Reading has always been a solitary 
activity for me. When I checked out 
books at the public library as a child, I 
knew that those books were mine alone 
for the next two weeks. I read for hours 
while curled up on the couch, oblivious to 
everything except the words on the page. 
When my mother called me for dinner, I 
scrambled to reach a good stopping point 
in my book before joining my family.
As a child, I’d never thought of books 
as a way to build friendships or commu-
nity. But Little Free Libraries is looking 
to change that.
Little Free Libraries is a nonprofit 
committed to inspiring a love for books 
and community. The movement focuses 
on filling book deserts — areas with few 
accessible public libraries — with small 

book-sharing boxes, known as Little 
Libraries. The concept is simple: Take 
a book, leave a book in return. Since its 
creation in 2009, the Little Free Library 
movement has built over 100,000 librar-
ies around the world to promote literacy 
and reading.
“As a young girl, going to the library 
and checking out books really changed 
my life and made me a lifelong reader,” 
said Kim Kozlowski, founder of Detroit 
Little Libraries and reporter for the 
Detroit News, in an interview with The 
Michigan Daily. Detroit Little Librar-
ies started in 2014 as a grassroots cam-
paign with the goal of making Detroit 
the “Little Free Library capitol of the 
world.” Detroit Little Libraries operates 
separately from the Little Free Libraries 
nonprofit, but the two organizations have 
a strong tradition of collaboration. Since 
its founding, Detroit Little Libraries has 

raised funds to build hundreds of Little 
Libraries throughout the city, includ-
ing 97 placed in front of Detroit Public 
Schools.
After installing her first Little Free 
Library in front of her home, Kozlowski 
was thrilled at the sense of community it 
brought to her neighborhood. She hoped 
to bring that same momentum to Detroit, 
a city climbing out of bankruptcy at the 
time. “Books promote your imagina-
tion, increase your vocabulary and your 
critical thinking skills. It can ultimate-
ly change the trajectory of your life,” 
Kozlowski said.
Kozlowski was aware of the stereo-
types that surrounded Detroit and hoped 
to flip this image by promoting literacy. 
“I had hope that if even one book could 
change the course of a child’s life in the 
city, then it was worth all the work we 
were doing,” Kozlowski said. Many of the 

libraries are made from reclaimed wood 
from abandoned Detroit homes, courtesy 
of End Grain Woodworking Co. Detroit 
Little Libraries also worked to include 
books by diverse authors in their librar-
ies. “We wanted to make sure there were 
books in the library that reflected the 
community and the diverse tapestry that 
Detroit is,” Kozlowski said.
Most of the impacts of Little Free 
Libraries have been anecdotal — only a 
few critical studies have been published. 
Little Free Libraries often become com-
munity gathering areas, bringing the 
neighborhood closer together through a 
shared love of books. “We started talk-
ing about not only the books we were 
reading, but also our lives,” Kozlowski 
said of a patron to her first Little Library. 
With this community impact in mind, 
Kozlowski worked with neighborhood 
groups and local artists to install, main-

tain and paint many of Detroit’s Little 
Libraries.
One of Kozwalski’s greatest challenges 
was ensuring that her libraries ended 
up in neighborhoods that could use it 
the most. Since the death of the original 
founder of Little Free Libraries, Todd 
Bol, in 2018, the movement has shifted 
to target neighborhoods with the great-
est need for literacy. One such neigh-
borhood is Brightmoor, Detroit, where I 
started a Little Free Library in front of 
a church I volunteered at. I replenished 
books regularly, scavenging through my 
house to find novels I read as a child. 
When I returned the following week, the 
books were nearly all gone. In contrast, 
the Little Library built in my hometown 
neighborhood of Canton, a middle-class 
suburb, doesn’t see nearly as much use.

Graduation Edition 2022 — 7
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Read more at michigandaily.com

It’s time to talk about the Schlissel memes

Repurposing Little Free Libraries during COVID

Writer’s Note: The Michigan Daily reached 
out to these sources over Instagram. We 
can not verify their identities, but they have 
identified as the admins of these Instagram 
accounts.
When your university’s president is put 
on blast for flirting through the proverbial 
family iPad, you don’t just brush it off.
It’s time to talk about the Schlissel memes. 
They take many forms: a Yik Yak post, a 
cheeky affirmation, a spray paint install-
ment in the Diag. Instead of an outpouring 
of disappointment or grief, students are 
resorting to humor, which is easy enough to 
understand, as joking is the simplest way to 
cope with shame, a fact further amplified by 
the absurdity of the situation.
We reached out to a number of Schlissel 
memers on Instagram for a look into the 
motivations of the students indulging in 
the tomfoolery. If you have a pulse and you 
own a cell phone, you probably know exactly 
what I’m talking about. @umich_ince-
llectuals, best described as a U-M-specific 
reimagining of the vastly popular meme 
page 
@on_a_downward_spiral, 
kicked 
off the memes with a series of text posts. 
The earliest read “WE JUST LOST THE 
SCHLUSSY” over a portrait of a grinning 
Schlissel. Another said “who else up lonely-
ing their ms.” My personal favorite from the 

