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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