In 1969, you could be denied 
voter 
registration 
at 
the 
Ann Arbor Clerk’s Office if 
you 
weren’t 
“conservatively 
dressed.” Or if your answer to 
“Where did you spend your last 
vacation?” implied any sort of 
family connection or financial 
dependency. Or if you told the 
clerk that you would call your 
parents if you were seriously ill or 
had some sort of emergency. 
For 
the 
majority 
of 
the 
University of Michigan’s history, 
students 
who 
attempted 
to 
register to vote in Ann Arbor 
faced 
arbitrary 
obstacles, 
like the above, aimed at their 
disenfranchisement. 
Though 
students resided in Ann Arbor 
exactly as we do today, Michigan 
state law was not keeping up with 
the development of the modern 
university.
Until 
1971, 
the 
Michigan 
Constitution 
said 
that 
“No 
elector shall be deemed to have 
gained or lost a residence by 
reason of his being ... a student at 
any institution of learning.” This 
meant students were not counted 
as residents of their college towns 
and therefore were not granted 
the right to vote in the cities they 
were studying and living in. 
The University’s mission went 
far beyond vocational skills and 
practical training; it was, and 
continues to be, an immersive 
community aimed at “developing 
leaders and citizens who will 
challenge the present and enrich 
the future.” Yet these future 
leaders and citizens had no say, 
no formally-observed political 
voice, to influence policies that 
would directly impact their lives. 
Despite the ridiculous hurdles, 
students were nevertheless still 
determined to cast their vote 
here, in this maize-and-blue 
territory. 
In a 1971 Michigan Daily 
article, former news reporter 

Chris Parks explained students’ 
motivations for wanting to vote 
in Ann Arbor. 
“Many students point out that 
they, at present, have no control 
over local governments which 
make decisions directly affecting 
them,” Parks wrote. “Voting 
in their hometowns, they say, 
is meaningless as what is done 
there has little effect on them.” 
With the modern ability to 
choose between voting in either 
your home or college state, these 
students’ sentiments can feel 
limited. Being able to vote in 
your home state, particularly for 
students who live in swing states, 
like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, 
is just as much a privilege as is 
having the option to vote in Ann 
Arbor. But it is precisely that 
choice — the right to strategically 
ensure your voice is heard at the 
loudest decibel possible — that 
makes college voting such a 
powerful opportunity. 
Throughout the late 1960s and 
early ’70s, students expressed 
frustration and continued to 
resist prohibitions from the often-
restrictive clerk’s office. For the 
1969 city elections, the locally-
based Human Rights-Radical 
Independent Party handed out 
leaflets 
instructing 
students 
on how to answer the clerk’s 
questions to most easily obtain 
a ballot. Answering questions 
in a way that communicated 
independence from one’s parents 
and intentions to permanently 
stay in Ann Arbor would often 
help students’ chances at getting 
registered. 
But these efforts were not 
always successful. A 1969 Student 
Government 
campaign 
to 
increase voter turnout “resulted 
in more bewildered students 
than registered voters,” wrote 
former Daily reporter Robert 
Kraftowitz. 
The 
campaign, 
which intended to bring students 
to City Hall to get registered, 
was wholly ineffective due to 
the inconsistent and irrelevant 
questions posed by city clerks. 

