The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Opinion Wednesday, February 16, 2022 — 13 PAIGE HODDER Managing Editor Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. JASMIN LEE Editor in Chief JULIAN BARNARD AND SHUBHUM GIROTI Editorial Page Editors ficial position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Julian Barnard Zack Blumberg Emily Considine Brandon Cowit Jess D’Agostino Zoe Phillips Ben Davis Andrew Gerace Shubhum Giroti Min Soo Kim Jessie Mitchell Mary Rolfes Nikhil Sharma Jack Tumpowsky Joel Weiner Erin White Anna Tupiano W hen the Board of Regents fired former University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel, The Michigan Daily Editorial Board was focused on the regents themselves. The regents — who serve unpaid for eight-year terms and are elected by Michigan residents — approve the yearly budget, appoint the president, oversee the University’s $17 billion endowment and regulate all three U-M campuses through the Regents’ Ordinance. They answer to Michigan voters, not the University community. How can the regents meet the needs of students, faculty and staff when those groups have little to no control over the board’s membership, and when regency itself is only a voluntary, part-time position? The board has clearly made mistakes with its power, particularly in the last couple of years. In the words of the Editorial Board, “many of the trademark bad decisions made by Schlissel were directed, or at least directly influenced, by the board (of regents).” The regents’ decision to reopen student housing in the fall of 2020 is specifically cited. In the same month, the regents failed to temper the administration’s aggressive response to the GEO strike or act on the Faculty Senate’s historic vote of no-confidence on Schlissel. One University’s fight to provide the Flint and Dearborn campuses with equitable resources also faces resistance from the regents. More recently, the regents didn’t stop Schlissel from returning to campus as a tenured professor — despite an ongoing investigation into his actions. And, as the Editorial Board points out, the regents have also historically failed to address sexual misconduct throughout the University with any sort of vigor. The regents were also criticized for raising tuition in the summer of both 2020, where it failed the first time it was proposed, and 2021. Each increase added just under $300 to in-state tuition and nearly $1,000 to out-of-state tuition. Financial aid awards were increased for low and middle-income in-state students, so many, myself included, weren’t impacted by the increase. Additional aid was not awarded to out-of-state students, who already paid the highest out-of-state tuition of any public university in the country. Despite their importance to the University as a whole — out-of-state students make up nearly half of all undergraduate students and their experiences and ideas are invaluable to the growth of in-state students — out-of-state students suffered the brunt of recent tuition increases engineered by a board they have no say in electing. In fact, they have no say over how the University’s highest authority handles any of the controversial issues impacting students. Moreover, because the board appoints the president, and the president fills most high administrative positions, out-of-state students’ lack of input extends to the entire University administration. Representation is only marginally better for in-state students and staff because they share electoral responsibilities with millions of other voters, most of whom have no vested interest in the University. The fact that University voices are drowned out was evident after the 2020 election, when former Regent Shauna Ryder-Diggs (D), one of two regents to oppose the 2020 tuition increase, narrowly lost reelection to current Regent Sarah Hubbard (R). Even by acting clearly in the interest of students, Ryder-Diggs was not able to keep her seat. Because the average Michigan voter isn’t involved with the University, and because down- ballot races often draw careless decision-making, the board has become dominated by powerful, recognizable figures. Regent Denise Ilitch (D) is the daughter of the late Mike Illich, the founder of Little Caesars Pizza and owner of Detroit’s baseball and hockey teams. Regents Mark Bernstein (D), Jordan Acker (D) and Michael Behm (D) each come from prominent family law firms (Bernstein’s commercials have plagued my television my entire life). And, of course, Regent Ron Weiser, famous in part for calling Michigan’s top three state officials “witches,” is Chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a large Ann Arbor property owner. The board members, who all have obligations elsewhere, aren’t paid either. That has two implications: the University will always come second to the regents’ paid obligations, and those without ample resources might not be able to serve on the board at all. The decision to bring students