The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan In Color
6 — Wednesday, September 30, 2020

As a first-year living on

campus during a widespread
pandemic, my concerns about
daily life at the Univeringly
continue
to
increase.
The

administration does not seem
to be taking the struggles of
students into consideration,
evident from the increase
in our tuition, prevalence of
lab fees and blatant lack of
student testing. When I sit
at home, watching my asyn-
chronous recorded lectures, I
can’t help but wonder whether
attending this school right
now is worth the thousands
of dollars I am paying. And
when I receive an email that
announces the reintroduction
of the Big Ten football season,
I definitely begin to consider
whether getting my degree is
worth risking my life.

In
complete
candidness,

it is very hard to argue that
any class should be in-person.
You can attempt to justify it
by pointing out students are
undergoing regular testing,
though they truly aren’t, but
consider my situation: I am a
freshman living in an apart-
ment complex on campus.
There is no requirement to test
me or anyone else in the build-
ing who also has in-person
classes. One week ago, I called
the COVID hotline offered
by the University to report a
party that could literally be
heard three floors above me.
After explaining that nobody
is close enough to do anything,
I was referred to building
security, who referred me to
the Ann Arbor Police Depart-
ment, who said the only option
available was to file a noise
complaint. It is a frustratingly
ignorant assumption to think
that socially starved teenag-
ers in one apartment complex
will choose to remain socially
distant. And the resources
that have been offered to
tackle gatherings which dis-
regard COVID-19 guidelines
have been of no use. It is more
abhorrent that the university
has prioritized profit over the
health and safety of its stu-
dents. Quite frankly, even edu-
cation is not a valid reason to
group college students togeth-
er during a pandemic — health
and safety must obviously be
the number one priority.

Testing
students
for

COVID, one of my only hopes
for a semblance of safety on
campus, has been abysmal.
From early August to Aug.
20, there were a total of 1,306
tests administered: a number
which seems ridiculously low,
and not nearly large enough to
actually determine how many
students are walking around
campus infected. With nearly
30,000 students, only around
4-5 percent were tested in the
beginning of August; a rate
that clearly shows where the
University’s priority lies. Now
the University has promised to
increase testing up to 6,000 a
week by the end of September.
This is an effort I appreciate,

but it’s not enough. Where is
the logic in pairing new safety
efforts with reopening the Big
Ten football season? Granted,
football players will all under-
go testing, and players that
test positive for COVID will
be forced to sit out of the game
for a minimum of 21 days. But
has the University not learned
that
reintroducing
popular

entertainment is cause for
more reckless get-togethers
among college students?

Aside from the seemingly

contradictory policies, it is
hard for me to wrap my head
around the concept of paying
more money to be in a place
where my health is not a pri-
ority. The $50 fee required
from each student, which was
used to create the masks and
kits, made me wonder why the
university had not utilized
its other forms of income and
endowments which could have
provided these essentials for
life on campus. Instead, they
rely on students, who may be
facing the most difficult time
in their lives. And if cost must
be added, could the nones-
sential fees at least be taken
away? For instance, Bio 173,
an introductory biology lab
class, requires students to pay
$45 for laboratory supplies.
However, if I am not going to
be in a lab, where is my money
going, if not toward my own
learning?

Paying extra only to have

been followed by canceled
classes for a week seems
ludicrous. While I sincerely
appreciate the efforts of the
Graduate Employees Organi-
zation in terms of fighting for
a safer environment for both
students and staff, I wish the
administration was capable
enough
of
controlling
the

situation at hand so it didn’t
have to reach a point where
education had to have been
disrupted. The reaction to
efforts calling for the right to
work remotely, vigorous plans
for testing and preventing the
spread of COVID-19 was met
with a lawsuit, an action that
screams louder than words.
South Quad currently has 13
positive cases of COVID-19,
and cases are confirmed in
most other dorms: Bursley,
Couzens, West Quad, North
Quad and so on. Nonetheless,
college proceeds to go on in-
person and this shows me that
my money is valued more than
I am. As a freshman who spent
the entire senior year of high
school looking forward to
attending the university, this
is deplorable. If the proper
protocol was enacted when
the numbers were low per-
haps the number of positive
cases wouldn’t have gotten to
this state. With the University
creating more opportunities
for students to get together,
I wouldn’t be surprised if we
lived tip-toeing on ice next
year as well. At this point, I
wouldn’t consider the Univer-
sity to be either leaders nor
best, a reality all students are
going to have to face if proper,
serious precautions are not
installed immediately.

