7-Opinion

I 

almost drowned at a birthday 

party when I was five years old. 

Upon arrival at Water Country, 

New England’s “safest and friendliest” 

waterpark, I had raced into a crowded pool 

of seemingly-still water. Little did I know, 

this was the Wave Pool: a 700,000-gallon 

tank of water that mimicked the nearby 

Atlantic ocean.

The 
wave-generating 
machine 

operated on a timer, thus creating 

waves that rapidly increased in size. I 

progressively struggled to keep my head 

above water. Each time I would return to 

the surface, gasping for breath, another 

monstrous wave would topple me over.

Underwater, I managed to cling 

onto something — swimming trunks. 

In an attempt to stay afloat, I pulled on 

them, hard. So hard that they fully came 

off of their occupant. But my efforts to 

surmount the wave tank were to no 

avail.

Five 
minutes 
later, 
I 
was 

unconscious, submerged at the bottom 

of the pool. There was a seemingly-

excessive number of guards on duty 

— over a dozen of them — perched in 

gleaming red chairs that lined the tank’s 

perimeter as if they were spectators in 

an amphitheater. Yet not a single guard 

noticed until a swimmer found me, 

horrified, and called for help.

The next thing I knew, I was reclined 

in a poolside lounge chair, breathing 

through an oxygen mask and flanked by 

paramedics and concerned swimmers. 

When I came to, the large audience that 

had gathered anxiously stood up and 

applauded.

I was fine. Everything was fine.

Being diagnosed with attention

deficit hyperactivity disorder at 20 

years old was cathartic; everything 

finally made sense. But I couldn’t stop 

thinking of that day at the water park, 

and I grew angry. Just as I had displayed 

signs of being a distressed swimmer, my 

ADHD symptoms had clearly presented 

themselves throughout my childhood. 

In both cases, the people who were 

supposed to protect me had failed to do 

so. I had slipped through the cracks.

My memories of ADHD symptoms 

trace back to early elementary school. 

With time these symptoms worsened, 

but my teachers reinforced that I was 

simply “ditzy” or that it was “just my 

personality.” When I communicated 

my symptoms to my doctors, they 

reassured me not to worry; it was “just” 

my anxiety disorder. I had mentioned 

my suspicions of ADHD to my therapist, 

who would laugh and respond, “Marina, 

if you had something, you would’ve 

been diagnosed in kindergarten.”

In reality, girls with ADHD are 

underdiagnosed and undertreated for 

numerous reasons, including gender 

bias in research. According to the 

American Psychological Association, 

girls with undiagnosed ADHD will 

“most likely carry their problems 

into their adulthood, and if it is left 

untreated, their lives often fall apart.” 

I initially felt that my healthcare 

professionals had wronged me. Part of me 

felt grateful, though; my missed diagnosis 

had only decreased my quality of life — it 

was not life-threatening or fatal.

Nonetheless, diagnostic errors are 

often fatal and are not discussed enough. 

While policy change and structural 

reform are necessary, patients can gain 

more autonomy in their health outcomes 

by making changes in how they interact 

with their providers.

Diagnostic errors include diagnoses 

that are initially “missed, wrong, or 

delayed.” John Hopkins researchers 

found that diagnostic errors represented 

the “largest fraction of (malpractice) 

claims, the most severe patient harm, 

and the highest total of penalty payouts.” 

In the United States, 12 million people 

face medical diagnostic errors every year, 

and it’s estimated that 40,000 to 80,000 

of these people die due to complications 

of misdiagnoses. Despite the prevalence 

of these mistakes, diagnostic errors are 

understudied. 

They are frequently “underreported 

or poorly reported” as oftentimes 

patients don’t self-report errors — experts 

downplay the full extent of them and 

most hospitals don’t even track diagnostic 

errors. The rate of errors to “accurate” 

diagnoses is estimated to be about 5%, 

implying that these errors affect at least 

1 in 20 U.S. adults, while other research 

estimates that “10-20% of all diagnoses 

are inaccurate” in the U.S.

Furthermore, 
this 
rate 
of 

diagnostic error may be much higher 

for certain populations. Numerous 

existing disparities in diagnosis are 

thought to particularly concern race/

ethnicity, age and sex. A high rate 

of patients who have experienced 

diagnostic error reported perceiving 

the visible factors of being African 

American, female and a young adult 

as a contributing variable to their 

diagnostic error for even the most 

serious cases, such as strokes or heart 

attacks. The maternal mortality rate, 

which is disproportionately higher for 

Black, American Indian and Alaska 

Native women and increases with age, 

has also been associated with missed 

or delayed diagnosis.

