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