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Jeff Stillman
©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/30/20

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/30/20

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2020

ACROSS

1 Contentious

marketing clash

6 Firmly fixed

10 “Capisce?”

response

14 Hang loosely
15 Lunch box treat
16 Work at a

keyboard

17 Cliff dwelling
18 Caboose
19 Kuwaiti ruler
20 *Founding

Father who
inherited a
malthouse

22 Packs down
24 Many corp. logos
25 *“War and Peace”

author

28 Student’s second

try

31 Went undercover
32 Poem of homage
33 Kitchen

enticement

34 Demean
36 Litter sound
37 *“Hee Haw”

cohost

40 Backboard

attachment

43 Snaky formations
44 Type of pool or

wave

48 Make a move
49 QB’s miss,

maybe

50 Former Spanish

currency

51 *Outlaw

associate of Cole
Younger

55 Wondering word
56 Extremely small
57 Give up, or what

you might do
before the starts
of the answers to
starred clues

60 Class of

merchandise

61 Day for Caesar to

beware

63 Track specialist
64 Mathematician

Turing

65 “Great shot!”
66 Serving holder
67 “SNL” segment
68 Fresh talk
69 Embroidered, say

DOWN

1 To the stars, in

mottos

2 One with

aspirations

3 Becomes fond of
4 Capital of Samoa
5 Wetland plant
6 Gift recipient’s

surprised query

7 Playground

comeback

8 __ of Tranquility:

lunar plain

9 Fabled slowpoke

10 Tabloid

twosomes

11 Chills or fever
12 Single show
13 Poetic

contraction

21 Pilot’s datum:

Abbr.

23 Pasta preference
26 Warming periods
27 Source of pliable

wood

29 Diplomatic HQ
30 Relatively risqué
34 Muscular

Japanese dog

35 Big tin exporter

of S.A.

38 Brings together
39 Female in the

fam

40 Indian friend of

Sheldon and
Leonard

41 Low-fat frozen

dessert

42 Pentateuch peak:

Abbr.

45 Mammal’s digit

that doesn’t
touch the ground

46 Wheaties box

adorner

47 Like lasagna, say
50 “Gangnam Style”

performer

52 Manhunt pickup
53 There are 60,000

of them in a min.

54 Simplifies
58 Rules on plays
59 Cairo’s river
60 Vegas opener
62 Lunes or martes

SUDOKU

7

8
2

6

3

3

6
9

7

1

2

8
3

9

8
3

6

5
2
1

5

8

4

1

4

6
2

6

5
9

“60 characters.
Bare your soul.

Get featured in the Daily!”

WHISPER

Introducing the

WHISPER

“Tinder during
covid season
is the most
inner conflict
I’ve ever had”

“I should stop
speaking my
mind when it
comes to
pastries”

09/24/20

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

34 Only unanimous

Baseball Hall of

Americans
have
a
large

appetite for television shows
about police, violent crime
investigations, dramatic court
hearings and life in prison. It
seems like there are endless
options of shows about these
topics because the demand
is so high. I am not exempt
from this; personally, some
of my favorites were Crimi-
nal Minds, Brooklyn 99 and
Mindhunter. But this past
summer amid protests against
police brutality, I began to
grapple with the harm that
has been caused by the mas-
sive wave of crime television
since the 1980s, despite my
love for them.

With any piece of media

you consume, one of the most
important things you must
remember is that what you are
seeing is not reality. Shows
such as Law & Order, CSI, and
Chicago P.D. are written from
a perspective that is not an
accurate representation of the
criminal justice system in the
United States. These shows
depict a world of police sav-
iors, fighting crime and chaos,
saving us from criminals that
would otherwise disrupt our
properly functioning society.
All they want to do is put away
violent people and make the
world a better place. But this
is a lie.

Most police shows are dis-

honest about the amount of
corruption and brutality that
officers bring into communi-
ties. They normalize a sys-
tem that is inherently racist
and violent, with origins as
slave patrols and current ties
to white supremacist orga-
nizations. The ‘good cops’
who save the day at the end
of every episode are not who

most Black Americans see
when we are stopped by the
police. Those were not the
cops that killed Breonna Tay-
lor, George Floyd or Aiyana
Stanley Jones. The indoctri-
nating images of superhero
police departments make it
easier for Americans to call
violent cops ‘bad’ apples, but
in reality, police departments
in the United States kill civil-
ians at much higher rates than
other wealthy countries such
as Canada and Australia.