These included, but were not 
limited to:
Are you self-supporting?
Do you live in private housing?
Where did you spend your last 
vacation?
If students were not more than 
50% self-supporting, or spent 
their vacations outside of their 
Ann Arbor residence, they would 
be denied registration.
However, students who were 
able to register made a substantial 
impact: 75% of former Ann Arbor 
Mayor Robert Harris’s new 
voters were U-M students in the 
spring of 1969. Harris’s victory 
hinted at the capabilities of a 
mobilized student body, fueling 
student advocates and bitter 
Republican candidates alike. 
In the 1970 census, students 
were counted as residents of 
their college towns for the first 
time in National Census history. 
These figures were then used 
to draw congressional districts 
on both the federal and state 
levels, informing the amount 
of financial aid the city and 
state receive from the federal 
government.
Essentially, 
students 
were 
being counted as citizens in 
conjunction with a law that made 
it difficult for them to exercise 
their basic constitutional rights. 
Until 1971, a student had to 
meet the following criteria to 
register, in addition to subjective 
judgements from the clerk’s 
office:
A student must be at least 
21 years old by the date of the 
election.
A student must have lived in 
Michigan for six months and in 
Ann Arbor at least 30 days before 
election day.
A student must have no 
intention of returning home, but 
is uncertain of their future place 
of residence.
A student must be free from 
parental control, regard the 
college town as their home and 
have no other home to return 
to in case of sickness or other 

affliction.
In April of 1971, the state of 
Michigan 
changed 
the 
first 
criterion to ‘at least 18 years old.’ 
A month later, the Michigan 
Supreme Court deemed the other 
rules 
unconstitutional 
under 
the 14th Amendment, which 
prohibits 
governments 
from 
depriving citizens of “life, liberty, 
or property” without fair cause.
This case, Wilkins v. Ann 
Arbor City Clerk, asserted what 
students had been advocating for 
years: Students cannot be denied 
the right to vote in their college 
towns.
“For 
voting 
purposes, 
there is no rational basis for 
distinguishing between students 
who reside at a given locality 
for nine months of the year 
and non-students who reside 
in the same locality for nine 
months of the year,” the opinion 
reads. 
“Requiring 
additional 
qualifications to vote which 
affect different groups unequally, 

whether by income, occupation, 
or employer, is a denial of equal 
protection.”
In the November 1972 election, 
student voices were put to the 
test for what was truly the first 
time. And they delivered.
In heavily-populated student 
districts in Ann Arbor, voters 
under 
21 
years 
old 
sealed 
victories for sheriff, circuit court 
judge and 22nd district state 
representative. The sheriff and 
representative 
winners 
were 
Democrats, and the nonpartisan 
circuit 
court 
judge, 
Shirley 
Burgoyne, was known for her 
women’s and LGBTQ+ rights 
advocacy. On a campus entangled 
with ’60s counterculture, student 
voters successfully advocated 
for progressive politics in their 
college town.
The voters and best had hit the 
polls, and from then on, student 
electoral action was full steam 
ahead.
At the first annual “Hash 

Festival” in ’72, the Diag was 
filled 
with 
political 
rallies, 
guerilla theater, rock and roll 
music and political speeches. In 
an article from The Daily, former 
Arts Editor Paul Travis noted 
the shift of students’ political 
focus to their newfound voting 
abilities.
“This past weekend Ann Arbor 
saw a variation on the old theme 
— the mixing of youth culture 
and traditional, electoral politics 
in an attempt to keep voters 
keyed up for yesterday’s city 
elections,” Travis wrote.
As the ability to act on 
political 
interest 
expanded, 
students translated their idealist 
worldviews 
into 
practical 
electoral 
action. 
Former 
Daily News Reporter Ralph 
Vartabedian examined this shift 
in students working with then-
presidential candidate George 
McGovern (D-S.D.).

