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

