Content
Warning:
sexual
assault
A story published by Business
Insider Oct. 5 detailed decades of
sexual misconduct tied to Young
Life, an international youth
Christian
organization,
with
incidences of sexual assault of
former members reported across
the country — including at the
University of Michigan.
Public Health senior Maddie
Malvitz and LSA senior Becca
Wong, two of the students inter-
viewed as part of the Business
Insider story, both began attend-
ing Young Life meetings at the
University as freshmen. Wong
was promoted to a leadership
position her sophomore year.
The two told Business Insid-
er that a male student leader
harassed Wong at a block party in
2019 and later that night, invited
Malvitz to a house where he and
other Young Life members lived.
Instead of going to that house,
Malvitz told Business Insider
the student leader took Malvitz
to the back of another house
and forced her to perform oral
sex on him. Following the inci-
dent, Malvitz said she went to
the house where other Young
Life members lived and slept on
their couch while the student
leader went upstairs. During the
middle of the night, Malvitz said
the student leader came down-
stairs and demanded they have
penetrative intercourse; Malvitz
refused.
When Malvitz told Wong
about the assault in May 2020,
Wong was a student leader and
reported the incident to the
University’s Young Life leader-
ship immediately, according to
the Business Insider story. After
doing so, Wong said she was
called to meet with leadership
over Zoom, where they informed
her that she would be terminated
from the organization.
In an interview with The
Michigan Daily, Wong said she
felt blindsided by this decision
and even afterwards still wanted
to be a part of the organization.
Wong said it took her time to fully
recognize the organization’s sys-
temic issues.
“It’s a very harmful experi-
ence but when you’re in (Young
Life), you really drink the Kool
Aid and you really believe every-
thing they’re doing,” Wong said.
“Leaving Young Life was a very
eye-opening experience, and you
can’t really see the problems in
Young Life until you’re out of it.”
Malvitz echoed Wong’s point,
saying that after her assault and
what she believes to be the orga-
nization’s manipulative handling
of the report, she began experi-
encing religious trauma that she
still struggles with.
“I think my trust in church
structures
in
general
has
declined
extremely,”
Malvitz
said. “(Young Life) has hurt me so
much further than I can explain
by using the word of God or say-
ing that what they were doing
was more important than the
pain I was going through.”
Wong said she believes Young
Life will not take proper action
unless they are prompted to by
people speaking out. She refer-
enced the #DoBetterYoungLife
movement, an online forum space
dedicated to those who have been
harmed by Young Life and want
to share their experiences, as an
example of how members con-
tinue to speak about their experi-
ences in the organization.
“I do not believe that Young
Life can change internally,”
Wong said. “I think the exter-
nal pressure is the only thing
that will force them to change
because we’ve seen how they
responded to the #DoBetterY-
oungLife movement and how
they responded to so many sto-
ries of people being hurt by their
homophobia and their homopho-
bic policies, and they responded
with, ‘We’re not changing our
policies. This is the Word of
God.”’
In an email statement to The
Daily, the Young Life parent
organization’s communications
office said they take all allega-
tions of sexual misconduct and
harassment seriously, and “no
one guilty of violating or abus-
ing another individual is allowed
to continue in relationship with
Young Life.” The organization
also said they deny all claims
from Malvitz and Wong.
“Regarding the specific alle-
gations that Maddie Malvitz
and Becca Wong assert, this is
an active claim in the EEOC, so
we cannot comment. However,
Young Life has denied all claims
and is defending itself vigorous-
ly,” the statement reads.
The Daily also contacted the
University’s Young Life branch
but did not receive a response in
time for publication.
Wong and Malvitz also dis-
cussed the shooter threat that
was directed at women and shook
the University campus over the
weekend, specifically mentioning
how the threat appeared to target
sexual assault survivors. Wong
said the threat is one example of
the added stress many survivors
have about reporting incidences
of sexual violence.
