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La Casa releases statement on Victors
Award following drop in Latinx enrollment
The University of Michigan’s
central
Latinx
student
organization, La Casa, released
a statement on Jan. 19 speaking
out
against
the
Office
of
Enrollment
Management’s
decision to change the amount
of financial aid offered to
out-of-state
students
with
demonstrated need.
The Victors Award, which
replaced the Provost Award in
April 2020, will be available for
incoming out-of-state students
in
the
class
of
2024
and
beyond. The Provost Award,
last distributed to members
of the class of 2023, met the
full demonstrated need of out-
of-state students and did not
include a merit component.
The Victors Award offers a
flat $8,000 per year award and
includes merit consideration.
La Casa’s statement outlines
the
organization’s
concerns
about the change. They say the
new award disproportionately
impacts the Latinx community
and resulted in a 16% decrease
seen in first-year Latinx student
enrollment for the Fall 2020
semester.
Public Policy junior Juliana
Collado, who recently finished
her term as La Casa’s lead
director, stated that though
they
know
the
COVID-19
pandemic may be a contributing
factor, the decrease in Latinx
first-year enrollment provoked
La Casa to write the statement.
“What
we
know
is
the
numbers,” Collado said. “What
we also know is that Latinx
students are particularly loan
adverse. Because the transition
from the Provost Award to
the Victors Award (provides
students with a) significantly
(smaller) amount of money,
it
just
is
inaccessible
for
students that can’t afford (the
University). ”
La Casa has discussed the
change with OEM. According to
La Casa Internal Director Xalma
Palomino, an LSA sophomore,
La
Casa’s
discussions
with
administrators at OEM were
responsive, yet brief.
“They were answering our
questions but it was only a
30-minute meeting so there
wasn’t much that we could
cover,” Palomino said. “The two
main things that we took away
from that meeting is one, they
said that they weren’t going to
change the policy this year, and
two, that they wanted … other
colleges across the University
to pick up on that funding.”
La Casa External Director
Rebeca Yanes, an LSA junior,
was also at the meeting and said
she thinks OEM did not seem to
have any plans to make changes
to their decision to implement
the Victors Award.
“They made it clear that
this was a decision that was
already made and that they
were planning on continuing
it for the next year,” Yanes
said. “It makes it seem like the
University of Michigan isn’t
reachable. It’s not accessible.
We talked about members of
the Latinx community being
loan adverse (and) not receiving
sufficient
aid
from
the
University is sending a message
that (this University may not be
accessible for them).”
Rick
Fitzgerald,
assistant
vice president for the University
of Michigan’s Office of Public
Affairs, stated in an email to
The Daily that the decision to
switch to the Victors Award
came from the fact that the
Provost Award was no longer
financially sustainable.
“While the Provost’s Award
meets full demonstrated need
for eligible continuing non-
resident students, the amount
awarded changes from year
to year as individual financial
need is determined annually,”
Fitzgerald
wrote.
“It
was
important
not
to
adversely
affect the affordability of a
Michigan education for non-
resident students who were
already
here
despite
the
unsustainable finances of this
award in the longer term. The
introduction
of
the
Victors
Award is intended to continue to
support non-resident students.”
Fitzgerald also noted that
the University and the Office
of
Enrollment
Management
share La Casa’s concerns with
the enrollment decrease, but
suggests that further analysis
is needed in understanding
the factors that may have
contributed to this decrease,
including
the
COVID-19
pandemic.
“The university is aware of La
Casa’s concerns and shares La
Casa’s goals of greater college
affordability and diversity in
our student body,” Fitzgerald
wrote. “While La Casa points
to the changes in financial
aid awards as the reason, we
believe more analysis is needed
to fully understand how many
factors — most notably, the
COVID-19 pandemic — may
have
influenced
enrollment
decisions … rest assured that
the university is committed to
doing this analysis.”
As a part of La Casa’s efforts
to challenge the Victors Award,
the
organization
has
asked
community
members
who
previously received the Provost
Award to prepare testimonials
explaining its impact on their
educational experience.
La
Casa
Undergraduate
Advisor Tania Zaragoza, an LSA
junior, was one of these Provost
Award recipients.
