The University of Michigan
Diag was illuminated by a string of
tealight candles the evening of Dec.
2 as community members gathered
to mourn and commemorate the
four lives lost in the Oxford High
School shooting on Nov. 30, where a
15-year-old sophomore opened fire
in what would become the deadliest
K-12 school shooting since 2018.
Three students spoke at the
event: Public Policy junior Alyssa
Donovan, LSA junior Mckenzie
Miller
and
LSA
junior
Josh
Winslow. Donovan and Miller are
graduates of Oxford High School.
Prior to the speeches, organizers
and
other
supporters
walked
around and lit small handheld
candles for attendees to hold.
The speakers stood on the steps
in front of the Hatcher Graduate
Library and attendees gathered
around to listen to them through a
megaphone.
During her speech, Donovan
expressed her and other organizers’
support for the members of the
Oxford community.
“The reasons for our gathering,
our shared experiences of trauma
and loss to gun violence, are
devastating,” Donovan said. “We
are here today to relay our support
for the community of Oxford, for my
community and the community of so
many here gathered today.”
Donovan continued, telling the
Oxford community that the U-M
community stands with them in
their time of grief.
“We’re
here
to
show
the
community of Oxford that the
University of Michigan, the state
and the country share our pain, our
sorrow, our devastation and our
loss,” Donovan said. “We’re here to
support us through it. We are here to
offer our thoughts and our prayers.
We’re here to reach out to others
being brought together in our shared
grief.”
Miller pointed out the tight-knit
nature of Oxford and explained the
shock she felt when she learned that
her hometown was the location of
the attack.
“Oxford’s a small town,” Miller
said. “It’s the kind of place where
you go to Meijer with your friends
on a Saturday night. McDonald’s
before every football game. It’s a
place where people grow up and they
come back to raise families. Oxford’s
been changed forever.”
In an interview with The Daily,
Miller said she initially found out
about the shooting from a friend.
Miller said she then received a text
message from her sister, who is a
sophomore at Oxford High School,
telling Miller that she loved her.
“I actually got a text from her
… to me and my other sister, and it
just said ‘I love you guys,’” Miller
said. “I was, at that point, trying to
figure out what was going on and I
was panicked. ‘What do you mean?
What’s going on?’ And then she just
said ‘There’s a shooter in the school.
I love you guys so much.’ And then I
didn’t hear from her for another 30
minutes.”
During her speech, Miller went
into more detail about how she’s
been feeling all week following the
shooting.
“I can’t explain what it feels like
to receive those ‘I love you’ texts.
What it was like to see your small
hometown high school trending on
Twitter,” Miller said. “I don’t know
how to explain how any of this
feels, and I truly hope no one else
will ever have to understand. I’m
not okay, but it breaks my heart to
know that what I’m feeling is only
a small fraction of all the students
and staff that were in that school.”
Miller said that, right now, her
focus is on mourning the lives lost
and respecting those affected.
“I know that many of us, myself
included, are feeling a range of
emotions these past few days,”
Miller said. “Anger, confusion,
resentment, denial, just sadness.
And there will be time for all of
those emotions to run their course
and make these necessary talks and
actions. But right now, it is time to
grieve. Feel pain and sadness for all
those affected. To give support and
prayers for Madisyn Baldwin, Hana
St. Juliana, Justin Shilling and Tate
Myre. Four students, four kids, who
will always be remembered.”
The Coalition for Re-envi-
sioning Our Safety, a multira-
cial group of faith leaders, social
workers, health care workers,
researchers and activists who
support building a “care-based”
community, are currently work-
ing to develop a plan for an
unarmed public safety response
program in Ann Arbor that was
approved in an April City Council
meeting.
In April, The Ann Arbor City
Council passed a resolution call-
ing for an unarmed public safety
response program to send pub-
lic health experts to non-violent
emergency calls in place of the
police. This program aims to help
individuals who do not feel com-
fortable calling the police for help
or need professional help with
issues such as mental health.
The program aims to expand
the work of public health provid-
ers by having a comprehensive
program that directs resources
to those in need, according to
the resolution. Ann Arbor City
Councilmember Kathy Griswold,
D-Ward 2, said she supports this
program because there needs to
be a more proactive approach on
providing care for marginalized
communities.