“Regardless of whether or not
the threat is real, the fear is real
and we all experienced that,”
Wong said. “I wish the Univer-
sity would have taken this more
seriously.”
The University investigated
the threat with the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and
decided there was no harm to the
campus, allowing classes to con-
tinue in-person as normal. More
than a thousand students signed
a petition asking the University
to hold all classes and activities
remotely Monday.
Malvitz said she too was
unsettled by the threat, espe-
cially considering the fact that
the Business Insider article was
set to publish within a few days
following. Malvitz said she was
disappointed by the University’s
response and its lack of recogni-
tion of how the threat specifically
survivors of sexual assault.
“There’s these constant lit-
tle aggressions that make you
not want to speak on campus,”
Malvitz said. “A lot of these
announcements from the Uni-
versity were just saying, ‘It’s okay
now. We are safe.’ They weren’t
talking about that it is directly
targeting women in the #MeToo
Movement It’s dangerous to not
notice the violent factors that are
going on on campus, and acting
like they’re not happening makes
it so much worse.”
Wong said she believes it is
important to speak about these
issues. If survivors choose to
report, Wong said, she hopes they
feel safe and supported.
“It’s important to speak truth
into these issues, because a main
weapon of oppression is silence
and Young Life has silenced a lot
of us,” Wong said. “That’s why
we’re speaking out today. We will
not be silenced and we are not
going away.”
Daily News Editors Lily Good-
ing and Jasmin Lee can be reached
at
goodingl@umich.edu
and
itsshlee@umich.edu.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 — 3
The Michigan Daily found three red flags to look out for
CAMPUS LIFE
UMich survivors of Young
Life speak on allegations of
sexual misconduct
LILY GOODING &
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Daily News Editors
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CAMPUS LIFE
RONI KANE
Daily Staff Reporter
Members of Christian group said they’ve experienced
assault, retaliation within organization
Students face online
scams when buying
football tickets
What is the ‘Go Blue Flu’?
People are more sensitized and aware of coughing, illness
now given the pandemic, epidemoiology professor explains
The “Go Blue Flu” and the “col-
lege plague” are just some of the
witty names students at the Uni-
versity of Michigan and across the
country have termed the back-to-
school sickness that has infiltrated
lecture halls with dry coughs and
runny noses.
Though students across campus
may be experiencing flu-like symp-
toms, the flu season has yet to come.
So what is the source of this seem-
ingly infectious illness?
The Michigan Daily sat with
Dr. Joseph Eisenberg, U-M pro-
fessor and chair of the epidemiol-
ogy department and public health
expert, to get answers as to what
these symptoms could possibly be
from.
Is the Go Blue Flu really the flu?
According to the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention, the
influenza virus can be contracted
year-round, but getting the flu is
quite common in the fall and win-
ter months, specifically between
December and March. Eisenberg
said an early September-October flu
season is highly unlikely.
“As the weather gets colder, peo-
ple are inside more … so transmis-
sion is more efficient with respect
to aerosol droplets, very much
similar to COVID-19, which does
better in colder and drier environ-
ments,” Eisenberg said. “However,
early October is quite early for the
flu season. There (are) also a lot of
other viruses that cause the com-
mon cold.”
Eisenberg said it is more likely
that students are infected with
other respiratory viruses that are
not COVID-19. These can include
various respiratory syncytial virus-
es like rhinoviruses, the other coro-
naviruses and others.
Why is everyone sick?
Some studies suggest that quar-
antine and isolation lead to a weak-
ened immune system. Eisenberg
said this could be the biggest expla-
nation as to why so many students
are experiencing flu-like symptoms.
He also explained that the congre-
gation of students across the coun-
try in one city, or even one lecture
hall, can expose everyone to viruses
that may have been localized to one
community or general area back
home.
“If people have not been exposed
to (viruses that cause the common
cold) in a long time because they’ve
been mostly at home and not social-
izing, their immune system is not
quite primed to fight off viruses,”
Eisenberg said.
