Y

ears, decades, centuries 
from now, students will take 
a constitutional law class 

like the one I teach with professor 
Pamela 
Brandwein. 
They 
may 

learn, as they do now, about slavery, 
eugenics, 
Japanese 
internment 

camps and the Guantanamo Bay 

detention camp. They may also learn 
about how American political history 
is a story of thoughtful, determined 
people repeatedly redeeming its 
promise of liberty, human dignity 
and equality. And they will read 
about the history you choose to make 
in the coming days.

You must vote. There are few 

demands your country makes of you 
as a citizen, like jury duty and voting. 
Without those demands, citizenship 
is meaningless. The development 
of modern democratic states has 
transformed the world. Billions have 

been lifted even in the last 25 years. 

Violence within and between states 
has declined. The problems we face, 
like the pandemic, climate change, 
economic 
uncertainty, 
violations 

of civil rights, debt, unstable global 
alliances and eroding democratic 
norms, are ones we can solve. The 
primary way we solve problems at 
a societal level is through voting. 
Research, by our own professor 

Arthur Lupia and others, shows the 
ability of individual voters acting in 
good faith to make rational choices in 
the aggregate — one of the miracles of 
democracy.

The moral failure of not voting 

is graver than selfishness. It’s 
disrespectful to your fellow citizens 
if you don’t voice your shared right 
to think for yourself and contribute 
to our country — and particularly 
disrespects those who have this 
right denied to them. It dishonors 
the millions of righteous men and 
women, many of your ancestors and 
mine, who have been beaten, raped 
and tortured, who have been given 
farcical literacy tests and chased 
after with dogs and fire houses, who 
suffered through pogroms, book 
burnings, lynchings and wars; heroes 
who died in the mud in Belgium 
and on the beaches of Normandy, 
who marched hundreds of miles 
to reservations and re-education 
programs, who huddled in ships and 
survived inquisitions, who dared to 
sit in the wrong place at the lunch 
counter and on the bus, who were 
figuratively crucified for loving the 
wrong person, who were murdered 
because of the color of their skin or 
the god they prayed to, who were 
shot in the sanctity of their own 

bedroom, who voiced their undying 
belief in the United States even while 
their government shipped them 
away on trains and locked them away 
in desert camps.

The rights many enjoy today — to 

work in just conditions, to a fair trial, 
to speak and assemble, to privacy, to 
our own belongings, to freedom from 
torture, to freedom from arbitrary 
arrest, to think and read what we 
want — are underwritten by the 
bloodshed of braver forebears. Some 
are still denied them. These rights are 
not our assured American destiny. 

Every morning, many of your 

fellow citizens wake up willing to 
die for a belief in these liberties. 
The least you can do if you are able 
is to walk down a few flights of 
stairs or a couple blocks to drop off 
a ballot, or to wait in line and mark 
a piece of paper. Do it knowing 
that many could not, and some still 
cannot. Because all of those people 
who came before you and fought 
believed, as you should, that those 
pieces of paper change the course of 
history. Vote.

Opinion

T

he ruling also declared 
EPGA 
of 
1945 
to 
be 

unconstitutional. 
This 

ruling directly impacts Whitmer’s 
plan to extend the state of emergency 
in Michigan from Sept. 29 until Oct. 
27. Narrowing the scope from state 
legislation to the local university 
community, while this removal of 
authoritative 
guidance 
occurred 

despite a significant increase in case 
numbers, the onus is now on the 
University of Michigan to provide 
clear public health guidance and 
support to all individuals, both on 
and off-campus.

Our state has been relying on 

Whitmer’s extension of the state of 
emergency to handle the COVID-
19 outbreak and to enforce the 
guidelines we need to follow to 
control the spread. It is unclear how 
the state government will be handling 
legislation relating to the pandemic 
moving forward. The effect of 
repealing EPGA and EMA, alongside 
the lack of national precedent for the 
management of a global pandemic, 
will be the unanswered concern of 
how to handle potential spread from 
outlying communities. 

The severity of the pandemic will 

likely not decrease after Oct. 27, and 
with flu season approaching, there 
is still a greater concern for how 
the infection will worsen on our 
campus — especially because the 
University’s lack of proper testing 
and overall response has resulted 
in an increase in case numbers and 
outbreaks across many different 
residence halls. This Michigan 
Supreme Court ruling ultimately 
emphasizes the importance of taking 

personal responsibility during the 
coronavirus pandemic. 