“There has been talk about this
for a few years in many commu-
nities, and the general approach
rather than being punitive (is) to
be more proactive so that we can
reduce actions with police offi-
cers,” Griswold said.
Lee Roosevelt, clinical assis-
tant professor in the School of
Nursing, is a member of CROS.
She said the coalition is about
people coming together to help
the community.
“In April, when the city put
together this resolution, we all got
together and decided to combine
forces and really organize to make
sure that this is a comprehensive
program now that we have the
city backing for it,” Roosevelt said.
CROS’ core values include
ensuring non-police profession-
als are responding to non-violent
emergencies under this program.
They believe that the police can
cause significant harm in the com-
munity and cannot be re-trained
to take care of sensitive cases.
Part of the group’s goals
includes ensuring these public
health professionals are separated
from the criminal legal system.
They must also be trained on a
variety of issues such as mental
health, homelessness and emo-
tional abuse.
Washtenaw County has seen
multiple instances of police bru-
tality in recent years, including
the death of Aura Rosser, a Black
woman killed by Ann Arbor police
officers in 2014. Last year, amid
heightened awareness around
police brutality and racial injus-
tice, millions of Americans pro-
tested for Black Lives Matter
across the country, including in
Ann Arbor.
Roosevelt said the police are
not always trained for emergen-
cies such as mental health in ways
that other professionals are, and
therefore should not be the ones
responding to people who need
help with those issues.
“The police are not social work-
ers, and we are asking them to
behave as social workers instead
of doing what they are trained to
do,” Roosevelt said.
Roosevelt said the program
needs to be run by an independent
nonprofit organization in order to
ensure separation from other city
departments.
“The big thing is that it has to
have city (administration) support
and be funded by the city, but it
needs to not be embedded in the
police department of the city, it
needs to be really separate,” Roo-
sevelt said.
Roosevelt also said this pro-
gram could be beneficial to
individuals who do not feel com-
fortable asking the police for help.
“We have a large portion of the
community that has very chal-
lenging and problematic inter-
actions with the police, and just
won’t call 911,” Roosevelt said.
“Part of the police department is
not going to be utilized by the por-
tions of our community that are
asking for something that is sepa-
rate and different.”
LSA senior Josephine Graham
is leading a lawsuit that aims to
change the way the University
handles sexual assault cases. This
class action lawsuit was filed in
May 2021 on behalf of hundreds of
survivors of former athletic doctor
Robert Anderson.
Graham volunteers at Youth
Arts Alliance and Telling It, a
“trauma-informed” after-school
program for children in the
community,and works at Ground-
cover News, a local nonprofit
street newspaper publishing sto-
ries related to homelessness and
poverty. Graham said that based
on her experience working with
marginalized communities and
learning about the criminal jus-
tice system, she believes there is
a strong distrust between mar-
ginalized communities and the
police.
“You just look at all the data
and hear all the stories, and most
importantly see first hand by
working with communities most
impacted,” Graham said. “You
see that they all have a very strong
distrust in the police because, as I
believe, the system has been bro-
ken from the start.”
The resolution also requests
a separate call number differ-
ent from 911. Roosevelt said the
reasoning for the separate num-
ber is to avoid confusion for the
emergency dispatch if the caller is
requesting an unnamed response.
CROS’ proposal was inspired
by other unarmed public safety
response programs that have been
successful. Some of those exam-
ples are located in Eugene, Ore.;
Denver, Colo.; Olympia, Wash.;
San Francisco, Calif. and Austin,
Texas, among other cities.
The City Council resolution
aims to complete developing the
plan this month. The program will
have a budget of $3 million, given
by the city administration to the
unarmed response organization.
“When you compare it to
the $30 million fund the police
department gets, it’s actually a
very low budget,” Roosevelt said.
Griswold said the pilot for
testing the program would start
within two years, which is the
minimum funding period for the
program.
“If we can get the pilot started
mid-2022, I would be very satis-
fied,” Griswold said. “We do have
models already in other commu-
nities, so we can modify them to
meet Ann Arbor’s needs.”
