In the coming weeks, se-
lect students in the College
of Literature, Science & the
Arts will receive an email
congratulating them for be-
ing named James B. An-
gell Scholars. The award,
named for the University of
Michigan’s third president,
celebrates any LSA student
who receives an “A” record
for two consecutive terms
at the University. While we
wish to offer congratulations
for these students’ diligent
dedication to their stud-
ies, it is also critical to learn
about the award’s namesake.
While Angell’s legacy is com-
plex — and potentially prob-
lematic — it is unlikely that
more than a small percent-
age of the students that walk
through the doors of Angell
Hall are aware of this legacy.
Amid a nationwide reckon-
ing with the memorialization
of controversial historical
figures, the University must
also partake in increasing our
efforts to thoroughly under-
stand the leaders we choose
to highlight on campus, in-
cluding Angell. Angell served
as University President from
1871 to 1909. During his 38
year tenure as president,
the University’s enrollment
more than tripled. He was
adamant that education be
accessible to all, not just for
the elite. To this point, he
emphasized the admission
of first-generation college
students; in 1880, fewer than
one in four students had par-
ents with a college degree.
Angell also oversaw the first
female students to join the
University at the beginning
of his term in 1870 and 1871
and later became a vocal sup-
porter of co-education.
Angell saw education as a
public service and greatly ex-
panded resources for faculty
research to this end. Under
his leadership, the number
of departments on campus
grew from three to seven and
the number of professors
went from 35 to 250. Histori-
an James Tobin asserted that
it was Angell who supported
the University in becoming
the leading public university
in the country.
On the night of April 11, 2019,
Columbia University student
Alexander McNabb entered
a library on Barnard Univer-
sity’s campus. Students at
Columbia — with which Bar-
nard is affiliated — are per-
mitted to freely access and
use Barnard’s campus build-
ings and resources. Despite
having done nothing at all to
indicate himself as a threat
of any kind, McNabb was
stopped by campus police
and physically restrained. A
Barnard student captured
the encounter, which many
described as an incidence of
racial profiling because the
school library’s ID policy
after 11 p.m. is unevenly en-
forced. McNabb is Black, and
he wasn’t bothering anyone.
Toward the end of the vid-
eo, one of the five campus
security officers that con-
vened around McNabb for
no apparent reason can be
seen wandering off with
McNabb’s
ID,
imploring
McNabb to come outside
with him. The ID clearly
identified McNabb as a Co-
lumbia student. Clearly and
understandably
distressed,
he can be heard asking, “You
saw my ID, what else do you
need to see?”
While this might seem like a
one-off occurrence at anoth-
er institution that can be ex-
plained as an unfortunate in-
cident where mistakes have
been made, it very clearly
isn’t. Due to the demands
of the Graduate Employees’
Organization demands — in
particular its call to cut the
University
of
Michigan’s
funding to its Department of
Public Safety and Security in
half — stories about students
of color at U-M experienc-
ing horrifying treatment by
DPSS have been surfacing.
One in particular, that of Jus-
tin Gordon, is beyond appall-
ing. He was held in limbo,
in a jail cell, as punishment
for going to the campus gym
without his ID.
His entire life has been
stained by that injustice.
For example, Gordon was
hired by the National Foot-
ball League, only to have his
job offer rescinded due to
his criminal record, despite
his University of Michigan
degree and letters of recom-
mendation from his profes-
sors. Gordon was stopped
because he was Black, and
that a confluence of biases
which
permeate
through
both policing practices and
society caused his life to be
upended. My rage is directed
at not only the racist systems
held in place by entities such
as DPSS that have severely
impacted his life, but also
with the administration here
at the University.
Although Gordon was pro-
moted to impressive posi-
tions within the University
and continued to be an honor
roll student even after his in-
carceration, the school argu-
ably created yet another per-
manent barrier to students
with a prison record. On Feb.
1, 2019, the University imple-
mented SPG 601.38, which
requires faculty, staff, stu-
dent employees, volunteers
and visiting scholars to re-
port all felony charges, even
if not convicted, to the Uni-
versity.
Instead of removing possible
instruments for discriminat-
ing against individuals such
as Gordon, based on precon-
ceived notions held about
criminality that can have an
indelible, lifelong influence
on someone’s interactions
with society, the University
has created another. Fur-
ther, there is no evidence to
suggest that criminal history
information in general ad-
missions decisions improves
public safety.
Seeing the University step in
to assist a smart and ambi-
tious alum and enable him
to thrive in the long-term,
rather than only promoting
him to positions of visibility
in service of Diversity, Equity
and Inclusion in the short-
term would be the right thing
to do. The University has not
done the latter, but they did
do the former while Gordon
was still a student, even after
his incarceration.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Opinion
Thursday, August 5, 2021 — 21
When
asked
about
my
strengths, my default an-
swers are writing and “peo-
ple skills.” What do I mean by
“people skills?” While defi-
nitions vary, I would define
them as the communicative
tools used to connect with
another person. I put them
in quotations because these
tools carry different mean-
ings for different people.
