The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
8 — Wednesday, January 19, 2022 

Several years ago as a new student, 

I was blessed with an “aha” moment 
in recognizing an extension of my 
personal identity. For me, the feel-
ing of incorporating terms and labels 
that I was previously oblivious to, but 
click immediately upon hearing them, 
is unparalleled. A series of extensive 
personal information forms, frequent 
engagement with an affinity group, or 
another spontaneous event can lead 
to reconsidering and discovering ter-
minology that helps us better express 
the identities that encompass our indi-
vidual being. 

One such identity that isn’t imme-

diately apparent for select individuals, 
including myself, is their first-genera-
tion college student status. First-gens 
are typically known as students who 
are the first in their families to attend 
college. The criteria for some defini-
tions vary according to differences 
in where one’s parent or guardian 
received their degree or the level of 
education obtained, like an associates 
degree or a bachelor’s degree. The Uni-
versity of Michigan’s official definition 
of first-generation college student — 
which coincides with the definition 
that most colleges have set forth — is 
a student whose parents did not com-
plete a four-year college degree. On 
the other hand, low-income college 
students are generally defined accord-
ing to Pell Grant status, but similar 
definitions are also based on assets and 
institution-specific income thresholds. 

First-gen students are likely to give 

a variety of answers when asked about 
when they first became cognizant of 
their status. Some were aware of the 
delineation of their identities prior to 
applying to colleges, whereas others 
were informed in the midst of their 
higher education journey. FAFSA 
applications, discussions with parents 
about the future and a sense of bewil-
derment in a new environment can all 
serve as factors that lead to this rev-
elation about how their identity is per-
ceived within institutions. 

As I was transferring from my pre-

vious university, I was able to form 
a foundational set of criteria that I 
expected from my institutions to 
facilitate a true sense of community 
for first-generation students. Among 
other things, I primarily sought a colle-
giate institution with consistent, dedi-
cated support and outreach towards 
first-gens. Upon googling “umich first 
gens,” I found the University of Michi-
gan to be much more robust compared 
to other schools in terms of first-gen 

specific resources, support and rec-
ognition. The First-Gen Gateway and 
the Go Blue Guarantee were several 
notable markers of the university’s 
commitment and ongoing progress.

As I became more immersed in 

the first-gen landscape, one term that 
sprang up from time to time was FGLI. 
FGLI stands for “first-generation, low-
income” and is generally pronounced 
as either “fly,” “figly,” or the letters 
enunciated individually. FGLI serves 
as an umbrella term that not only 
achieves brevity in the context of advo-
cacy and discourse, but also serves as a 
point of reference for individuals who 
identify as part of this community. The 
term itself may seem trivial, but having 
a qualitative phrase to affiliate with is 
of paramount importance, especially 
since first-gen and low-income iden-
tities are often left unrecognized or 
overlooked entirely. Although many, 
including myself, might take the Uni-
versity’s frequent advertising efforts 
for granted, the absence of any effort 
is abysmal and unfortunately the norm 
at other collegiate institutions. Even a 
granular “1ST GEN” sticker plastered 
onto a laptop is a momentous mile-
stone and sign of progress. While the 
visibility and recognition of FGLI stu-
dents through the perfunctory use and 
presence of terms like FGLI, first-gens 
and low-income makes me feel seen, it 
is undeniably still a first step. 

The adoption of these terms is by 

no means an indicator that all is well. 
The University has made considerable 
progress in terms of accommodating 
FGLI students, but there is still room 
for improvement. Although there are 
university-wide resources and sup-
port, there are only a few schools with-
in the institution that offer tailored 
FGLI-specific resources. For example, 
the College of Engineering maintains 
its own dedicated set of resources for 
its FGLI students, such as the First 
Generation Engineers (1st Gen Engin) 
club. These tailored resources — or the 
absence of them — can make or break 
a FGLI student’s experience within 
their respective school.

Even the existence of the FGLI 

identifier cannot resolve some discrep-
ancies on its own such as the sparse 
FGLI representation and involvement 
in professional and selective organiza-
tions. Moreover, some students may 
choose not to self-identify as FGLI 
or may feel that other components of 
their identity are of greater salience to 
them, leading them to place the FGLI 
term and resources on their periphery.