Regarding how the program
would be received by the com-
munity, Graham said building
trust with the community would
require hard work and time.
In order for the program to be
effective, the organization needs
to
have
a
community-based
approach that listens to the peo-
ple’s voices, Graham said.
“This is an ongoing process
because trust doesn’t come in
unity,” Graham said. “It requires
us to be intentional in the ways
we engage most directly with
people impacted by these issues …
They are great ideas, but they are
not implemented in a way that is
focused on the community.”
Daily Staff Reporter Caroline
Wang can be reached at wanca@
umich.edu.
News
Wednesday, December 8, 2021 — 3
ANN ARBOR
Multiracial group of local actvists develop plan
for unarmed public safety response
CAROLINE WANG
Daily News Reporter
Organization supports “care-based” approach to non-violent emergencies
Jonathan Vaughn
talks campaign for
Board of Regents
Anderson survivor has been camping
outside of President’s House since Oct. 8
ADMINISTRATION
Vigil on Diag mourns victims of Oxford shooting
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
CAMPUS LIFE
Jonathan Vaughn wears many
hats. He is a former collegiate athlete,
a survivor of the late University of
Michigan
athletic
doctor
Robert
Anderson and a business owner. Vaughn
has been camping outside University
President Mark Schlissel’s house for
more than 50 days in protest of the
University’s handling of the hundreds
of sexual assault allegations against
Anderson.
Now, he is also a self-announced
candidate for the 2022 election for the
U-M Board of Regents. He announced
his run at the Nov. 13 “Survivors Speak
Up” forum.
Vaughn said his reason for running
for the Board of Regents is simple: the
current regents have failed at their
stated mission of “developing leaders
and citizens.” In an interview with The
Daily, Vaughn said the University’s
handling of past and current sexual
assault cases and the administration’s
marginalization of students of color are
all examples of the failing of the Board
of Regents.
Since his announcement on day 36
of his planned 100-day protest, Vaughn
has continued his protest outside of
Schlissel’s house. On day 41, The Daily
sat down with Vaughn about what he
wants to accomplish as regent and why
he is running.
Vaughn said his experience as a
football player at the University in the
late 1980s and his return to campus
in 2020 as a vocal advocate for sexual
assault survivors show that he has the
commitment necessary to represent
the campus community on the Board of
Regents.
“I’ll put my love for this University
up against any other regents,” Vaughn
said. “All the sacrifices I’ve made for this
University during my time here, I never
question that I am a Michigan Man
through and through.”
Vaughn’s goals as regent would be to
engage with the people of the University
and to prioritize campus safety.
Through his protests on South
University Avenue, Vaughn said he
has had extraordinary access to U-M
students. Vaughn estimated he has
talked to 4000 or 5000 people and
said the general disappointment in the
University regents and administration is
a common talking point.
“There’s
an
overwhelming
unfavorable opinion or response from the
students and the faculty in the office of
the president and administration and the
Board of Regents,” Vaughn said. “There is
a loss of hope that the current leadership
will protect, inspire and empower.”
This is particularly true in the era of
the Anderson case, which may be the
largest sexual abuse scandal by a single
person in the documented history of
the United States with thousands of
complaints filed. Other U-M staff and
faculty have been recently accused of
sexual misconduct, including former
violin professor Stephen Shipps, former
computer science professors Walter
Lasecki and Peter Chen, computer
science professor Jason Mars, former
American Culture professor Bruce
Conforth and former Provost Martin
Philbert, among others.
Vaughn said the regents haven’t
taken responsibility for the actions of the
University in dismissing and covering
up the Anderson abuse complaints.
While Schlissel and the regents have
heard from survivors at Board of
Regents meetings, Schlissel has not
directly spoken to the protesters outside
of his home.
Mike Cox, Vaughn’s attorney in
the Anderson litigation and former
Michigan attorney general, said that
Vaughn would succeed as regent.
“He not only loves the University as
an institution and for its traditions, and
more importantly, he is focused on what
is best for its current and future students,”
Cox said. “By that I mean he knows the
University is organic and to grow it must
focus on its students. Further, he is smart,
a hard worker and a critical thinker — all
good things for a regent.”