Even as COVID-19 cases at the
University remain low, some U-M
students have said they have wit-
nessed their peers coughing in their
classrooms and lecture halls. Eisen-
berg noted that, after experiencing
a pandemic, most people are no
longer desensitized to coughs and
sneezes that would have otherwise
gone unnoticed in the past.
“The flu pre-COVID really
wasn’t on students’ radar and I
think that COVID-19 has increased
our awareness of coughing,” Eisen-
berg said. “It used to be acceptable
to come to class or work with a
cough. The majority of people prob-
ably wouldn’t have given it a second
thought. I think that people are sen-
sitized to coughing now in a way
they probably weren’t two years
ago.”
Dr. Erik Nielsen, professor of
molecular, cellular and develop-
mental biology, teaches roughly
150 students in a single lecture hall
twice a week. He said that it is not
uncommon to see people coughing
this time of year.
“It’s not uncommon to see this
many people coughing a little bit,
but I think we are more aware of
it now — (we) have been isolating
for a year and have not been hear-
ing these coughs in large groups of
people in a long time,” Nielsen said.
NADIR AL-SAIDI
Daily Staff Reporter
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Having just transferred from
Plekhanov
Russian
University
of Economics in Moscow, Rus-
sia, LSA junior Veronika Volevich
was looking forward to attend-
ing her first football game in The
Big House. She made a post in
the “Buying and Selling Tickets
UMich” Facebook group on Sept. 4
requesting that anyone selling tick-
ets to the football games on Sept. 11
or Sept. 18 comment or contact her
privately.
Within a few minutes, Volevich
said she got a message from Face-
book user “Elena Beretta.” Beretta
told Volevich she had tickets for
both games in Section 31, Row 10
and asked Volevich to make an
offer. Volevich suggested $40 per
ticket and said Beretta immedi-
ately accepted.
But an hour after Volevich
electronically paid Beretta for the
tickets, Volevich said she still had
not received them. When Beretta
stopped responding to her private
messages, Volevich realized it had
been a scam.
“Then I decided to make a post
about (Beretta) in the (Buying and
Selling) group,” Volevich said. “I
received three or four messages
from other people saying … she had
used the same exact strategy on
them.”
Associate
Athletic
Director
Kurt Svoboda confirmed in an
email to The Michigan Daily that
this is the first year that student
football tickets have been solely
distributed online. Ice hockey and
basketball student tickets have
been virtual since 2019.
“We do not have plans to return
to physical tickets in the future
but we will continue to follow best
practices within the industry to
provide security within the tick-
eting landscape,” Svoboda wrote.
“Mobile ticketing is proven to be
far more safe and effective than
paper tickets as it relates to authen-
ticity.”
Volevich is not the only student
who has recently been scammed
while trying to buy student tickets
through social media.
After talking to several other
students with similar experiences
to Volevich, The Michigan Daily
found three major warning signs
to look out for — and ways to miti-
gate the risks — when trying to buy
student tickets online.
“I know I’ll never get my money
back,” Volevich said. “I just want to
warn other people so this doesn’t
happen to them.”
Red Flag 1: Pressuring the
buyer to pay the full cost before
sending the ticket
LSA sophomore Audrey Beach
was scammed on Aug. 21 while
trying to purchase an entire season
of student tickets through the Buy-
ing and Selling Facebook group.
Beach said a scammer by the name
of “Reilly Kat” liked Beach’s post in
the group, so Beach reached out to
her to purchase the ticket
Once they agreed on a price,
Beach said Kat told her to set up
a Zelle account and transfer the
money immediately if she wanted
the tickets.
“She was definitely pressuring
me into paying right away, like as
soon as possible, and to get a dif-
ferent payment app that was better
for her,” Beach said.
Beach said she was out shopping
with her family at the time and told
Kat she wanted to wait until she
got home to set up a Zelle account
on her laptop. Kat insinuated she
would sell the tickets to someone
else if Beach took too long, suggest-
ing she use her phone to transfer
the payment if she was serious
about buying.