“It’s
actually
through
(receiving the Provost’s Award)
that I’m able to attend the
University,” Zaragoza said. “It’s
pretty straightforward. If you
don’t have the money, then it’s
just not a possibility, no matter
how much you want to be here.”
Moving forward, La Casa
hopes
to
continue
their
conversations
with
the
University
to
help
further
support not only the Latinx
community, but all low-income
first-year students affected by
the new aid policy.
“We’re
not
just
here
to
protest (and) be angry at the
University,” Collado said. “We
have actively engaged with the
University (and) we want that
partnership reciprocated to us.
The University has shoveled out
millions of dollars to different
DEI
initiatives
(and
that)
shows the value that they see in
diversity, equity and inclusion.
Here’s another way that they
can show that they care about
DEI, about having accessible
education.”
LARA JANOSZ
Daily Staff Reporter
CAMPUS LIFE
Organization claims new award disproportionately impacts the Latinx community
masks, avoiding large groups,
spending time outdoors when
the weather allows, washing
hands more frequently, those
kind of things, and I think if we
can remain vigilant about those
things a very high percentage of
the time, I think the campus will
do okay despite the presence of
this more transmissible strain.
If we let our guard down more
people will get infected if the
strain is around.
TMD: Can you talk about what
the
slower-than-anticipated
vaccine
distribution
and
administration means for U-M?
MS: The good news is, having
a vaccine that works as well as
these two existing vaccines is just
remarkable. 95% effectiveness
is about as good as it gets for a
vaccine. The challenge is the
supply, you know, can we make
enough of it and how quickly can
we make it? It’s a novel kind of
vaccine … and so it’s complicated,
and ramping up the production
to the level of hundreds of
millions of doses has never been
done before, and it’s challenging.
Michigan Medicine has gotten
our campus to the stage where
we can deliver between 12,000 to
25,000 doses a week. So, if we had
enough vaccines now, it would
take us two weeks to vaccinate
the entire student community in
Ann Arbor. So, that’s great. The
problem is we don’t have enough
vaccines.
We put in a request each week
for how many doses we want,
and in the last couple of weeks,
we haven’t gotten nearly the
number of doses. And it’s not the
state’s fault — they don’t have the
supply. So, we’re ready to very
aggressively vaccinate everyone
in the order of their eligibility as
soon as we have the supply.
TMD: We know you don’t
gamble — you’ve told us that
before — but what do you
think the chances are that the
University will be administering
vaccines to the general student
population this semester?
MS: I think it’s rather unlikely
that we will get to have enough
supply and work our way through
all the other priority groups
to be able to begin vaccinating
students before the end of the
semester. I would love to be
proven wrong. So the priority
is to give the vaccine to people
for whom the disease is even
more dangerous. And because
the students are in an age group
that is least likely to have a
lethal outcome, on average, your
priority is the lowest.
However, amongst the student
body there are people that have
high risk. People with certain
underlying diseases that put
them in a high-risk group, they
might get vaccinated before the
end of the semester. But healthy
students that are typical — no
unusual health issues — I would
hope
that
vaccine
becomes
available by the summer.
My hope for next fall is that we
can have a high enough fraction
of everybody in our community
vaccinated that we can have a
semester that looks a lot more
like a normal semester. I don’t
think it’ll look like a completely
normal semester — we’ll still
have to be careful. If you want
to be realistically optimistic, I
think next fall we’ve got a shot at
a much higher sort of quality of
experience with much more stuff
in person.
TMD:
The
President’s
Commission
on
Carbon
Neutrality released its draft
recommendations in December,
and
after
opportunity
for
public comment it will deliver
its
final
recommendations
to
you
in
February.
We’re
wondering what’s the process
you’ll use to evaluate the final
recommendations
and
decide
which parts to act on?
MS: The University has been
continuing to work on its carbon
neutrality goals and its other
sustainability goals while we
wait for this commission to tell
us a timeline and a prioritized
set of things we can do to get to
neutrality, so I’m pretty excited
that it’s coming up to its stage of
making recommendations. All
along, I’ve been meeting with
the co-chairs of the process,
Professor Forrest and Jennifer
Haverkamp.