The current Board of Regents
is primarily focused on money and
endowment growth, Vaughn said. As
regent, Vaughn said he would not be
concerned about money, stating that he
“will not be bought.” Instead, Vaughn
said he would direct the Board toward
greater transparency and more frequent
auditing of the services provided to the
students.
“Universities can’t be the Titanic in
today’s age because the Titanic is not
agile,” Vaughn said. “We must become
more agile in (our) thinking, more
creative in (our) thinking. We must be
able to take a top-down and a bottom-
up view of everything. And so not only
thinking about the long term financial
welfare of the University, but the
services that you provide here.”
Vaughn said that part of his goal
in running for regent is to educate the
public on the role of the board and their
election process. He said that most
students he speaks with do not know
that the regents are a public office
elected in statewide elections.
History
professor
Terrence
McDonald, director of the Bentley
Historical Library, said the Board
of Regents effectively functions as a
board of directors at a large corporation
with the president acting as CEO. The
selection of the University president is
one of the main roles of the regents.
Historically, the most frequent
occupation for regent is lawyer,
McDonald said. This holds true today:
six of the eight current regents are
lawyers and the other two have degrees
in business.
Vaughn says he is undaunted by
his different professional background,
saying that it will give him an advantage
in representing the community. After
attending the University, Vaughn spent
a decade playing football professionally
for the National Football League. For the
last 18 years, Vaughn has been co-CEO
of a Florida-based hospitality company
with his brother, Britt Vaughn.
“I know people,” Vaughn said. “I
have critical thinking skills and thrive
under pressure and understand what
true team play is. And at some point
in time, your moral compass has to be
greater than your legal compass in the
way that you think and the way that
you handle things because we’re talking
about people’s lives.”
Vaughn has not yet announced
what political party he will run with.
Typically, the state political parties
nominate their candidates for regent at
the state convention prior to elections.
McDonald said no one has ever won
a seat on the Board of Regents with a
political party other than the traditional
Republican or Democrat.
“One could imagine an independent
campaign,”
McDonald
said.
“It’s
certainly possible, but you would have
to figure out how you would somehow
get your name out. You wouldn’t get
anybody’s publicity. And independent
candidacy is hard.”
Vaughn would need to obtain
12,000-24,000 votes if he does not run
with a traditional party affiliation and
would need to file before July 21, 2022
to get a place on the statewide ballot. A
case, Graveline v. Benson, is currently
pending before the 6th Circuit US
Court of Appeals to reduce the number
of signatures to 12,000 given that “no
independent candidate for statewide
office ha(d) ever satisfied Michigan’s
current statutory scheme to qualify for
the ballot over the preceding 30 years.”
“Whatever party I choose, or
independent, I will not be bought,”
Vaughn said. “I cannot be bought off of
someone else’s agenda. I’m not asking
for a handout to be a regent. I see issues
that I think I can directly help solve.
And the people who support me love
this University (and want) to get back to
being leaders and best.”
The University’s chapter of College
Democrats issued their support for
Vaughn’s decision to run for Board of
Regents in a statement to The Daily.
“We support Jon Vaughn’s decision
to run for a position on the University’s
Board of Regents because of his
dedication to making this campus a
better and safer place for all,” the
statement reads. “We also would like
to emphasize our support for the work
he and other survivors of sexual assault
have been doing to keep our campus safe
and advocate for the needs of the student
body.”
Ryan Fisher, the spokesperson for
the University’s chapter of College
Republicans and LSA senior, said the
Republican businesswoman Lauren
Hantz is the only candidate for regent
that they currently support.
“Vaughn has been a proponent of
the University of Michigan community
for a long time,” Fisher said. “With that
said, we are going to hold off until he
announces more of his platform and
policy goals. (We) would love to see
an emphasis on financial restraint,
quelling the ongoing tuition increases,
and protecting free speech for all on
campus.”
ELISSA WELLE
Daily Staff Reporter
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
CHRISTIAN JULIANO
Daily Staff Reporter
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Students gathered on the Diag on Dec. 2 to grieve the victims of the Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School.
Sophomore opened fire on Nov. 30, killing four students and injuring seven others