Not only do these television

shows inaccurately depict the
police, they also perpetuate
harmful myths about people of
color in marginalized neigh-
borhoods.
Entertainment

media often overrepresents
violent crime and Black and
Brown suspects, compared to
white-collar crime and White
suspects.
These
narratives

gloss over the effects of white
supremacy and lack of access
as a result of institutionalized
and systemic racism and capi-
talism that have legitimized
these communities as “crime-
ridden.”

Beyond
perceptions
of

policing within communities
of color, the media’s portray-
als of the prison industrial
complex, and the workers
within it, contribute to the
widespread
acceptance
of

mass incarceration and police
brutality in the U.S. For exam-
ple, in nearly every episode of
the fifteen season television
series, Criminal Minds, FBI
agents who specialize in high-
level crimes committed by
serial criminals are presented
with a case that they need to
solve. The episode structure
is usually the same: the team
arrives at the scene, and soon
another crime is committed
by the same person so they
feel the pressure to find the
suspect before someone else

is harmed. This indicates that
if the FBI weren’t working
around the clock to find them,
more crime occurs. Viewers
watching continue to believe
that they need more police
officers and federal agents
in their town to keep them
safe, even though the crimes
depicted in the media are sig-
nificantly less severe than the
survival crimes committed in
said neighborhoods — such as
food theft as a survival tactic,
which the system causes by
keeping civilians from these
resources in the first place.

In addition to the desire to

have more policing, we begin
to accept police brutality as
part of the job to ensure the
safety of others. In one epi-
sode of Criminal Minds, an
unarmed man who is suspect-
ed of sexual assault is shot and
killed by an agent after he is
released
from
questioning.

The agent lies and says she
killed him in self-defense. We
are left to empathize with the
FBI agent because his murder
is better than the possibility
of him committing another
crime. We have to deconstruct
this way of thinking. Why is
execution the only way we can
keep communities safe? We
must also recognize that no
matter how law enforcement
feels about individuals they
interact with, they should
not have the power to be the
judge, jury and executioner.
If they can justify violence
against that man, they can do
the same against anyone.

In addition to media affect-

ing society’s attitudes about
how police officers should
treat
citizens,
they
also

impact why we think we need
police officers in the first
place. In her New York Times
article, “Yes, We Mean Liter-
ally Abolish the Police,” Mari-
ame Kaba reminds us that the

police don’t do what most peo-
ple think they do. The average
police officer only makes one
felony arrest in a year. Most
of their time is spent respond-
ing to noncriminal issues. The
media portrayals of communi-
ties full of violence and cops
running to the rescue and
directly restoring the peace
have contributed to the sup-
port of harsher policing on the
streets and more prisons in
urban areas when there isn’t
any need. In fact, these shows
fail to display the consequen-
tial harm that police bring
into Black communities such
as extreme violence, family
separation, mental and physi-
cal abuse, school to prison
pipelines and so on.

I’m not saying everyone has

to stop watching any televi-
sion show or film that features
police or detectives because
that
would
be
essentially

impossible. But I implore you
to understand the vast differ-
ences between what is depict-
ed on the screen versus the
reality of the PIC and what
Black Americans experience
daily. Remember that media
industries are capitalizing on
and reinforcing a system that
has been harming the image
and lives of Black and Brown
people for decades. As some-
one who believes in the abo-
lition of the PIC as a whole,
I know how powerful a tool
imagination is. We must be
able to reimagine a world in
which police and prisons do
not exist because they are
not needed. We could create
a world where community
members care for each other
and police budgets are redis-
tributed into social programs.
We have to understand the
realities within our own com-
munities instead of relying
on crime television to tell us
about our own communities.

Television’s role in the Prison Industrial Complex

CAMILLE MOORE

MiC Blogger

ZOOM CLASSROOM VIA UNSPLASH

COVID as a freshman:

My life is worth more than my money

SYEDA MAHA

MiC Columnist

“As a freshman who spent the

entire senior year of high school

looking forward to attending the

university, this is deplorable.”