How can we learn to trust our 

providers, our hospitals and the health 

care system as a whole? According 

to the National Academy of Medicine, 

systemic racism and institutional bias 

have been shown to “(manifest) in lower-

quality healthcare.” Additionally, the 

U.S. has an extensive history of medical 

racism and malpractice exploiting Black 

Americans, Native Americans and Puerto 

Ricans, so it is understandable that 

minorities tend to have higher levels of 

physician distrust. 

There has been an increase in interest 

and understanding in the complexity of 

diagnostic error over the past few years, 

and the ECRI Institute has even labeled 

it as “the #1 patient safety problem 

in healthcare today.” The Society to 

Improve Diagnosis in Medicine and 

over 60 other health care organizations 

are collaborating to reduce both health 

disparities and diagnostic error. But 

individuals, 
especially 
members 
of 

communities that have been historically 

abused through medicine, may reasonably 

remain skeptical of their health care 

providers and feel powerless to the health 

care system.

As patients, we are often instructed to 

be “consumers” of medicine, but no one 

ever seems to tell us what that means. Self-

advocacy is the key to gaining agency in 

your diagnosis and health care treatment, 

and here is what that looks like.

Use differential diagnosis to confirm 

your diagnosis: Think like a detective, 

eliminating clues to reach a conclusion. 

When you receive a diagnosis, ask your 

doctor for their steps in reaching the 

diagnosis. Ask for all of the possible 

diagnoses that your doctor considered 

and why each one was eliminated. In this 

process, you could realize that a potential 

diagnosis was falsely eliminated.

Don’t be afraid to take notes. Write 

down the names of the rejected diagnoses 

and any other information you find 

important. In case you later suspect a 

misdiagnosis, you’ll have a backup plan.

Prepare for your appointments like 

you would for an exam. Come with an 

idea of your expectations, any boundaries 

you want to have and questions. You have 

the right to decide what your treatment 

plan is. If you’re not comfortable with a 

proposed plan, ask for more information 

or other options.

Ultimately, trust yourself and your 

body. If something doesn’t feel right, 

vocalize it to your provider or someone 

who you trust that will help you take the 

next steps. Additionally, don’t be afraid 

to get a second opinion. You deserve to 

feel respected and comfortable with your 

provider. Sometimes it takes many tries to 

find the right person. 

While 
you 
probably 
cannot 

singlehandedly resolve the “diagnosis 

crisis,” you can learn how to consume 

health care to your advantage. The cracks 

in the system may be, in reality, gaping 

holes, waiting for an unlucky soul to 

stumble upon one of them. You might find 

these cracks in waterpark wave pools, in 

doctors’ offices and other places where 

you least expect them to arise. And once 

you learn how to navigate these spaces, 

you might gradually rebuild your trust 

in them. Medicine is one of humanity’s 

most important creations, so it must be 

equitable and accessible to all.

N

ames 
have 
power. 
They 

can 
both 
recognize 
and 

infuriate a person. Take the 

case of legendary Indiana University 

basketball coach Bob Knight. He was 

under a zero-tolerance policy after 

multiple disciplinary issues in 2000. 

Then in September 2000, a student 

reportedly referred to him as “Knight,” 

not his preferred “Coach Knight” or 

“Mr. Knight.” That minor detail sparked 

a confrontation that ended up being the 

straw that broke the camel’s back: Coach 

Knight had to leave.

The power of names, however, goes 

far beyond just a single person. We just 

had to search for a more lasting tribute 

for truly exceptional personalities, and 

we found one — naming monuments 

and places after people. What better way 

to permanently etch their names and 

legacies into history, right? Whether we 

should name anything after a person is 

a futile discussion. We’re long past any 

reasonable point of return on that subject.

As soon as we added value to naming 

places after people, everyone started 

queuing up for a piece of the pie. With 

politicians, comedians and well-off 

college alumni, you have diverse pools 

of people willing to pay to get their 

name memorialized. Meanwhile, other 

groups have another motive for jumping 

into the name game — control. The 

Lost Cause of the Confederacy, which 

attempts to falsely portray the racist 

actions of the Confederates as a noble 

effort in defense of states’ rights against 

Northern aggression, did precisely that. 

