S T A T E M E N T

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, January 26, 2022 — 7

I’ll bite: Giving into the ‘Twilight’ 
renaissance










 

 

 
 


 

 

 


 

 
 
 



 



RILEY HODDER

Statement Correspondent

Design by Francie Ahrens
Page Design by Sarah Chung

The day I moved into my 

dorm and my family left me, I felt 
completely and utterly alone. My 
roommate didn’t move in until 
the next day, and I had just been 
abandoned by the people I had 
grown up with. It was me against 
the world, and the feeling followed 
me around everywhere I went. 

This feeling only built up with the 

revelation that I would have to eat, 
in public, all alone, for the first time 
in my life.

Of all the college experiences 

I had mentally prepared for, this 
wasn’t one of them. As I walked 
down the steps into the Markley 
dining hall, I could already feel 
that familiar gnawing feeling at the 
bottom of my stomach. The room 
was swarming with people. With 
every step, I became more aware of 
my existence: My hair was frizzy, 
my outfit weird, I was sweaty. Every 
tripped step or awkward movement 
around the crammed tables sent a 
surge of anxiety through me that 
was enough to tighten my chest and 
make me shut my eyes. 

There were so many people, so 

many eyes, so many things to focus 
on. I grabbed food, sat at a table 
— my table for one — and hoped I 
would fade into the background. 
What I ate, I couldn’t tell you. I was 
no longer hungry. I ate blindly and 
ran.

In that moment, I felt so guilty. 

This is supposed to be one of the 
most pivotal moments of my life, and 
I was too afraid to eat around other 
people? To my disappointment, my 
dining hall-phobia didn’t improve 
as the semester progressed. When 
I could eat with someone else, I 
would. But whenever I had to eat 
alone I was hyper aware of my 
existence and terrified to move, let 
alone eat.

I suffered in silence for weeks. 

Going to dining halls became a 
pointless venture. I was barely able 
to eat anyway, so I opted for anything 
I could make in the microwave — 
ramen, soup or leftovers. 

In short, I spent a lot of money. 

Every day I thanked myself for 
saving up over the summer, because 
otherwise, I’d be going hungry. Yet 
I never stopped feeling guilty; my 
parents were putting their own 
money toward my dining hall meal 
plan, and my seemingly-irrational 
fear was preventing me from using it. 
Here at the University of Michigan, 
dorm residents are required to select 
one of these dining plans and can’t 
opt out for a monthly allowance. If 
I’d been given the choice, I would’ve 
told my parents to just give me that 
allowance instead.

While I was privileged enough to 

accommodate my phobia, I couldn’t 
help but think about my other peers 
who might not have that option. I 
was lucky to have some spending 
money to buy myself snacks and 
food between my weekly dining hall 
visits, but what if I didn’t? What if 

I was here on scholarship, or need-
based financial aid, and my only 
viable option was to eat in the dining 
halls when I felt that I couldn’t?

These 
thoughts 
about 

inaccessibility had me concerned, 
but as I assumed I was alone in this 
feeling, I didn’t think much further 
on it. 

The first time I realized my 

dining 
hall-phobia 
was 
not 

entirely rare was a dreary winter 
morning in English 140, when we 
were 
discussing 
inaccessibility 

on campus. I volunteered how I 
found it hard to eat in dining halls, 
as they had the tendency to make 
me anxious. I was surprised when 
nearly the entire class agreed; almost 
every person had an experience in a 
dining hall that had made them feel 
uncomfortable, or kept them from 
eating.

So how big of an issue is this?
When I decided to write this 

piece and look for people to talk to, 
I was overwhelmed by the sheer 
amount of responses I received. 
While not all students were ready 
to be interviewed, countless fellow 
dining hall-phobes expressed their 
discontent with eating in the erratic 
environment.

LSA sophomore Alex Ngyuen 

talked to me about his time spent 
in the dining halls, but most 
importantly, about what he had 
been doing to avoid eating in them 
entirely.

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Covid Kitties Anonymous

Design by Sam Turner
Page Design by Sarah Chung

DRAKE GEORGE

Statement Correspondent

When it was announced that the 

University was going online for the 
rest of the Winter 2020 semester, 
I remember exactly where I was. I 
was laying on my stomach playing 
Apex Legends when my housemate, 
Maggie, practically busted down 
my door. Her eyes were wide as she 
pushed her phone out to show me the 
email. The only thing I could say back 
was:

“Duuuuuuude.”
I couldn’t believe what I was 

reading. The concept of the world 
temporarily shutting down was 
surreal to me. For the rest of the day, 
I aimlessly wandered around my 
room, dragging my feet along the 
blue carpet below me just to feel a 
little something. The next couple of 
days seemed to blur together, from 
my classes moving online to most of 
my friends leaving Ann Arbor to go 
back home. My friends that would 
relax in my room were now nowhere 
to be seen, and there was a notable 
emptiness. 

There had been a buzz in my 

theatre department class group chat 
about our entire situation. People 
expressed their shared loneliness, 
fears of the world and a prospect that 
stuck out to me most: cat adoptions. 
My entire class was slowly but surely 
making plans to adopt cats. 