account was an edited photo of Schlissel’s 
twitter with a blacked out profile picture 
and “Gone. Don’t text me or hmu” in the bio.
@umichcapsbabes, which popped up 
fairly recently, jumped on the train with a 
similar slew of memes. Their most popular, 
with over 200 likes, poked fun at the famed 
YouTube apology format, titled “my truth” 
with Schlissel in the thumbnail. Another 
meme read “me leaving Pizza House with 
10 extra calzones up my ass” over a cheery-
faced Schlissel.
@umichaffirmations, known by almost 
12,000 followers for their cleverly specific 
affirmation-based U-M memes, made a 
carousel post of memes catered towards 
Schlissel. Some include, “I WILL NOT Send 
Raunchy Messages From My Work Email,” 
“WHAT IF WE MISSED OUR CONNEC-
TION IN PARIS” and “I Will Not Be Lured 
In With The Promise Of A Knish.” 
What got to me about @incellectuals and 
the other pages was how fast they respond-
ed to the news and how they decided to go 
about it — for some reason, their immediate 
reaction to reading those 118 emails was to 
make memes. When asked about the use of 
memes as a response, one of the @umich_
incellectuals admins responded over Ins-
tagram DMs: “I think the memes were 
inevitable, the fuck them kids memes were 
already all over campus, we made a few too 
and like rightly so everyone already had a 
pretty low opinion.” The account’s second 
admin seemed to agree: “The way memes 

came almost immediately after his firing 
were kind of reflective of like the almost 
comedic relationship that’s been existing 

between schlissel and the student body for 
nearly 2 years.”
The admin from @umichcapsbabes had 
some thoughts about the meaning of the 
memes: “What makes them funny is that 
someone took time out of their day to make 
an edit for the bursley baits loop for abso-
lutely no reason. Mark Schlissel is a grown 
man who’s probably at home very concerned 
about his public image and everyone else is 

just like yeahhh it makes sense that he’s a 
calzone man.” 
@umichaffirmations’s admin ties up the 

issue with a nihilistic bow: “The fact that 
our university president is having an affair is 
an absolutely absurd and unfortunate situa-
tion. But so is living through a massive pan-
demic. So is the fact that we have single-digit 
weather. We can either live life accepting the 
bad things, or cope with them via humor.” 
While I personally don’t enjoy accepting 
these things with complacency, I struggle 
to find a better alternative. But maybe I’m 

looking at it the wrong way. 
Yes, it’s funny — I will never get tired of 
“lonely m”— but what exactly is the joke 
here? That our No. 1 ranked University, with 
its illustrious Board of Regents and its $17 
billion endowment, was spearheaded by 
someone incompetent enough to send hotel 
receipts to Individual 1 over his University 
email? That our president, our emblem, likes 
his calzones with extra mushrooms and his 
salads topped with cherries? The latter is not 
so incriminating, but his behavior towards 
Jon Vaughn is. Far worse than a string of 
silly emails is the impotent response to the 
Robert Anderson case and, most important-
ly, its survivors — Schlissel disgraced this 
institution long before Communications.pdf 
was in the picture. In fact, many might agree 
that his firing in and of itself is hypocritical.
There are jokes, but as the first @umich_
incellectuals admin says, “At first I thought 
he’d been fired over the Anderson case, 
which would have been ideal because his 
conduct over that has been disgraceful and a 
huge dark cloud over the university.” 
Maybe Schlissel will return to the com-
fort of his tenure as a professor. Maybe 
some rightfully vindictive MCDB majors 
will heckle him to embarrassment during 
office hours, or maybe he will retreat into 
his 401(k)-padded cave and never be heard 
from again. There’s also the possibility that 
Mary Sue Coleman won’t do a better job. At 
the very least, the idea that our frustrations 
might become a tangible force is reassuring.

 LAINE BROTHERTON
2022 Digital Culture Beat Editor

TRINA PAL AND LILLY PEARCE
2020 Daily Arts Writers

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