They erected multiple statues and fought 

aggressively to rename places after 

Confederate figures to control history 

and intimidate those who would oppose 

them. This occurred in earnest around 

World War I, with military bases named 

after Confederate figures along with a 

flurry of statues, novels and plays meant 

to perpetuate these false ideas.

This situation leaves us with a mixed 

bag of personalities among those who 

share this originally exclusive honor of 

receiving a monument in your namesake. 

Quite a few of them end up being 

unsavory characters; maybe a name 

has colonial or oppressive origins. The 

obvious step is to rename. For example, it 

is ridiculous to have military bases named 

after Confederate generals that fought 

against the nation. However, there’s one 

issue that we run into quite quickly — 

emotional attachment. 

Why does this happen? While we’re 

usually adept at recognizing the flaws in 

the people around us, we develop blind 

spots when it comes to our idols. We deify 

some personalities, deeming them heroes 

capable of no wrong. That is setting 

ourselves up for failure. When faced 

with the inevitable flaws in a hero, we 

have two choices: accept them and grow 

disillusioned or cling ever tighter to their 

mythical image.

Hence, we see opposition to renaming 

efforts, even in the case of military bases. 

There can be justifiable criticism towards 

the right for naming military bases 

after Confederates using ill-formulated, 

emotional arguments. At the same time, 

renaming in itself indicates a diminishing 

of one’s honor — removing someone’s 

name indicates that they don’t deserve 

to be honored or remembered. Here 

is where those who’d like to remove 

memorializations of controversial figures 

wrongly assume that all cases should 

be as cut-and-dry as the Confederate 

name case. Renaming can cause massive 

division and confusion, as evidenced by 

the San Francisco school renaming fiasco.

Before delving into the school 

renaming proposals, let’s explore our 

perception of Mohandas Karamchand 

Gandhi, better known as Mahatma 

Gandhi. Maybe the mention of Gandhi 

reminds you of Ben Kingsley’s portrayal 

with iconic quotes like, “An eye for an 

eye will make the whole world blind.” 

(Incidentally, this quote is misattributed 

to Gandhi.) Or perhaps you think of his 

inspiring impact on leaders like Martin 

Luther King, Jr. to pursue non-violent 

protests. 

As a person of Indian origin, Gandhi 

holds mythical status as a hero of the 

Indian independence movement and a 

source of pride. However, Gandhi is also a 

man who espoused racist stereotypes and 

supported segregation during his time in 

South Africa, participated in a twisted 

celibacy test by sleeping with naked 

women about 60 years younger than him 

and treated his wife Kasturba dreadfully. 

He has a complicated legacy that isn’t 

reflected in his public image. One might 

contend that he shouldn’t be celebrated 

and honored, but that is perhaps an 

oversimplified view. 

Opinion
Wednesday, March 17, 2021 — 11
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

BRITTANY BOWMAN

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.

CLAIRE HAO

Editor in Chief

ELIZABETH COOK 
AND JOEL WEINER

Editorial Page Editors

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.

Julian Barnard
Zack Blumberg

Brittany Bowman
Emily Considine
Elizabeth Cook
Brandon Cowit

Jess D’Agostino
Andrew Gerace

Krystal Hur
Min Soo Kim
Jessie Mitchell

Zoe Phillips

Mary Rolfes

Gabrijela Skoko

Elayna Swift

Jack Tumpowsky

Joel Weiner
Erin White

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

SIDDHARTH PARMAR | COLUMNIST

MARINA WAGNER | COLUMNIST

THEODORA VORIAS | COLUMNIST

Siddharth Parmar can be reached at 

sidpar@umich.edu.

Marina Wagner can be reached at 

mwagnerr@umich.edu.

Theodora Vorias can be reached at 

tvorias@umich.edu. 

T

ake a short walk across the 

University 
of 
Michigan’s 

campus and you will see no 

shortage of Canada Goose jackets, 

Hermès bracelets or Gucci sneakers. 

These aren’t objects that the average 

college student — let alone the average 

adult in the United States — can easily 

afford, but based on our campus, you’d 

think they were. Wearing designer 

clothes isn’t an issue in and of itself, but 

it does become an issue when it is the 

result of unchecked privilege. Mar. 12, 

2021, will mark two years since the news 

broke of “Operation Varsity Blues” — the 

infamous college admissions scandal 

which brought to light the lengths 

America’s elite will go to ensure their kids 

get into the country’s most prestigious 

universities. It galvanized the public 

and sent shock waves through college 

campuses across the country. To this day, 

scrolling through social media comments 

of those involved will show you people 

are still upset. While the anger and 

frustration toward the guilty are valid 

and understandable, years later we have 

still failed to recognize that the problem 

is so much more than cheating your way 

into college. 

