The Michigan Daily spoke with
Regent Sarah Hubbard (R), the
University of Michigan’s newest
member of the Board of Regents,
Tuesday to discuss her time in
office since first joining the Board
in January. Hubbard is one of two
Republicans on the Board, the other
being Ron Weiser, who is currently
in the midst of controversy after
calls from some in the U-M
community for his resignation.
Hubbard
was
elected
in
November after narrowly defeating
incumbent Democrat Shauna Ryder
Diggs by 4,000 votes in a statewide
election. Hubbard, who grew up on
a farm in rural Michigan and was
a Pell Grant-eligible student at the
University, pitched herself to voters
on the campaign trail as a moderate,
bi-partisan candidate who leaned
right and emphasized lowering
tuition, protecting freedom of
expression on campus and bringing
a “new perspective” to the board.
There are eight members of
the Board of Regents who are
elected to eight-year terms per
the Constitution of the State of
Michigan. Elections are staggered,
and every two years two members
of the Board of Regents must seek
re-election. Wayne State University,
Michigan State University and
the University of Michigan all
have elections for their Boards of
Regents.
The Board of Regents is the most
powerful body at the University
and has two main responsibilities:
hiring
the
president
of
the
University
and
managing
the
budget, which includes tuition.
Before her election to the Board,
Hubbard held no political office or
position at the University. Hubbard
said her “great passion for helping
the
University”
propelled
her
expeditious jump to this powerful
position.
“I’ve
been
very
active
in
working with the alumni groups
since
graduating,”
Hubbard
said. “And I’ve also had a lot of
relationships with public officials,
with the public, with the business
community across the state and just
saw an opportunity to serve and a
way to give back to my University.
I happened to win with a squeaker
there last year, and I’m really
enjoying the opportunity to be
more engaged.”
Hubbard is the owner of Acuitas
LLC, a government relations and
lobbying firm in the state’s capital
of Lansing. She holds two degrees
from the University, a bachelor’s
degree in political science and
psychology from LSA and an
MBA from the Ross School of
Business. She also has a history
of working with the Republican
Party, though in the past she has
donated to Democratic candidates
in Michigan, including U.S. Rep.
Debbie Dingell and Sen. Gary
Peters, D-Mich.
Hubbard’s first official Board
of Regents meeting is not until
Feb. 18, but she said she is already
preparing and getting to know U-M
administration and student leaders.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time
getting to know the leaders of the
University much better,” Hubbard
said. “Talking with administration
leaders, deans, student leaders,
taking emails from a lot of different
groups and preparing to meet
with other groups on campus and
hearing from a lot of people. …
While I’ve known the University
for a long time, I’m getting to know
it in a much different, better way.”
Though the Board of Regents
typically
handles
general
management
and
high-level
oversight
of
the
University,
Hubbard said she believes the
Regents are very accessible to
students and members of the U-M
community.
“We do receive a lot of emails and
outreach from students and student
groups, and we certainly encourage
students to continue to stay in
touch with Regents,” Hubbard said.
“And there are all sorts of things
that might be on students’ minds,
especially with COVID. I very much
appreciate hearing from people and
what their concerns are, and I want
to hear from people. I want to hear
from students and families and
parents and faculty — all of you.”
Hubbard said being a Regent
has gone how she expected it to so
far and spoke about the “learning
curve” of becoming a Regent.
“I thought it would be very tense
and that it would be relatively time-
consuming, and it is … but as far as
actual surprises, I don’t know that
I have anything in particular that
I would point to,” Hubbard said.
“It’s just such a steep learning curve
right now, and a lot of items and
issues are new to me at this point.”
Hubbard has been assigned to
the Health Affairs Committee on
the board, an important position
in the middle of a global pandemic.
According to the bylaws of the Board
of Regents, the committee provides
oversight of the University’s clinical
enterprise, including the health
system.
After experiencing what she
described as a hostile environment
due
to
her
all-white
female
roommates
in
her
sophomore
year dorm, Lorraine Furtado, a
University of Michigan class of 2020
alum, found sanctuary in the Inter-
Cooperative Council, a housing
cooperative operating numerous
houses across Ann Arbor. Though
the situation was an improvement,
Furtado said microaggressions and
hostility persisted.
“I wanted to demand more for
myself, and I knew I deserved to
demand more for myself,” Furtado
said.
So in 2019, Furtado began
planning to transform her former
home — the Lester Cooperative
House — into a safe space for Queer
and Transgender People of Color
like herself. The ICC co-ops are
maintained and operated by the
student members who live there,
rather than a landlord.
Members of Lester participated
in
house
meetings
about
re-theming the house. After an
almost unanimous vote in favor of
re-theming among house members,
they brought it to the ICC, where
it was later approved in November
2019, according to Furtado.