Similar to the blurry distinc-
tion between a good writer
and a great writer, there is not
a universal metric by which
someone can be pinpointed
as “great with people” ver-
sus “good with people.” This
blurriness continues to cre-
ate doubt in my abilities. It
is easy for me to say I’m not
actually a good writer and,
instead, say my professors
have just graded my work
easily. As it is almost impos-
sible to measure human con-
nection, it is also easy for me
to say that I’m not actually
good with people. With these
doubts, which are exacer-
bated by societal pressures
to validate skills through
quantifying their value, I of-
ten find myself scrambling
to explain how these immea-
surable skills are actually my
strengths.
The idea of constantly doubt-
ing my strongest abilities is
both contradictory and limit-
ing. However, the two skills
I am best at both happen to
be subjective and therefore
more easily belittled than
more objective skills. Com-
pared to experience with
Photoshop,
Javascript
or
statistical modeling, experi-
ence with people or writing
sounds obvious and self-ag-
grandizing. With skills that
are less quantifiable, it be-
comes easier to assume that
the majority of people have
the same capabilities with
these skills because distinc-
tions between different pro-
ficiencies in them are less
absolute.
The last few years have wit-
nessed an increased empha-
sis on science, technology,
engineering and math educa-
tion and careers, a decline of
humanities majors that rely
more on soft skills and the
resulting employability fears
associated with this decline.
Somewhere in the midst
of this, we have mistakenly
come to equate measurabil-
ity — more specifically, quan-
tifiability — to value. And
considering the management
system of many universities,
our society’s general margin-
alization of soft skills can be
traced back to the way our
education system pits studies
that rely more on soft skills
against ones that emphasize
hard skills.
Recently, responsibility-cen-
tered management (a univer-
sity budgeting system under
which each department has
autonomy over its revenue
and expenditures) has be-
come the budgeting model
of choice for many academ-
ic institutions. Under this
model, large classes — which
are more profitable — are
prioritized over smaller, dis-
cussion-based classes, which
typically happen to be classes
that are centered around soft
skills. Operating as busi-
nesses, universities further
devalue subjective skills and
the discussion-based class-
es that go along with these
skills because they are not
as fiscally advantageous for
them. However, what is valu-
able to a business and what
is valuable to society should
not and cannot be viewed as
equivalent to each other. The
mere fact that classes cen-
tered on soft skills are not
as profitable to universities
as classes centered on hard
skills does not mean soft
skills themselves are not as
beneficial to society as hard
skills are.
Despite this prioritization
of hard skills, these “soft”
abilities are still valued by
American companies, with
61% claiming that skills like
communication and problem
solving are the most valued in
prospective hires. In a study
conducted by Boston Col-
lege, Harvard University and
the University of Michigan,
soft skills training was found
to increase worker produc-
tivity by 12%. With this addi-
tional productivity and sub-
sequent increase in retention
rates, the training produced
a 256% net return on in-
vestment after nine months.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner
believes the skills gap asso-
ciated with soft skills is the
widest in the United States.
It is undeniable: There is
ample evidence to support
the argument that soft skills
are valuable and capitalisti-
cally productive. Even so,
justifying the importance of
soft skills using statistics —
quantifiable numbers — on
why these skills are valuable
in the workplace perpetuates
and perhaps even validates
our society’s obsession with
numbers and hard facts.
When researching why soft
skills are important, the vast
majority of articles are cen-
tered around soft skills’ im-
portance in the workplace.
However, the true power of
soft skills lies in their un-
avoidable and fundamen-
tal presence in our daily
lives. Self-awareness allows
you to recognize your own
strengths,
fears,
insecuri-
ties and priorities — and also
those of the people around
you. The ability to negotiate
enables you to effectively and
respectfully voice your opin-
ions without losing sight of
your perspective. More gen-
erally, communication allows
you to both set and maintain
expectations for yourself and
others. While proficiencies
in different soft skills are
clearly economically profit-
able, more importantly, they
are personally fulfilling and
socially valuable. Soft skills
enable us to be empathetic
and
self-aware
members
of society without losing
our analytical side — that is
priceless.
This is not to say that soft
skills are more important
than hard skills. This is sim-
ply to say that they are also
important — and not at the
expense of more measurable
skills. As a society, we seem
to have manufactured a scar-
city mindset around the skills
we deem valuable. With all
of the multifaceted merits
of both hard and soft skills,
there is no need to depreciate
one set of skills for the sake
of another set of skills with
completely unrelated assets
and uses. Instead, we should
take different kinds of skills
for what they are: differ-
ent kinds of skills, each with
their own nuanced worth.
Your skills don’t
need to be quantifi-
able to be valuable
OLIVIA MOURADIAN
Daily Opinion Writer
Alec Cohen/Daily
Black students
should feel safe
going to the library
While University leadership would
likely respond to thse allegations by
asserting that U-M has a rich history
of activism and stands with marginal-
ized groups on campus, it has clearly
shown the multitude of ways it doesn’t
prioritize the well-being of our com-
munity’s most vulnerable.
Sierra Élise Hansen, Columnist
SIERRA ÉLISE HANSEN
Daily Columnist
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From The Daily:
Acknowledging Angell — we need a
comprehensive U-M history lesson
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
EDITORIAL BOARD
OPINION