What I can guarantee is the
report won’t be taken and put on
a shelf. The report, we’re going
to address the things that are
straightforward and simple to
address immediately. And then,
we’re going to spend enough time
to really understand the bigger
and more complicated things
and then focus on those as well.
The response is meant to be an
action-oriented response.
The biggest thing in that report
that I’m most interested in and
then we’re going to need to study
is to convert how we heat and
cool all the buildings on campus.
To go from steam heat generated
by fossil fuels to geothermal and
electric heat pumping, which
would require literally tearing
up every pipe and replacing every
pipe that goes through every
building on campus and digging
these boreholes into the ground,
tens of thousands of them, to do
this geothermal heat exchange.
Other things they’re going to
propose are likely to be shorter-
term,
more
straightforward
and
well-justified
and
we’ll
just do them. So those are the
extremes, a decades-long, multi-
billion dollar project. And you
can imagine with a multi-billion
dollar project, we’re a university
that has lots of resources, we
surely do, but everything we do
has an opportunity cost. So the
question would be if we spent
billions of dollars on one thing,
what are the things we’re not
going to do to balance that out.
And that’s the discussion we
need to have with the faculty,
with the students, with the deans
and with the regents.
TMD:
Carbon
offsetting,
according
to
the
draft
recommendations, is when an
organization counterbalances its
direct emissions by investing in
or purchasing credits associated
with
verifiable
emissions
reductions
or
sequestration
efforts somewhere else on the
planet. Proponents argue that
because climate change is a global
problem, it makes sense to reduce
emissions wherever it’s cheapest
and
easiest.
But
opponents
argue that carbon offsetting
allows wealthy institutions to
externalize emission reduction
while continuing to burn fossil
fuels. What is your view on the
proper role of carbon offsetting
in carbon neutrality efforts?
MS:
You’ve
laid
out
the
problem. So, the leadership team
and I and the regents need to
understand it better. So it really
is a dilemma. I understand where
the advocates are coming from,
it is a global problem. Of course,
everyone in the world can’t buy
offsets, because at the end of the
day, what everyone in the world
has to do is stop emitting so much
carbon. We’ll run out of offsets. I
also don’t want the purchase of
offsets to compete financially
with the investments it’s going
to take for us to reduce our own
carbon release.
So, if we buy offsets for X
number of millions of dollars a
year, I don’t think that relieves
us of the obligation to diminish
our own carbon output. But, it
gets rid of a lot of the resources
that we would be using to invest
in things like the geothermal
system for example. So we have
to study, that’s going to be a
hard one. And from what I’ve
heard, the committee itself is
not of one mind about offsets,
and then they’ve been getting
comments
back
from
the
broader community of experts
and advocates. So I think it’s
something we’re going to have
to look hard at, but I’m willing
to consider anything that gets
recommended.
TMD: We wanted to follow
up about the MLK symposium
yesterday. In light of nationwide
protests for racial justice, you
said in June that “The important
movements and calls for action
we are seeing emphasize the
need for us to do more to end
systemic racism in our society
and on our campuses.” What has
the University done to address
systemic racism on its campuses
since then?
MS: To put it in context — and
this came up yesterday at the
symposium — this is a marathon,
racism. It’s been around almost
forever in various forms —
certainly throughout the history
of our own country. And as hard
as we work at it, I think we have
to have a commitment to work on
it basically forever. However, in
the context of the awful events
of the last year, particularly the
multitude of police killings of
Black people, most of whom were
unarmed, it has focused societal
attention on the issue in a way
that gives us an opportunity to
push harder.
So amongst the things we’ve
been doing on campus, most
recently, we launched the task
force that the provost and I set
up around public safety at the
University. I’ve spoken with
many people of color, not just
African Americans, but many
people
who
don’t
feel
safe
around the police. We need to
understand how we do policing
on our campus and how people
feel about how we do policing,
and try to make ourselves best in
class. That effort just launched
within the last couple of weeks.
There
will
be
preliminary
reports during the semester, and
then a final report at the end of
the semester.
SCHLISSEL
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