define ourselves by the institutions 
we occupied when we interacted with 
them constantly. I’m sure that if a ran-
dom person asked me, “Tell me about 
yourself,” during a regular year, I 
might mention the university which I 
attend, but since I live at home, and all 
of my classes have been online, the fact 
that I attend the University of Michi-
gan barely crosses my mind. 

Since we’ve been so removed 

from personal connection, the idea of 
“school spirit” feels foreign. What will 
football games look like? Will people 
still be proud to sport maize and blue? 
To define themselves by the school 
they attend? The answers could swing 
to extremes. Many, feeling lonely, may 
be extremely eager to participate in 
school spirit and make up for lost time, 

whereas others may feel alienated and 
therefore unwelcome by communi-
ties and events they would, in normal 
times, be familiar with. I have no clue 
what the next year brings, but I know 
it will be quite odd.

After mask mandates for vaccinated 

people were lifted in Michigan and 
many classes are scheduled to be in-
person in the fall, a return to “normal-
cy” may be approaching. It’s important 
that we remember what we discovered 
in isolation, and bring it with us. As we 
move into the unknown, we can only 
hope that we preserve the eagerness to 
find our true selves, as well as our irrev-
erence for powerful institutions.

5

Thursday, June 3, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Op-Ed: Why we need the Campus Conservation Corps

We’ve changed. Now what?

OPINION

MEERA KUMAR | OPINION COLUMNIST

TYLER WATT, ZACKARIAH FARAH, ERIK WILLIAMS AND RILEY LIST

Ninety years ago, millions of young 

Americans embarked on a journey 
to revitalize a polluted and environ-
mentally degraded nation. They were 
members of the Civilian Conservation 
Corps, a program created by former 
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
in 1933 to repair America’s natural 
beauty while also creating millions of 
jobs. The Civilian Conservation Corps 
planted over 3.5 billion trees nation-
wide, including nearly 500 million in 
Michigan alone. Despite the tremen-
dous success of the Civilian Conserva-
tion Corps, funding for the program 
ran out in 1942, shortly after the start 
of World War II.

As we walk through our campus 

today, the accomplishments of the 
Civilian Conservation Corps seem 
distant and nearly forgotten. The 
lack of an organized effort to main-
tain and protect our environment is 
abundantly clear. There is garbage in 
our streets, sidewalks and even the 
Diag — nearly everywhere. It’s some-

thing that we blind ourselves to at this 
point. Beyond its ugliness, we know 
that litter negatively impacts our envi-
ronment and our health. Plastic waste 
can break down into tiny pieces called 
microplastics, which then permeate 
our soil and infiltrate our drinking 
water. From there, microplastics inev-
itably enter the bodies of all animals 
— including you and me! That means 
that you have plastic in you at this 
very moment. In fact, in several recent 
studies, Americans were found to 
have microplastics embedded in every 
major organ, and according to Nation-
al Geographic, humans are consum-
ing about 1,000 pieces of microplastic 
every week (the equivalent of eating 
an entire credit card) — and that’s not 
even counting the plastics we inhale. 
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. As 
you walk through campus, try count-
ing how many pieces of plastic you 
come into contact with in a single day. 
Our food is wrapped in plastic, our 
clothes are made of plastic and there’s 

plastic in the air we breathe. Some-
thing must be done to clean up our 
campus.

In response to the looming threat of 

ecological disaster, LSA Student Gov-

ernment has created the Campus Con-
servation Corps, reviving the mission 
of the original Civilian Conservation 
Corps. Our initiative aims to organize 
students to finally clean up the litter 

flooding our city. However, the scope 
of the Student Government’s CCC 
extends far beyond our campus clean-
up project. The CCC plans to protect 
our local environment by removing 
invasive species from nature pre-
serves and planting native Michigan 
plants like carrots, blueberries and 
black-eyed Susans in community gar-
dens. The CCC will also be partnering 
with the Ann Arbor City Council to 
take on many important conserva-
tion tasks in our city that often go 
neglected due to a lack of volunteers. 
We’re joined in these efforts by repre-
sentatives from Central Student Gov-
ernment and Engineering Student 
Government as we bring together 
voices and minds from across the Uni-
versity of Michigan to save and beau-
tify our environment. 

But we can’t accomplish this work 

alone, and that’s why we are asking for 
your help. 

 Read more at michigandaily.com

AMBIKA TRIPATHI | OPINION CARTOONIST AND 
CAN BE REACHED AT AMBIKAT@UMICH.EDU.

Many people, including myself, 

define themselves differently after 
the past year. As things return to 
normal, I can only wonder how to 
move forward. A few months ago 
on TikTok, there was a trend where 
creators would lip-sync to an audio 
of Dr. Umar Johnson asking, “What 
happened to the original plot of the 
movie?” while adding text over their 
videos that described how their life 
trajectory changed entirely due to the 
pandemic. This trend was popular 
because it was relatable — different 
relationships, gender identities and 
sexual orientations, academic inter-
ests, living situations and much more 
revealed themselves to many over the 
course of the lockdown, seemingly 
out of left field. 

Defining oneself has always been 

essential. As humans, especially ones 
finding our place in the world, it feels 
integral to know our identities and 
how they fit into society. You need 
to have an elevator pitch about your-
self because when an interviewer, a 
club application or a person at a party 
says, “Tell me about yourself!” you 
need something to say. In her speech, 
“Learning from the 60s,” Audre 
Lorde said, “if I didn’t define myself 
for myself, I would be crunched into 

other people’s fantasies for me and 
eaten alive.” And so, many were — in 
attempts to own our narratives, we 
adopted labels and conventions that 
we didn’t stop to evaluate. 

However, when the pandemic hap-

pened and people were left without 
the constant policing of society, they 
began to redefine themselves on their 
own terms. Now, more than a year 
later, restrictions are loosening, and 
it’s almost time to return to regular 
social interaction. What now?

I entered the University of Michi-

gan at the beginning of August 2020, 
eager to major in environmental 
engineering. Now, I am decidedly not 
pursuing engineering for my under-
graduate degree (not out of dislike for 
the department — after much reflec-
tion during the lockdown, I’ve found 
that my interests lie elsewhere). It’s 
daunting to float untethered, but it’s 
a step forward from lying to myself 
about what I’m interested in. My 
major was the easiest thing on the list 
to decide, and now, without one, I’ll 
show up to classes next year unsure 
of my interests or identity. But after 
seeing the alternative — convincing 
myself to follow something I’m not 
interested in — I’m thankful for the 
opportunity to question the rest of my 

life. 

How we define ourselves has 

changed over the last year due to time 
spent away from those outside of our 
bubbles. However, when addressing 
the pandemic, it’s integral to remem-
ber that not all, or even most, change 
has been positive. Lockdown affected 
different groups unequally — many 
people have been altered by grief, 
loneliness and anxiety, and some 
much more than others. Not everyone 
was in a place where they could “find 
themselves” — many had to worry 
about simply surviving and keeping 
their families alive instead. To act 
as if this pandemic was ultimately a 
“learning experience” while brush-
ing the traumatic experiences of mil-
lions under the rug would be elitist; 
being able to “discover yourself” is a 
privilege. The way powerful universi-
ties handled crises involving gradu-
ate students and underrepresented 
groups, such as students of color and 
low-income students, during the pan-
demic is something we must keep in 
mind as we move forward.

With the scandals that many insti-

tutions have gone through in the past 
year alone, it feels odd to accept estab-
lishments as a part of one’s identity. 
Additionally, it was much easier to 

Meera Kumar is an Opinion Columnist and 

can be reached at kmeera@umich.edu.

FILE PHOTO/Daily