Members voted to rename the
house after Sylvia Rivera, one of the
leading activists in the Gay Libration
Movement.
“I cried from joy,” Furtado said.
“It was such a beautiful moment to
know that my housemates cared
about the vision I had. They cared
about the community I wanted to
create, and they agreed with me
about it. And it was so meaningful
to know that my housemates cared
about a safe space for QTPOC as
much as I did.”
The change in making Lester
the Rivera House will be effective
in Fall 2021. The house, which was
previously all-vegetarian, will no
longer have any dietary restrictions.
Rivera will operate year-round.
They accept applications from any
University students as well as other
people in the Ann Arbor area who
meet the ICC’s eligibility criteria.
Approving Rivera House
According to Furtado the process
of getting Rivera approved was a
difficult one. She said while working
to obtain approval for Rivera,
ICC leadership “did not create an
inclusive environment” for her and
was hostile.
“I would cry after every single
board meeting, my housemates
would have to caravan to come pick
me up because I would be so upset
after board meetings, because I
frankly felt bullied,” Furtado said. “I
didn’t feel like I was a voice that they
wanted to be there, and that was
really tough mentally to know that.”
Furtado said she was treated
poorly by the ICC board in a meeting
to discuss a large financial decision
regarding Rivera.
“The main reason people had
pushback was because it would
require so much red tape, so many
legal resources, it would require so
much forethought and planning,”
Furtado said.
LSA junior Amaya Farrell, a
vice president in the ICC, said that
according to meeting minutes,
the major concerns were legal
wording for fair housing laws.
Farrell, who was not on the board
at the time of the meeting, said she
spoke with members attending
that meeting who told her some of
the representatives were fixated
on the legal wording, which was
not the focus of the proposal being
discussed.
“The (two ICC Vice Presidents)
could
tell
there
was
tension
(because) one board rep continually
worried about the legality in a
nonproductive and non-appropriate
manner for the time, and after the
proposal passed the communication
norms were talked about to remind
(people) what they had agreed on
for communication and behavior,”
Farrell wrote in a text message to
The Daily.
When asked about the criticisms
and negative member experiences,
current ICC President Julian Tabron,
a Rackham student, acknowledged
members feeling unwelcome or
marginalized in the past.
“We do membership surveys and
compare it (the data) with U of M,
and we had a diversity issue a couple
of years ago to a point where the ICC
was less diverse than U of M, which
was disappointing to me,” Tabron
said. “I’m African-American and
Native American, and I am trying
to work towards making this a more
welcoming environment, and I think
that’s part of what Rivera is trying to
do for marginalized individuals.”
To prevent situations like Furtado’s
from taking place again, Tabron said
there are bystander intervention
training and microaggression training
sessions open to all members of the
ICC, as well as the dispute action
and resolution team which handles
internal conflicts within the co-op
houses. The training sessions have
worked in the past, Tabron said, and
have helped the ICC break ties with
racist and prejudicial members.
Tabron said he sympathizes
with those who have experienced
discrimination and uncomfortable
situations within the co-ops.
“I’m sorry some members felt
alienated or discriminated against
in the past. As a member, I’ve
experienced
that
too,”
Tabron
said. “I think the ICC is heading in
a more positive, better direction
where
we
can
foster
better
healthy relationships in our own
communities. We’re still working on
it — it’s a work in progress.”
University alum Ramin Samei,
who also worked to re-theme the
house, experienced more support
from the ICC. Samei said COVID-19
has been a challenge in transitioning
Lester into Rivera.
“There has been a lot of support
for this idea from within the ICC,
like a ton of support from our board
and from the staff, in making this
dream a reality,” Samei said. “I think
some of the challenges have been
that we have so many people coming
together on this, and all of us are
going through the pandemic … this
is a hard time to start anything. But I
think overall, I’ve had a pretty good
time (with) it just because there’s
been such good support.”
The future ahead for Rivera
House
Furtado said Rivera is at the
forefront of real change for QTPOC
students, in comparison to what
she sees as failed attempts at
transformation by the University
and some of its organizations and
initiatives.
“On
UMich’s
campus,
there
are so many empty shows of racial
solidarity from white folks that are
just really performative, and they’re
shells of what they could be, and we
didn’t want to do that,” Furtado said.
“We wanted to be explicitly clear that
this is something that will actually
cause change and create a safe space
and isn’t just putting a band-aid on
all of the racial issues on campus,
which so many initiatives have just
done, if I’m being completely honest.
We wanted something that would
actually be transformative.”