back to campus in fall 2020, for example, was allegedly influenced by Weiser’s extensive property interests. He went as far as donating $30 million to the University days before it announced it would reopen. All told, the board’s mistakes are due in part to regency’s part-time nature and because those affected are, at best, weakly represented. The board has taken an important step by including students, faculty and staff in the Presidential Search Committee. Even then, University stakeholders shouldn’t have to rely on the board’s generosity to have representation. Changing how regents are chosen so that all relevant University stakeholders are always represented — while maintaining the centuries-old relationship the University has with Michigan voters — is the best way to tackle the University’s ongoing struggles. Current graduate and undergraduate students, members of the Faculty Senate and other University staff (including lecturers, MHousing and MDining employees and other support staff) should each be allowed to elect one regent. Terms should also be limited to two years instead of eight, encouraging the board to evolve with the campus population — or face a challenging reelection fight. For the 2022 fiscal year, student tuition will account for $1.8 billion of the University’s budget, far more than the $322 million Michigan taxpayers will contribute. The University’s world-class faculty is critical not only to our institution’s prestige but to its ability to bring innovation to Michigan as a whole. And, of course, without additional staff, the entire campus would quickly grind to a halt. These three groups make major contributions to the University and as employees and attendees are most intimately impacted by the board’s decisions. It stands to reason that they should be allowed to directly pick at least a minority of the board’s members. The Board of Regents doesn’t represent UMich stakeholders; it’s time they do F ormer Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores announced Feb. 1 that he had filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL and three of its teams. He alleged racial discrimination in league hiring practices as well as tanking — a practice by which teams intentionally lose to amass greater draft capital, among other charges. Flores’s lawsuit calls into question the legitimacy of the “Rooney Rule,” which requires all NFL teams to interview at least two external minority candidates for coaching and general manager vacancies. Flores, however, is essentially calling the rule a sham. He claims that multiple teams engaged him in sham interviews meant only to satisfy the Rooney Rule, and he was not a serious candidate for those jobs. He brought receipts; the lawsuit contained screenshots of a text exchange between Flores and Patriots coach Bill Belichick, whom Flores worked for in New England before taking the Dolphins’ job. Belichick evidently believed he was texting his current offensive coordinator, Brian Daboll, to congratulate him on being hired as coach of the New York Giants. But the text went to Flores, who was set to interview for the Giants’ job himself three days later. Flores did have his interview as scheduled, and shortly thereafter the Giants introduced their new coach: Brian Daboll. Flores’s claims come with instant credibility, both because of the state of racial representation in the league and because of Flores’s stature as a coach. There are only three active black coaches in the NFL — Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin; the Dolphins’ new coach, Mike McDaniel; and Lovie Smith with the Houston Texans — after Flores and Texans coach David Culley were fired after this season. That alone is a pretty bad look for the league, but context makes it worse. The Texans have a longstanding reputation of institutional racism and those allegations have been repeatedly substantiated. Late Texans owner Bob McNair even faced severe backlash from his own players for racist comments he made in 2017. Racism seems to be hereditary in the McNair family. Bob McNair’s son Cal, current owner of the team, is no stranger to racially charged controversy himself, and recent rumors have been swirling that Houston was dead-set on hiring former NFL quarterback Josh McCown as coach. They didn’t, but the fact that they were considering a white man in his early 40s with no coaching experience with people like Flores out there is indicative of the larger problem, even if McCown wasn’t ultimately hired. Flores’s lawyers, justifiably, accused McNair of only hiring Smith to thwart allegations of institutional racism in light of the class-action suit. ESPN’s NFL Insider Adam Schefter chimed in as well, saying “I think (Flores’s lawsuit) changed this (NFL coach- hiring) cycle,” on the network’s Super Bowl LVI “SportsCenter” special on Feb 9. “I think the Texans were tracking — tracking — to hire Josh McCown, and the environment and atmosphere changed once that lawsuit was