Thus, 
The 
Michigan 
Daily 

Editorial 
Board 
calls 
on 
the 

University to help outline precautions 
necessary to compensate for the lack 
of state legislation that could follow 
the end of the state of emergency on 
Oct. 27. We encourage students to 
continue wearing masks, washing 
their hands and social distancing on 
campus. 

We also call on the University 

community to sign up to participate 
in 
random, 
voluntary 
testing 

through the University, so as to 
enable our public health experts 
and contact tracers to develop a 
comprehensive picture of where 
COVID-19 infections exist and how 
to contain them. Additionally, we 
encourage those on campus to use 
the University’s ResponsiBLUE app, 
which allows students to track their 
symptoms and receive guidance 
for how and when to reduce their 
interactions in certain public areas. 
While students are already required 
to use this app to enter many 
buildings on campus, we believe 
they should use this app even if not 
mandated to, as it can be useful 
for identifying cases before they 
potentially infect more students. 

There have also been consistent 

cleaning measures taken in public 
spaces and residence halls. These 
actions have helped to not only keep 
our campus distanced and safe but 
have worked to give the community 
faith in our university’s response. We 
should continue to have confidence 
in this response after the end of the 
state of emergency.

While 
we 
acknowledge 
the 

necessity of checks and balances, 
we are asking the University 
administration to also shift the 
conversation 
and 
acknowledge 

the barriers students face when 
trying to get tested on campus. For 
example, students have said that the 
University Health Service rejected 
their requests to receive testing, 
despite reporting symptoms or close 
contact with community members 
who had tested positive. Some 
students have also reported that their 
calls to UHS didn’t go through when 
they sought testing and that the 
reported data is inaccurate. Rather 
than leaving students wondering 
what options that leaves them 
with, the University could enlist 
additional individuals to staff 
phone lines for UHS. Another 
potential way for the University 
to eliminate barriers for students 
would be by continuing to work 
with the Washtenaw County 
Health Department to incorporate 
testing 
data 
from 
University 

students at off-campus locations 
into the University’s COVID-19 
dashboard to increase accuracy 
and timeliness of such data. 

This lack of authority on a federal 

and state level has left students 
without much cohesive direction. 
We need to demand support from 
the University to implement safety 
protocols 
and 
procedures 
that 

responsibly parallel local measures 
and take more precautions than the 
contentious state governments. 

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

SIERRA ÉLISE HANSEN | COLUMN

What disaster experts know

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.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020 — 8
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

I 

have found myself asking the 
following question, set to repeat 
like a lagging, skipping record: 

How much time will our leaders 
spend quantifying the obvious before 
they act? I’m exhausted from waiting 
to see it manifest in appropriate 
action. Our leaders seem preoccupied 
with data, as if numbers are gods 
and they are beholden to them. 
National frustration on all sides is 
at an inflection point and radiating 
outward with the abrupt shattering 
of hallucinatory American life. But 
the question remains, rephrased here 
to abandon the hopelessly rhetorical: 
How will we decide to enact good 
citizenship at all levels to meet the 
moment?

We’re seeing the dissolution of 

American childhood ideals of equal 
opportunity and romance and the 
stab of expectations unfulfilled; A 
president who has fallen ill with no 
one sure whether to believe him. 
Many of us have been watching for 
our suspicions to manifest while 
desperately 
hoping 
they 
won’t. 

None of the problems that have 
been exposed are being fixed while 
we wait and therefore the days feel 
doomed to repeat themselves. When 
the University of Michigan’s data on 
COVID-19 signaled the crossing of 
another threshold, I felt the baffling 
commingling of dread and lack of 
surprise. 

One way to move forward could 

be looking to experts who study 
disasters. Scott Gabriel Knowles, a 
disaster historian and professor at 
Drexel University, has been studying 
and historicizing disasters for decades. 
I have been tuning in to his podcast 
COVID-calls, streaming live every 
day at 5 p.m. EST. In the past, Knowles 
has suggested we build memorials for 
the victims of natural disasters and his 
habit of commemorating what many 
of us have grown worryingly numb to 
is a small, measured surprise, as well 
as a tiny piece of validation amid my 
daily doom scrolls.

On his recent COVID-call with 

Michael Yudell, a professor at Drexel 
University who focuses on public 
health, Yudell noted how W.E.B. 
DuBois embarked on a project to 
document public health disparities in 
Black men 124 years ago. Yudell added, 
“Here we are, 124 years later, still 
trying to quantify health disparities 
that we know exist. Yes, the Band-

Aid has been ripped off … but how do 
we pivot to push society to really take 
up these issues in a way that leads to 
change? Because we can measure this 
stuff to death, which in some ways is 
what we’ve been doing.”

