases emerged among employees on Aug. 28

FILE PHOTO/Daily

At least six people have tested positive among staff the the Brown Jug since late August.

JULIA FORREST &

SUNSKRITI PARANJAPE

Daily Staff Reporters