filed. And I think it would’ve been very difficult for them to hire a guy they, I think, were very interested in, and they ended up hiring Lovie Smith instead.” Given the way the McNair family has spoken — publicly — about minorities, it’s hard to disagree with Flores’s lawyers here. From the outside, it looks like they’re racists using Culley and now Smith as pawns to try to throw fans off the scent. Tomlin is the league’s longest- tenured coach, and he coaches the franchise owned by the Rooney family, the namesake of the Rooney Rule. None of that is to say Tomlin’s continued presence in Pittsburgh is due to his race. He has long been an elite NFL coach, and the Steelers would be universally ridiculed for firing him. Having said that, Flores had begun to establish himself as an elite coach as well, and his firing by the Dolphins this offseason came as a massive shock both within the league and in the media. He was known as one of the league’s most popular coaches within his own locker room, and is often spoken of as the epitome of a “player’s coach.” Flores led the Dolphins to their first back-to-back winning seasons since 2002 and 2003, and had restored hope to one of the league’s most success-starved franchises. Flores’s status as a rising star — one who was already producing winning seasons after taking over a franchise mired in two decades of complete and utter irrelevance — is significant. If Flores was a first-time coach who was fired with a record 7-10 games under .500, you could argue that he was just a sore loser seeking to capitalize on America’s racial tensions. But Flores led one of the league’s most perennially embarrassing franchises to a 24-25 record in three seasons, including 19-13 the last two seasons. Whether Flores’s firing and/or his interview experiences were racially influenced remains to be seen, but firing him was so objectively stupid that you almost have to wonder whether the decision may not have been entirely football-related. With the league’s record on race, from blackballing Colin Kaepernick to the conspicuous snubbing of qualified black candidates, all of this is enough to raise an eyebrow or two. That last point isn’t some kind of abstract conjecture. There are multiple well-known African- American coordinators who should be coaches right now, and their lack of opportunities is glaring. Schefter noted later in the “SportsCenter” special that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ new defensive coordinator has interviewed for 10 coaching jobs, and hasn’t gotten one of them. Teryl Austin is a respected and experienced coach who is clearly worthy of a chance to lead an organization. Is it that much of a reach to say anybody who’s been asked to interview 10 times for a coaching job is probably qualified for one? Eric Bieniemy, the offensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs, has overseen one of the most prolific offenses of all time, with two Super Bowl appearances and one championship to his name. He has interviewed for multiple vacancies over multiple years. He’s still a coordinator. Bieniemy and Flores were passed over for the New Orleans Saints job, too. New Orleans chose to promote from within earlier this month, going with their defensive coordinator, Dennis Allen. That seems sensible on its face — to maintain stability in an organization which just lost its legendary longtime coach in Sean Payton. After all, Allen had been with the organization since 2015; has coaching experience, like Flores but unlike Bieniemy; and was seen as Payton’s right-hand man in recent years. That sounds great on paper, but Allen was 8-28 with zero playoff appearances in three years as coach of the Raiders. He gets another chance in the big chair before Flores, who’s had more recent (and far more successful) coaching experience? He gets the nod over Bieniemy, the architect of Patrick Mahomes’s development into an all-time great quarterback? Bieniemy and Flores were passed over for a job that they were both more qualified for than Read more at MichiganDaily.com T he stereotype of the “iPad baby” has become one of the most detestable and looked-down- upon images in recent history. We as a society tend to look on in disgust at the parents of sticky- handed, wide-eyed children at restaurants, their toddler connected mind, body and soul to their overly screen-protected and intensely loud iPad as you try to enjoy dinner with your family. Whether it be the catchy songs of “CoComelon” or the bright-colored pictures and toys of the YouTube channel “Ryan’s World,” toddlers of this day and age are seemingly obsessed with technology. They just can’t seem to take their eyes (and hands, and mouths) off of it. Sure, members of Generation Z are met with similar arguments, whether it be complaints that we are “always on Insta-space-ta- gram” (one of my dad’s personal favorites), or that one day we will eventually lose our eyesight from the perpetual blue light or get “tech” or “text” neck. These