When I was a freshman in high 
school, I read some book that I can’t 
quite remember the title of, knowing 
only that it started with the words 
“You’ll never be remembered like 
Caesar.”
I hated that thought. Or more 
accurately, I hated how accurate it 
was.
I’ve never been comfortable with 
the idea of being forgotten, in any 
capacity, really. To me, it always 
seemed that being lost to time was 
equivalent to “true death.” And 
I saw remembrance as the only 
form of immortality that could 
be guaranteed. A faux-afterlife 
unlike any religious teaching that 
can also be crafted through acts 
and 
deeds. 
Most 
importantly, 
though, the memory of others 
seemed equivalent to proof that an 
individual meant something when 
they were alive and afterward.
It’s funny to me now, because the 
author who wrote that book was 
right. I’ve completely forgotten his 
name, his work and why he wrote it, 
but I still know Caesar. I know how 
he was born, how he took power and 
how he died after a brilliantly short 
burst of life. And somehow, 1900 
years on, he survives in my memory 
while the author (who could still be 
physically alive) is lost to time in my 
mind. My great-great-grandparents 
are also lost to time. And one day, 
you and I, and everyone who reads 
this will be as well.
When I first encountered the 
concept known as the “Right To 
Be Forgotten” years later, I think I 
was stuck in that ‘Caesar’ mindset 
that being remembered could only 
be a positive thing. The “Right 
To Be Forgotten,” much like the 
“Right To Die,” is a term coated in 
shocking nature. Both run counter 
to what we’re supposed to want. 
We’re supposed to want to live, 
and we’re supposed to want to be 
remembered, so the two come off as 
contrarian.
But the right to be forgotten is 
not an abstract concept or some 
nihilistic ideal. It’s the right to have 

data that pertains to you, that you 
no longer desire to have stored, 
deleted. And in many places like 
the European Union and Argentina, 
parts of the right to be forgotten 
have been codified into law. This 
can look like many different things. 
By some definitions, it only gives 
you the right to demand the deletion 
of photos, posts and data about 
yourself, even if you’ve forgotten the 
passwords to your accounts. That 
part is relatively uncontroversial 
where it is implemented, but 
still is incompatible with the 
First Amendment in many cases. 
Its definition, however, can be 
extended to points that force us to 
answer uncomfortable questions 
about our conception of truth.
The genesis for the right to be 
forgotten, though, is the practical 
reality that we’ve gotten too good 
at remembering ourselves. And in 
many ways, I think that’s scarier 
than being forgotten.
The truth is, we don’t have to — 
or, rather, we can’t — be forgotten 
now, because our devices won’t let 
us. The digital landscape has made 
it so that every moment of your life 
can be remembered, tracked and 
acted upon. Every purchase you’ve 
made, photo you’ve taken and post 
you’ve uploaded is swirling around 
in a collection of data that only 
people much smarter than most can 
comprehend. But it’s there, and it’ll 
stay there forever. Because battery 
lives are longer than our mortal 
ones.
In many respects this is a good 
thing: We can remember who we 
were and who our friends were and 
who our family was. But the flip 
side is that when we can remember 
exactly who we were and exactly 
what we did for nearly every hour of 
every day, we often don’t like what 
that transparent image reveals, or 
more specifically, we don’t like how 
narrow the scope of our life’s image 
becomes.
Thus, the principal consequence 
of the digital age is that we no 
longer completely control our self-
image, and that singular moments 
don’t get lost to time. People have 
their lives ruined by images they’ve 
taken at inopportune times or posts 

they made 12 years ago, and most 
worryingly, by articles written about 
the lowest moment in a person’s 
life. Because now these moments 
don’t go away. Pictures don’t fade 
and digital archives don’t wither, 
and this causes people’s futures to 
get trapped by moments from their 
past. Moments that 50 years ago 
would have been a blip; Moments 
that “The Right to Be Forgotten” 
offers a solution to.
But where the right gets intriguing 
is when it’s expanded. By some 
definitions, the right to be forgotten 
demands that your image and data 
be removed when you remove your 
consent from its broadcast, even 
if it’s in the hands of others. This 
is the law in the European Union, 
and it runs through search engines. 
In the EU, sites like Google now 
must offset a request form where 
people can ask that a search for an 
individual’s name does not yield 
the photos or websites that they 
wish to be forgotten. The pages and 
photos still exist, but aside from 
some exceptions, they no longer will 
be associated with the name; they 
will be exterminated from “Search 
Results” pages.