Data represents a complex matrix 

of stories documenting either a 
steady accumulation of numbered 
lives or sudden tragedy. Knowles 
has made it his life’s work to not only 
gather data in his academic research 
but to, as he so aptly puts it,“put 
knowledge (and data) to work.” 
Diametrically opposed to this idea is 
the bureaucracy of today’s mortality 
counts, which seem to have been 
borrowed directly from the British 
empire. I cannot help being reminded 
here of how so much American legal 
doctrine is similarly, and sometimes 
quite bizarrely, descended from 
archaic British common law. 

Another 
guest 
on 
Knowles’ 

COVID-calls, Dartmouth University 
Professor Jacqueline Wernimont, 
talked about how the mortality count 
was commercialized in England 
during the bubonic plague years. 
She spoke at length about women 
called 
“searchers,” 
enlisted 
to 

perform the dirty work of counting 
the contaminated corpses filling the 
streets. Wernimont added that not 
only weren’t most people officially 
counted, but church parishioners 
sold the resulting periodicals for 
profit along with listings for the price 
of bread: The mundane mingled 
inappropriately and deceptively with 
flattened, two-dimensional tragedy. 

Wernimont has recently identified 

a blurry historical line between 
COVID-19 dashboards today and 
“mortality bills” in bubonic plague 
times, adding how their numbers can 
“blunt the pain of deaths.” During 
the 
COVID-call 
she 
described 

how the gruesome labors of these 
“searching” women, usually poor, 
recently-widowed London women, 
were erased. The similarities there 
— between the invisible labors of 
medieval “searchers” and today’s 
workers on the front lines — are 
striking.

To further complicate assumptions 

about the efficacy of data science, 
the belief that electronic health 
records and their standards for 
“meaningful use” somehow mitigate 
inconsistencies in the data is wrong. 
In an article recently published 

in the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology 
Sloan 
Management 

Review, the authors write that “data 
standards for the pandemic are not 
codified in EHRs, and data on the 
equipment needed to fight it isn’t in 
them at all.” 

What this means is our official 

sources of data are inadequate and 
inconsistent at best. News companies, 
university groups and even nonprofit 
organizations 
have 
strained 
to 

compensate by attempting to fill 
knowledge gaps. In the Sloan article, 
the authors write that this “leads to 
multiple versions of pandemic truth, 
adding cost and uncertainty,” and 
that it also “builds a false sense of 
confidence … The New York Times 
reports very specific death counts, 
camouflaging the uncertainty and 
severity of the issues, and distracting 
people from addressing the root 
issues.”

When the national death toll of 

our modern plague reached 200,001 
Americans on Sept. 12, 2020, there 
were no bells announcing the 
establishment of the fact. During 
bubonic plague times in England, 
every burial event was marked by 
reverberating acoustics from ringing 
parish bells. But I knew multitudes of 
people somewhere were mourning 
deaths and medical professionals 
had clearly determined COVID-19 
as the cause of each. When I heard 
the numbered news it felt as if an 
abstracted national reality was 
converging with my personal sense 
of isolation. 

But the defining shock of the 

alleged 
collapse 
of 
American 

democracy reached me later in a 
delayed reaction — like the long peal 
of a bell’s toll — when I read an essay 
on Medium that had gone viral. The 
essay is by Indi Samarajiva, who 
survived the Sri Lankan Civil War as 
a member of its majority and declares 
America has been in the process of 
collapsing for some time. He points 
to how in thirty years of bloody civil 
war in Sri Lanka around 18,000 
people died — fewer than the number 
of people who died in the United 
States from COVID-19 in the past 
three months alone. 

From The Daily: On our govenor’s powers
O

n Friday, Oct. 2, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against Gov. 
Gretchen Whitmer, stating that she does not have the authority to 
extend executive orders regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and safety 

protocols she unilaterally put in place. The Michigan Supreme Court based 
their ruling on the Emergency Management Act of 1976 and the Emergency 
Powers of the Governor Act of 1945, declaring that Whitmer had the authority 
to declare a state of emergency once, but did not have the authority to extend 
nor re-declare a state of disaster past April 30 without legislative approval. 

Sierra Élise Hansen can be 

reached at hsierra@umich.edu.

Your vote is the history you write — honor 

the patriots that suffered for it

Jacob Walden is a Ph.D. Candidate 

in Political Science at the University 

of Michigan and can be reached at 

jawalden@umich.edu.

JACOB WALDEN | OP-ED

MADELYN VERVAECKE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU
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