Since there were no live specta-
tors at football games last fall, this
was Beach’s first time purchasing
tickets to a U-M football game. She
said if she had known more about
how tickets were transferred, the
value of season tickets or the tricks
scammers traditionally used, she
would have been more careful.
“If I had that experience last
year, if I had ever been to a football
game … I definitely would have had
a better understanding of what I
was trying to buy and how to do it
safely,” Beach said.
To protect both buyers and sell-
ers from losing the full value of the
tickets, Beach and other scam vic-
tims suggested sending half of the
cost before receiving the tickets
and the other half after.
Red Flag 2: Asking that money
be sent through new payment
applications
All of the scam victims inter-
viewed by The Daily said the Pay-
Pal-owned application Venmo — a
middle ground between a payment
transfer service and social media
platform — is their preferred inter-
face for virtual payments. Venmo
appears frequently in lists of the
applications college students use
on a daily basis, and a third of
Venmo users are between the ages
of 18 and 24.
Volevich said Beretta refused
to use Venmo when they were dis-
cussing how the payment would be
sent.
“(Beretta) said she would prefer
either Zelle or Apple Pay,” Volev-
ich said. “I found that weird since
everyone has Venmo.”
Volevich said she consented
to using Apple Pay since she had
used it previously to make con-
tactless payments at local busi-
nesses. When a pop-up warning
screen appeared indicating that
this particular Apple Pay transfer
might not be safe, Volevich said,
she assumed Apple Pay flagged
any non-commercial transfer and
dismissed it.
“When I started the Apple
Pay transaction, I was warned by
Apple that this might be fraud,”
Volevich said. “I assumed that
since I’m transferring money to
another person, Apple Pay might
just suspect fraud, so I didn’t pay
attention to it.”
Besides paying attention to
explicit security messages from
payment apps, Volevich and other
scam victims recommended telling
the seller they are not comfortable
using certain payment methods
they are less familiar with. They
also suggested that if the buyer
and seller can arrange to meet in
person while the transaction takes
place, it would increase transpar-
ency and reduce scam risks.
“I would ask the (seller) to meet
in person,” Volevich said. “Since
all (students) live in Ann Arbor
mostly, it’s not that hard to meet in
person.”
Red flag 3: Facebook account
is not active and person’s stu-
dent status is unclear
If they had paid better attention
to key details on the scammer’s
Facebook pages, all of the scam
victims said they might not have
been so quick to send money to
strangers.
2019 University alum Zena
Shunnar told The Daily when
she was a student, she had never
heard of scams involving tickets
to U-M sporting events. But when
she was scammed while trying to
buy three tickets over Facebook
from a “fellow alum” to the Sept.
11 game, Shunnar said she found
out the hard way that things had
changed.
Shunnar messaged “Simone
Williams” who claimed she had
tickets available. Williams’ profile
mentioned she had recently moved
to Paris and had studied at École
Polytechnique de Milan in Milan,
Italy. Shunnar said she thought
this was odd, but gave Williams
the benefit of the doubt, supposing
Williams wanted to sell her tickets
because of her current residence in
Europe.
“I kind of made up the story in
my head on why she could be sell-
ing these tickets and why it says she
lives in Paris now,” Shunnar said.
LSA senior Julia Smoot said the
individual who scammed her had
very few Facebook friends and
only had posted a couple of times —
with each post receiving zero likes.
Similar to Shunnar, Smoot said she
had also purchased paper tickets
several times before and had never
had any issues.
Both
recommended
taking
more time to identify inconsisten-
cies on the Facebook profiles of
prospective sellers or buyers. They
also both suggested using MCom-
munity to verify their student or
alumni status.
“I started looking up (student
ticket sellers) in MCommunity and
I found at least two other people
who didn’t go here,” Smoot said.
“This one guy just kept saying,
‘you’re safe with me, you’re safe
with me.’ He did not go here.”
RESEARCH