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, February 17, 2021 — 3
New Regent Sarah Hubbard
talks time in office so far
Beating Ryder-Diggs in November, Hubbard is one of two Republicans on board
Lester Cooperative House to be rethemed
ADMINISTRATION
After months of deliberation, co-op to be renamed in honor of Sylvia Rivera
CAMPUS LIFE
MARTHA LEWAND
Daily Staff Reporter
ACADEMICS
JARED DOUGALL
Daily Staff Reporter
“I think what (the Board of
Regents) all have in common
is what’s best for U-M —
what’s best for students,
what’s best for academic
excellence,” Hubbard said.
“I don’t think partisanship
is going to rule the day, but
it’s certainly an element that
can’t be completely ignored.”
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Design by Jessica Chiu
Student parents talk struggles
of academia, work-life balance
during the pandemic
As the U.S. nears one year since
the initial spread of the COVID-19
pandemic, many schools and day
care centers have yet to regularly
remain
open.
For
University
of Michigan Graduate Student
Instructors
and
undergraduate
students who are parents, this
means trying to balance school,
work and child care at home every
day.
Work-life balance difficulties
Even
before
the
pandemic,
student parents at the University
have
discussed
the
lack
of
institutional
support.
Rackham
student
Valerie
Micol
works
as a GSI and researcher for the
University and has a 10-year-old
child. She said working from home
during the pandemic has wrecked
her work-life balance.
“I’m supposed to be writing
a dissertation,” Micol said. “It’s
supposed to be the most cognitively
demanding work that I need to do …
And then I’m just at home with my
10-year-old, being a fifth grade one-
on-one teacher’s aide for her. I don’t
want to be super dramatic, but it
feels like (working from home) has
just ruined a lot.”
The shift to working at home
has also heightened the gender
imbalance in the workplace, as
student parents who are women
are more likely to be more affected
by the burden of juggling both
professional work and parenting.
The hardest thing about working
from home with a child, Micol said,
has been the fact that her attention
is always divided.
“It’s like having a loud, rowdy
lab mate or co-worker who’s
interrupting all the time,” Micol
said. “Even when she’s relatively
subdued or we have good days, it’s
just still cognitively demanding, to
be on all the time in two settings.”
Ph.D. candidate Ruby Mochida
is currently a GSI teaching modern
Chinese culture and is also the
mother of two children, ages two
and five. She said she moved in with
her mother in New Hampshire over
the summer for help with child
care.
Being both a mom and a
GSI, Mochida also said she has
struggled with feeling isolated and
misunderstood.
“I think it’s just a fact that unless
you’re a mom, you don’t understand
the situation,” Mochida said. “So
I have to prove the reality to my
department, and it feels like they
don’t believe that it’s really that bad
or something is really hard.”
Ph.D. candidate Hanah Stiverson
has two school-aged children.
Stiverson said she is constantly
interrupted throughout the day and
finds it difficult to stay focused.
Stiverson said she has found
herself getting more exhausted
during the day than she used to,
causing her to feel behind.
“I know personally, I’ve got a
lot of timeline goals and personal
expectations that I set for myself,”
Stiverson said. “And working in a
way that has combined my home
life, with my work life, with my
parenting life, with trying to reach
these goals for fellowships and
going on the job market in a year
— all that’s combined into this ball
of stress that’s really hard to work
through.”
Fighting for greater protections
During their strike last fall, The
Graduate Employees’ Organization
included allowing student parents
to use their University-allotted
child care money for non-licensed
care in their list of demands sent
to
University
administration.
Allowing this change was one of the
concessions the University made to
GEO to end the strike.
In addition to extending the
policy to include an option for
funding unlicensed childcare, the
University increased the age limit
to qualify for this aid to include
children up to the age of 15 without
disabilities.
The
previous
and
existing policies cover children
with special needs up to the age
of 19. The temporary program
instituted by the University also
allocated an additional $500,000 to
unlicensed childcare, as requested
by GEO.
This demand followed a group
of Rackham students with children
publishing an opinion piece in The
Michigan Daily in August 2020. The
group discussed their experiences
and struggles and asked the
University to issue a statement of
support and guide departments in
mitigating the impact of COVID-19
on student parents.
Micol said though the child care
funding concessions were helpful,
she thinks the University needs to
do more.
“Part of the child care subsidy is
that your child has to be enrolled on
75% of the weeks of the semester,
which is something like maybe 12
weeks or 13 weeks,” Micol said.
“But they give you like $2,000, and
that’s going to cover only six weeks
or (so) … I honestly think that the
unlicensed care piece was just
such a low hanging fruit that the
University could have done without
strike.”
Though Mochida moved in with
her mother for child care, she said
she was unable to use any of the
subsidy to pay her mother for taking
care of her child.
PAIGE HODDER
Daily Staff Reporter
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
As many schools remain closed, GSIs and undergrads
with children discuss difficulties in managing coursework