comments don’t scare us, and we continue to text, tweet and post because it’s what we know. We have grown up in the age of social media, and it is our way to communicate our thoughts and express ourselves. But, as opposed to the toddlers of this generation, we grew up reading picture books for fun, watching “Dora the Explorer” in the comfort of our own homes and coloring on the paper placemats at restaurants with chunky crayons: there were no iPads in sight. I don’t mean to sound like a total “well, back in my day…” kind of person, but, yeah, “back in my day” (meaning, of course, the late 2000s and early 2010s), we didn’t bring technology to the table. Growing up, my first access to technology was my green iPod Shuffle, which I shared with my sister, and it solely played the soundtrack to High School Musical. I would have never thought to use it at family times because, honestly, things felt different about technology back then, in the early childhood of Generation Z. At that moment in my personal and emotional development, I was not reliant on technology as a form of comfort or entertainment. With this having been said, going through the last two years of a global pandemic has possibly changed my perspective on the phenomena of this elusive “iPad baby,” and this constant dependency on media. Now, I may even understand the placative qualities that this huge screen provides to its user, and empathize with the cause. The pandemic has brought many of us back to old pleasures we may have had in the past, or given us the opportunity to try out new ones. Whether it be reading all those books you forgot about on your shelf, knitting dozens of (unwanted) scarves for your family, trying out that baking recipe you keep forgetting to do or binge-watching all of the programs and films you’ve missed out on because of work or school, we’ve all found ways to cope with the constant state of uncertainty with the help of light-hearted distraction, and more importantly, media. I have personally (and rather unashamedly) found myself clutching to any sort media possible in the last two years, including rewatching comfort television shows, reading piles of novels and getting through 3,000 levels of Candy Crush. I am constantly scrolling my TikTok “For You” page, and I am religiously up to date with my “Goodreads” and “Serializd” accounts. I’ve become dependent upon my phone and laptop to provide me the perfect elixir of distraction from real life, whether that be school, politics or the pandemic. In all honesty, it has worked in the long run for the better of my mental health. Psychological studies tend to say the same thing. In a report from Common Sense Media, it was found that 21% of young people said that using social media helped them feel “less alone” amid the pandemic (up from 15% in 2018), and 43% of respondents, aged 14 to 22, found that social media has eased nerves and the likelihood of depressive episodes. The upwards tilt in the usage of social media platforms, video-call services and streaming platforms is not unexplained by psychologists and media analysts: it has helped young people everywhere feel better about themselves and their surroundings, especially in such isolating and distressing circumstances. As a society, we have deemed a reliance on media to be unbecoming and antisocial. Anyone who binges one too many episodes on Netflix is considered to be lazy, and anyone who likes one too many posts on Instagram is considered an addict. This stigma, especially in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic and the pandemic-influenced world, is incredibly damaging. It makes people who see media consumption as a form of comfort feel poorly about their coping mechanisms, that they should instead be “doing something with their lives.” Well, in the year 2022, I happen to believe that just getting through your day is doing something, and it shouldn’t go unnoticed, no matter how many times you may have stopped to send out a tweet or sat down to watch a movie to do it. It’s still getting by.We look down on the “iPad baby” since it’s unnatural to us. At their age, we were comforted in different ways. But being a toddler in the pandemic is hard in and of itself, and we can’t help but sympathize with them and their cries of emotional pain when their mother takes away their tablet, because inside, each of us is, in our own way, a toddler; we feel this same codependency. The pandemic has made each of us reliant on technology to cope: the bright screen of an iPhone filling up that isolating void of quarantine and uncertainty. We must realize that, deep down, we are just like those sticky and drooly toddlers, because we too need the help of a screen at times. How the pandemic has made each of us toddlers LINDSEY SPENCER Opinion Columnist QUIN ZAPOLI Opinion Columnist The NFL has a big race problem, and it is showing JACK ROSHCO Opinion Columnist The cold is here Design by Libby Chambers Read more at MichiganDaily.com