I aptly dubbed last fall, my first 

in-person semester as a University 
of Michigan transfer student, the 
semester of learning and unlearn-
ing. How do I operate living on 
my own? What notions do I leave 
behind in my metro Detroit sub-
urb? Which ideals and values are 
significant to me, and to what 
degree?

I unlearned the streets of my 

childhood hometown. I learned 
the ins and outs of my little cor-
ner on Forest Avenue. Some may 
argue I unlearned good driving 
by walking everywhere (I‘d argue 
against that claim), and some may 
(correctly) say that I learned the 
perfect method of defrosting my 
mom’s food. Beyond getting to 
know myself and my campus more, 
I’ve navigated critically unlearn-
ing my previous indifference to 
problematic norms of wokeness 
— namely current corporate diver-
sity initiatives. Before transferring 
to the Ross School of Business, I 
had nothing to do with the sphere 
of business, so I just pointed and 
laughed at its disingenuous social 
awareness from a distance. But 
once my immersion into the busi-
ness sphere truly began within my 
first couple classes of the previous 
semester at Ross, a disruptive seed 
was planted into my mind that 
watered and watered into fully 
bloomed animosity, growing from 
distinct phases of being bemused to 
irked, to ultimately disillusioned. 
The tipping point was when a shirt 
was handed to me in the basement 
of, ironically, the Trotter Multi-
cultural Center emblazoned with 
big, bold, maize text that read “I 
AM DEI.” What’s free is free, so 
I took the shirt; it’s since become 
a comfy bedtime staple. I wore it 
once when my friend was over, and 
with a mortified stare, she asked, 
“You’re never going to wear that in 
public, right?”

She was right. I knew I never 

would— the words “I AM DEI” 
immediately rang tone-deaf in a 
way that I couldn’t quite articulate. 
Tokenizing? Hasty? Grandiose? 
Performative? The magnitude of 
my discomfort at the shirt couldn’t 
be summarized in a few words, 
but served as a microcosm of my 
irritation throughout the semes-
ter at being inundated with lingo, 
jargon and pretty-little-nothings 

about the overused yet under-
mined phrase “diversity, equity, 
and inclusion,” always devoid of 
any real action to address what 
consistently has perpetuated rac-
ist oppression: global hypercapi-
talism.

It’s undeniable that an education 

in business would showcase some 
pitfalls of the modern synthesis 
of business and wokeness. Dur-
ing the fall semester of my junior 
year at Ross, students take the 
highest concentration of required 
courses in what’s dubbed the Ross 
Integrative Semester, or RIS. Each 
year, there are several preselected 
RIS themes centered on creat-
ing business solutions with posi-
tive impact, and this fall’s themes 
were inclusive learning; transpar-
ent and inclusive workspaces; and 
support for physical and mental 
wellness. Immediately within the 
first couple weeks of class, there 
was no question that attempts at 
an image of social consciousness 
were sprinkled throughout most, 
if not all, of my courses — and 
while they may possibly have been 
well-intentioned, were rendered 
ultimately feeble and insufficient. 
Common terminology for assign-
ments included phrasing like: 
“investigate a socially-conscious 
venture,” “discuss the triple bot-
tom line” and “create a business 
plan that addresses inclusivity 
and transparency.” At face value, it 
seems as though the Ross commu-
nity is a pioneer of “positive busi-
ness” — the often discussed, yet 
infrequently realized utilization of 
business principles and practices 
to create solutions mitigating soci-
etal ills and promoting the great-
er good. Delving a little deeper 
though, this facade is easily broken 
by Ross’s lack of any tangible com-
mitment to racial equity. Ross, for 

example, is one of the few schools 
in the University that doesn’t 
require a Race & Ethnicity course. 
Instead, what we do have is a sin-
gle class period in a required Man-
agement & Organization course 
devoted to (slightly, kinda, not 
really) discussing Ava DuVernay’s 
2016 documentary “13th.” The film 
touches on a wide breadth of issues 
related to the U.S.’s historical rac-

ism and oppression of the Black 
community through the prison 
system, and how it’s perpetuated 
by the active role of business inter-
ests within the prison-industrial 
complex. Thus, “13th” can help act 
as a springboard for a genuine dis-
cussion, but our conversation on its 
content was whittled down to 10 
minutes of one class period. This 
brief discussion, in my experience, 
largely consisted of participation-
point comments like “I had no idea 
the system was this bad!” and “it’s 
just so shocking,” centering their 
harrowed regret at past ignorance 
instead of truly unpacking the role 
that our goals as business students 
play in societal issues the film 
presents. 