While attending the University of 

Michigan, where 66% of students come 

from households in the top 20% of the 

income distribution, I have witnessed 

first-hand how deep elitism runs on 

college campuses. It’s easy to point our 

fingers at those who cheated their way 

into elite universities and call out their 

moral failure. It is a lot more difficult to 

call out the systems of privilege that get 

under-qualified students into colleges, 

even when they don’t pose as a star athlete 

or pay someone to take the ACT for them. 

Students who grow up in higher-income 

households live in their own world of 

privilege that gives them all the resources 

they need to not only get into top colleges 

but then rack up achievements not 

accessible to those in lower family income 

brackets. 

What the media failed to recognize 

in the whole college admissions scandal 

was that the college admissions process 

is based on much more than just grades. 

Even if grades and test scores were the 

only criteria, students coming from 

high-earning households have access to 

resources such as tutors and fancy pre-

college programs that aren’t available to 

low-income students. Those resources 

can help increase test scores and fluff-up 

applications. Extracurriculars, school 

prestige and legacy status all factor into 

admissions as well. 

As for extracurriculars, attending 

private or better-funded public schools 

gives students more opportunities to 

participate in prestigious clubs — such 

as the debate team or Model UN — or 

in sports — like crew and fencing — that 

aren’t offered at less well-off schools. 

Even outside of school, families that can 

afford to pay for private piano lessons 

or sailing lessons help ensure their kids 

stand out to college recruiters. 

A student’s ties to a university are a 

big contributor to getting rich kids into 

schools that they otherwise wouldn’t be 

able to. In recent years, legacy students 

— those who have a family member that 

attended the university they are applying 

to — have been disturbingly more likely 

than the average applicant to get into 

top schools. At universities like Harvard 

and Princeton, legacy students are four 

to five times more likely to get admitted 

than those who don’t have family ties to 

the school. Of course, a “philanthropic” 

donation to a university before your child 

applies could easily do the trick as well.

Students who don’t have to worry 

about the cost of tuition also have a 

powerful 
thing 
that 
lower-income 

students don’t have: options. To be able 

to choose where you’ll spend four years 

of your life and to handpick a school that 

is the perfect match is a privilege that is 

often overlooked. For many low-income 

students, just being able to attend college, 

whether it be a community college or a 

state school, is a blessing. We often forget 

how inaccessible college education has 

become for so many students. Nearly 

70% of 2019 graduates had to take out 

student loans. This barrier to entry, 

exemplified by the staggering difference 

in matriculation rates among students 

from high-income families and low-

income families, is something you don’t 

hear well-off students complaining about. 

The college admissions scandal 

shouldn’t only have taught us about how 

unjust the college admissions process is. 

The way students spend time outside of 

class in college are vastly different and 

are often perpetrated by family income. 

While some students are getting initiated 

into elite secret societies on campus or 

spending spring break partying on the 

yacht of a chairman for their school’s 

board of trustees, lower-income students 

are often working low-paying jobs just 

to make rent for the month. If you’re 

fortunate enough to have your family 

cover your tuition and living expenses, 

the opportunities available to you 

drastically increase, whether they be fun 

extracurriculars or unpaid internships. 

Prestigious universities that gate-

keep lower-income students create an 

environment that allows many rich 

students to be blind to their privilege. 

The University of Michigan is all too 

familiar with this issue. It has been widely 

criticized for its lack of socioeconomic 

diversity. It’s apparent from campus that 

the University is not your average state 

school. I will never forget a conversation 

between two students I overheard during 

my first week on campus. One student 

complained about not knowing how to 

do her own laundry because her maid 

had always done it for her. Her conclusion 

was to hire a maid service at school 

because she simply couldn’t be bothered 

to do her own chores. The other student 

complained about her father not booking 

her a first-class seat for her flight home 

for Thanksgiving. I was shocked. Though 

those may be normal conversations on 

campus, they are problems most people 

could only wish to have. The worst part 

was how oblivious the students were of 

their privilege. 