The 
final 
iteration 
of 
the 
right extends these practices of 

alteration to the media. It requires 
publications and media companies 
to acknowledge the right to be 
forgotten, removing names and 
specific 
requested 
references 
to individuals that are either 
embarrassing or detrimental to 
their image if there is practical 
purpose for that information to be 
stored.
Originally, in the EU, media 
outlets were exempt from the “Right 
to Be Forgotten” and didn’t have to 
offer any removal options. But in 
Hurbain v. Belgium (2021), a case 
in the European Court of Human 
Rights, this understanding changed. 
The court found that a Belgian 
paper had to remove the name of a 
man who was both responsible for 
and convicted of killing another in 
a car crash. More or less, it found 
that the right to be forgotten could 
trump the media’s right to report on 
objective truth.
And 
while 
that 
sounds 
reprehensible, there is practical 
value in giving people the right to 
escape shame. In the case of that 
man who killed another in a car 
crash, it could have been purely 
accidental, and he’d already been 
punished by the courts. He served 
whatever social punishment the 

courts deemed to be fair retribution. 
But it’s likely that the punishment 
extended far past any jail time. 
Because for decades, every new 
person he met and every job he 
applied for that looked him up saw 
him as defined by one singular 
moment. His lowest moment.
Thus, we arrive at a tug-of-water 
between the ethics of objectivity 
and the ethics of forgetting for the 
sake of preserving one’s integrity. Is 
having your entire existence defined 
for eternity by the one horrible 
thing more true than simply letting 
yourself be forgotten?
The right to be forgotten has often 
been referred to as “the right to be 
forgiven,” and I think that’s a more 
accurate name. There is immense 
benefit to a faithful recollection of 
the past. I believe that truth must 
be objective and stored. But by not 
letting people’s image change, by 
holding it hostage in one moment 
and freezing it there, the truth gets 
diluted. Because people do change 
despite it being hard to see.
When I was younger, I used to 
play this game in the shower where 
I would close my eyes and imagine 
the person I had been just a few 
years earlier. And inevitably, I’d get 
embarrassed. I’d remember all the 

shortcomings, idiosyncrasies and 
moronic attempts to be cool, and I’d 
be mortified. But then I’d imagine 
myself at present and try to guess 
what the things I’d be embarrassed 
of in the future were. I’d think about 
the popular phrases I’d parrot and 
fashions I touted and recognize that 
I’d strongly dislike those aspects of 
who I presently was in the future.
But the thing is, only I have 
to remember those things about 
myself. The version of me that 
I’d look back at with shame and 
disappointment was given the 
ability to sunset and fade away. I 
couldn’t imagine what it’d be like 
to have that past version of myself 
be the one that defined my image 
for the rest of my future, but I 
know it’d be awful. I’d feel trapped, 
because if every improvement I 
made to myself was erased by a 
now inaccurate image of who I was, 
why would I have incentive to try to 
become better?
I think the “Right to Be 
Forgotten” 
raises 
the 
genuine 
question of why we desire the truth. 
Do we value objectivity because it 
leads us to better understanding our 
human condition? Or do we desire 
the truth because we feel we need 
to record shame? I honestly don’t 
know.
I don’t think that the right to 
be forgotten can — or should — be 
legal precedent in the United States, 
as it is in the EU. But I think there 
needs to be honest and thoughtful 
conversation on how we use and 
preserve media.
Since 2018, Cleveland.com, a 
northeastern Ohio journal, has 
been 
experimenting 
with 
the 
right to be forgotten because they 
believe it’s an ethical practice. 
They’re no longer posting mugshots 
with stories and they’re allowing 
individuals to request their names 
be removed from stories about 
minor offenses or those that have 
since been expunged. And with it, 
people are being freed from their 
pasts. Former addicts, vandals 
and petty criminals are no longer 
defined by their mugshot. They can 
get jobs again. They can move on.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
6 — Wednesday, October 12, 2022
S T A T E M E N T

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

EMILY BLUMBERG
Statement Correspondent
It’s great to be a Michigan voter; students’ path to the polls

On the right to be forgotten

CHARLIE PAPPALARDO
Statement Columnist

Design by Emily Schwartz

Photo courtesy of Bentley Historical Library

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