We quickly touched on the role 

of business in the prison-industrial 
complex for a couple minutes, and 
this seemed to pass as proper DEI 
learning to administrators, faculty 
and some students.

 First-Gen, Low-Income 
(FGLI): An evolving term

The DEI Conundrum: An untold failure of 

the American left

Design by Maya Sheth

GUSTAVO SACRAMENTO

MiC Columnist
ELIYA IMTIAZ

MiC Managing Editor

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Online Event | Tuesday, January 25, 2022 | 4:00 p.m. 

 An online lecture. For more information, visit 
events.umich.edu/event/90122 or call 734.615.6667.

Epistemology and
Criminal Justice
Reform

Knowing 
What’s at Stake

SARAH MOSS
William Wilhartz Professor of Philosophy

LSA LECTURE

Painting by Bethany Baker

Social Media or 

Marketplace? A look at 
Instagram’s Interface

While I hate to admit it, 

checking my Instagram feed 
has become a subconscious part 
of my daily routine. From day 
to day, the content is generally 
similar — a few photo dumps, 
posts from my favorite musi-
cians and maybe some funny 
memes on my friends’ sto-
ries. One thing that especially 
remains consistent is the copi-
ous amounts of ads I receive on 
a daily basis. Every time I open 
Instagram, I can guarantee 
there will always be countless 
products ready to be marketed 
to me. This feels incredibly far 
removed from the way Insta-
gram functioned when I first 
downloaded the app at age 13. 

My first encounter with Ins-

tagram was in 2014 when I cre-
ated my account as a middle 
schooler who simply wanted 
to share memes and fun photos 
with friends. At the time, Ins-
tagram had minimal function-
ality; a user could really only 
post one photo at a time and 
share them through direct mes-
sages. Posting to my feed was 
a trivial hobby that didn’t take 
much thought or effort. Just 
like all social media sites, Ins-
tagram has undergone a pleth-
ora of significant updates since 
its initial launch, including an 
infamous logo change in 2016, 
and the ability to include mul-
tiple photos in a single post in 
2018. The most notable change 
in recent years was an update 
in late 2020 that rearranged 
the navigation bar to promote 

Instagram’s video feed, Reels, 
and their shopping page, Shop, 
in place of the Compose and 
Activity buttons. While this 
may just seem like an annoy-
ing inconvenience to Instagram 
users, there are underlying 
implications about pushing an 
eerily similar TikTok competi-
tor and a shopping page to the 
front of the app. 

As a company, changing their 

interface is far more lucrative 
for Instagram because it nudges 
users to shop through their app 
more than ever before. When 
users buy goods from sellers 
directly through the app, Ins-
tagram takes a 5% commission 
from every single sale made on 
their Shop. Meanwhile, Reels 
have now become one of Ins-
tagram’s primary features as 
a direct response to TikTok’s 
ever-growing platform. TikTok 
has roughly a billion monthly 
users and Reels emerged as Ins-
tagram’s attempt to keep users 
from fleeing their app entirely. 
With the navigation bar update, 
Reels is the centerpiece of the 
app, with the Shop as its sec-
ondary feature. To even make 
a post, a user must tap a small 
button in the upper right cor-
ner of their feed or profile 
tabs. Such an interface change 
doesn’t seem fitting for what 
Instagram is supposed to be: a 
photo-sharing app. Complicat-
ing the photo-sharing process 
in such a way implies that post-
ing your photos or videos is just 
an afterthought compared to all 
the superfluous new features. 

UDOKA NWANSI

MiC Columnist

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