The elitism of students at the 

University of Michigan and at so 

many other top universities is perhaps 

more apparent than ever. The college 

admissions 
scandal 
brought 
the 

conversation of elitism among students 

from high-earning families to the 

national stage. However, the conversation 

didn’t go far enough. There is much more 

progress that can be made in identifying 

the systems that allow students from 

high-income families to get ahead. It 

starts with admissions counselors and 

university administrators making a 

concerted effort to place equal value 

on prospective students despite their 

socioeconomic status. 

What the college admissions scandal 

didn’t teach us about privilege

I slipped through the cracks in the health care system. You could too.

What’s in a name?

W

hen I first started watching 

the 2017 Netflix original 

series “Girlboss” a few years 

ago, I fell in love with Sofia Marlowe’s 

entrepreneurial spirit and fearless way 

of living. Despite discouragement from 

her father, a man at a consignment shop 

and seemingly everyone else on her 

path, Sophia successfully launches her 

own business, Nasty Gal, an online retail 

store which upcycles and resells old 

clothes. Against the odds, she believes in 

herself, stays true to her vision and never 

compromises her style because of others’ 

judgements.

When I reached the end of the 

first season and discovered the show 

had been canceled, I was dismayed. I 

had discovered a new role model who 

inspired me during a time when I felt 

so much pressure and competition from 

academia. I was disappointed in Netflix 

and its viewers for not seeing more value 

in a show with such a uniquely strong 

female lead. Sophia Marlowe’s fictional 

story, based on company founder Sophia 

Amoruso’s path to founding Nasty 

Gal, is exactly what the business world 

needs more of: inspiring tales of unlikely 

leaders pursuing their dreams.

On one hand, being a girl or woman in 

entrepreneurship is amazing. In a world 

that is always telling you what to wear, 

how to do your makeup and how to act in 

the presence of men, entrepreneurship 

provides a unique space to make your 

own decisions. It’s one of the few places 

where women can be free to define for 

themselves how to do business. With that 

said, being a woman in entrepreneurship 

also comes with unique challenges.

When women do find the courage to 

follow our dreams, we face both external 

and internal sexism. And while the 

experience differs for everyone based 

on their identity, it’s something that no 

woman should have to deal with. 

Liisbeth, 
an 
“indie, 
feminist 

‘zine 
about 
post-capitalist 

entrepreneurship,” 
published 
an 

article in 2019 called, “Gaslighting: 

The Silent Killer of Women’s Startups.” 

Gaslighting, as described by The 

Guardian, is a form of “psychological 

manipulation intended to make the 

victim question their sanity.” The term 

was coined from Patrick Hamilton’s 

1938 
play, 
“Gaslight,” 
in 
which 

the husband, Jack Manningham, 

convinces his wife Bella that she is 

going mad by secretly turning the 

lights on and off in the house. The 

idea is that if you think you’re going 

mad, you’re more likely to trust the 

manipulator’s judgment calls more 

than your own. In entrepreneurship, 

this can look like seemingly innocuous 

phrases such as, “Are you sure that 

actually happened?” and “It was just a 

joke,” according to Liisbeth.

Although gaslighting is an issue both 

in personal relationships and in the 

workplace, I would argue that an equally 

measurable problem is internalized 

misogyny. How often do we think 

subconsciously to ourselves, “Because I 

am a woman, I need permission from a 

man to have an original idea?” 

Even at the University of Michigan, 

women are undervalued in the hiring 

process. In the undergraduate Center 

for Entrepreneurship, women represent 

just 26% of the faculty. Only 42% of 

American businesses are run by women. 

While hiring more women to hold these 

positions is absolutely necessary, these 

roles are not going to change overnight. 

To quote Sophia Amoruso, “You don’t 

get taken seriously by asking someone to 

take you seriously. You’ve got to show up 

and own it. If this is a man’s world, who 

cares? I’m still really glad to be a girl in 

it.”

At least part of the challenge of 

the modern woman entrepreneur is 

to pursue her own ambitions without 

regard to others’ judgments –– to create 

for herself, not for the critics. By focusing 

on her own empowerment while 

understanding how sexism is ingrained 

in the culture, she gives herself a more 

immediate chance of achieving her 

goals. While men must be held to higher 

standards, at this point, we can’t count 

on them.

Going into International Women’s 

Month, what I want women and girls to 

know is that you don’t need permission 

from anybody to follow your dreams. 

Your ideas are brilliant and there are 

people who will support you, even if 

there are times along the way when you 

are the only one who believes in your 

vision.

LILY CESARIO 
| COLUMNIST 

Lily Cesario can be reached at 

lcesario@umich.edu.

Sexism in entrepreneurship