I told myself I would never get a pet 

in college because it was irresponsible, 
but the timing just seemed right. To 
have a furry little friend that naps 
most of the time and plays with yarn 
seemed to be the perfect solution 
to pandemic-induced depression. I 
called my friend Sophia to confirm 
that we were on the same page.

“Should we… get a kitty for our 

house?”

“UH, FUCK YEAH. LET’S 

GET A LITTLE COVID 
KITTY!”

We didn’t get a 

Covid Kitty(™) 

immediately, but it stayed on my 
mind throughout the sweaty months 
of June and July. As the beginning of 
August rolled around, we made our 
way to the Humane Society of Huron 
Valley to pick out a furry little friend 
for us to raise. The one we found was 
a tiny grey and white kitten with the 
biggest green eyes I had ever seen. 

“That one — like, of course that 

one,” my housemate and I exclaimed 
unanimously. 

We proceeded to go through the 

paperwork while the lady at the front 
desk explained to us that the kitten 
was feral, meaning he was incredibly 
shy and unsocialized. I acknowledged 
this with a brief head nod and verbal 
grunt, but she was unsatisfied with 
my response.

“Are 
you 
sure 
you 
feel 

comfortable being able to take care 

of this cat?” she pressed. 
“How many students live 
in this house with you?”

The answer was seven: seven 

queer theatre students trying to keep 
both toilets from clogging in a World-
War-II-era house. I understood why 
she was questioning me. I was a tired 
college student wearing elephant-
print sweatpants and a ripped up ‘My 
Hero Academia’ t-shirt. 

It was a big task to take care of an 

animal, but I knew that I was capable 
and responsible enough. I explained 
how I had worked with a couple 
animal shelters in the past and knew 
how to coexist with underdeveloped 
and ‘difficult’ animals. Our cat would 
be taken care of, we assured her. 

After the extensive and slightly-

tense dialogue between us and the 
inquisitive front desk lady, we were 
finally able 
to adopt our new 

little 
mister — we 

named 

him 

“Espurr” after the Pokemon. But 
the lady’s questioning did leave me 
feeling worried about the adoption 
experience. I was fearful that I was 
being selfish about adopting an 
animal, that Espurr would be better 
off back at the Humane Society.

I arrived home and was hit with 

this feeling of fear even harder. As 
soon as I let my new friend out of his 
carrier, Espurr bit my hand and hid, 
obviously not acclimated to human 
interaction. That first night I cried on 
the same blue carpet, petrified of the 
thought of a cat who didn’t like me at 
all. For the next month, he would hide 
under a huge blanket, hissing at any 
person who walked by. Sophia and 
I had to forcibly wrap him in a towel 
before petting him for twenty minute 
intervals in order to acclimate him 
to human touch. Through all of this 
he would yowl and cry, leaving me 
to wonder whether or not I was even 
helping him.

Espurr eventually came around 

to love me, but I became curious of 
the other experiences the lady at the 
front desk had had with college-aged 
adopters, and why exactly there were 
so many college students adopting a 
pet, specifically a cat, during this time 
of crisis.

A speedy Google search affirmed 

my suspicion that my roommate and 
I were not the only burnt-out but well-
intentioned college students seeking 
a furry feline to keep them company 
mid-quarantine. 

In 
a 
study 
published 
by 
the 
Frontiers 

in Veterinary Science, researchers 
determined that since 2019, the web 
searches for pet adoptions have 
highly increased: “the RSV (relative 
search value) ratio (2020/2019) for 
both dog and cat adoption increased 
by up to 250%.” I also found an NPR 
interview where Cornell University’s 
Elizabeth Berliner claims: “There’s 
some statistics that represent that 
1 in 5 pet owning homes adopted a 

new pet during the pandemic. And 
so we do have concerns about what 
this adoption season will look like in 
2021.”

Moreover, the effect of everyone 

being confined to quarantine has 
created a new ‘generation’ of pets: a 
group of pets who have spent most of 
their time inside with their humans. 
While this wave of new quarantine 
companions has provided much-
needed comfort, some worry about 
how these recent adoptees will adapt 
to post-pandemic pet life. 

Researchers state that: “There is 

a concern for separation anxiety and 
possible abandonment of these newly 
adopted pets when the owners leave 
their homes for work in the future.” 
This sudden change in routine results 
in either a miserable pet, a miserable 
owner, or both. 

If this were the case, I wondered, 

were there an abundance of pets 
being returned after owners realized 
they were in over their heads? While 
exact rates of adoption returns vary 
from region to region, there did 
appear to be an overall increase in 
returns at the start of the pandemic. 
The Animal Care Centers of NYC 
“saw 1,393 animals brought to them 
last month (June 2021), more than 
twice the number of dogs and cats 
surrendered in February.” In the 
Dallas area, cats and their kittens 
were being left in bags on doorsteps in 
this same timeframe.

With this horrifying information 

in mind, I decided to ask people 
my own age, those of the infamous 
‘College Student Who Bought Cat 
In Pandemic’ demographic, to see 
what their experiences were like, 
fiscally and emotionally, throughout 
the adoption and post-adoption 
processes. 

My dining 
hall-phobia 
diagnosis

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

