“V
oting is at the heart
of democracy.” I’ve
heard this mantra
repeated so many times that, at
some point, I became numb to its
meaning. Why did voting matter
anyway? One vote — my vote
— was unlikely to change the
result of an election. For a long
time, I believed in this line of
reasoning; I thought voting was
overrated — a waste of time and
effort. Looking back now, I wish
I hadn’t been so naive. It took the
fall of a city for me to learn the
significance of voting. That city
was the one I was born in, the
one I spent my childhood in and
the one I loved: Hong Kong.
To understand how Hong Kong
fits into the larger conversation
around voting, we will first have
to go back in time. In 2019, the
city came under the spotlight
when its residents protested
against
China’s
oppressive
legislation:
an
extradition
bill that threatened the city’s
sovereignty and democracy. The
extradition bill would let Hong
Kong extradite people wanted in
countries with which they have
no formal extradition agreement.
The concern with this is that
residents believe the law would
allow “virtually anyone” to be
picked up, detained and sent to
China to be prosecuted. Many
people my age, peers I grew up
with in Hong Kong, protested on
the streets because they wanted
to be heard; they demanded
change. For a while, everything
looked hopeful. After all, the
protesters were loud enough that
the world paid attention.
But, that hope was short-
lived. It was quickly swallowed
by China’s national security
law, which took away residents’
freedom of speech by the end
of 2020. Since then, the city has
gone silent. Now, when I look at
the news, Hong Kong is nowhere
to be found. It’s as if the protests
never even happened. In a blink
of an eye, I watched a democratic
effort disappear.
The silence that ensued after
Hong Kong’s democracy fell was
the worst part. I never knew
silence could hurt so much. You
see, I normally relish in quietness.
As a shy and introverted person,
silence gives me space to breathe,
to take a break and to recharge
before I socialize again. But the
silence in Hong Kong is cruel.
It’s the kind that results from
being forced to hold your breath.
It’s the kind that if you defy, you
face the possibility of arrest and
prison.
What power did I have that
would allow my voice to be
heard? It was my power to vote,
and I wasn’t the only one who
recognized the power of voting.
Politicians had always known. In
fact, this same pattern emerges
as I looked through the history of
voting in the United States.
Voices
through
voting,
especially those of marginalized
communities,
have
been
consistently
suppressed
or
silenced. For example, African
Americans
didn’t
get
the
right to vote until after the
Civil War. Women didn’t get
to vote until 1920, and many
Indigenous peoples didn’t get to
vote until the 1960s. Even now,
disenfranchisement
policies,
such as those put on citizens
with a felony conviction, often
disproportionately affect BIPOC
voices.
In
fact,
nationally,
6.2% of African Americans are
disenfranchised due to having a
felony conviction.
Though not to the same extent,
I realized that voices halfway
around the world weren’t the only
ones being silenced. It’s happening
in the U.S., too. Watching Hong
Kong’s democracy collapse, I
now know how integral voting is
to democracy. This is why I will
vote in the upcoming midterm
elections in my state, Michigan.
It’s especially important to vote
in this election because Michigan
voters will have the power to codify
reproductive rights. Ann Arbor
voters will also have the power to
approve a tax that could help fight
climate change.
A
s a member of the class
of 2024, I began college
at
the
University
of
Michigan during the height of
the COVID-19 pandemic. I made
the decision to do my freshman
year from home, where the
pressure to be the perfect pre-
medical student pushed me into
four core science classes during
my first semester.
I got my first look at the
scientific process through a
screen (picture me receiving
biology lab credit for “isolating a
protein” with a laptop trackpad,
animation software and a lot of
imagination). Nevertheless, my
virtual science labs cultivated
a desire to partake in a new
activity called “research,” and
I became determined not to let
the pandemic deter me from this
goal. Up until this point, I had
thought
that
undergraduates
didn’t have the capacity to truly
contribute to the creation of
new knowledge — let alone the
intricacies of wet lab, biomedical
research. It wasn’t until I found
out about — and missed the
deadline for — UROP that I
realized research is an attainable
experience at Michigan.
Since access to the traditional
UROP research pathway had
closed, I was left with one
option: cold emailing professors.
I soon realized, after sending
over
a
hundred
unsolicited
pitches to various Principal
Investigators’ (PIs) inboxes at
Michigan, that the pandemic
was the least of my concerns.
The
majority
of
responses
were valid rejections citing full
capacity or limited funding as
the reason I wasn’t offered a
spot at the lab bench. However,
I was surprised to discover that
a handful of PIs were simply
not interested in undergraduate
mentorship altogether. A few of
these researchers substantiated
a
strict,
no-undergraduate
policy by mentioning that their
lab — syndicated and funded by
our research-heavy University
of over 32,000 undergraduates
—
was
focused
on
“high-
impact”
and
“undilutable”
projects.
Despite
pitching
myself as a motivated student
willing to work unpaid, under
a flexible schedule and toward
administrative
efforts,
my
standing as an undergraduate
precluded me from making any
sort of contribution.
Interested
to
see
which
projects
warranted
complete
separation
from
the
undergraduate
touch,
I
did
a deep dive into the PIs’ lab
websites, PubMed profiles and
Twitter pages. I quickly noticed
a running theme: their labs were,
indeed, fruitful in publications,
postdocs,
NIH
funding
and
conference
invitations.
They
had all the metrics of academic
success imaginable, and I, too,
was left wondering what I
could’ve possibly helped them
achieve by joining the lab. This
realization
diminished
my
motivation to stay in the hunt
to conduct research, and I was
ready to accept that I wouldn’t
be working within arm’s reach of
a microscope anytime soon.
It was then ingrained in my
head that there was an inverse
relationship
between
a
PI’s
H-Index, a quantitative metric
used to provide an estimate
of a person’s overall impact,
productivity and significance
within their respective field,
and the number of undergrads
they
let
run
around
their
lab. As it currently stands,
H-index is calculated based
on a researcher’s H-amount of
papers, each of which has been
referenced H-amount of times
in H-level journals. The world’s
most
prolific
scientists,
for
context, will have an H-index
over 100 by the end of their
career — such as Dr. Anthony
Fauci at 229 and Dr. Stephen
Hawking at 130.
Finally, at the beginning of
sophomore year I got a position
as
a
classroom
laboratory
assistant at the Undergraduate
Sciences Building. A few months
experience
of
organizing
beakers and cleaning fruit fly
residues for various biology
class labs beefed up my resume
enough to land me a position as a
part-time research assistant at a
highly productive cardiology lab
at Michigan Medicine.
With
the
help
of
undergraduate
upperclassmen
in the lab, I quickly caught on to
these patterns — a peer would
make the protocol, I would
run the experiment and my PI
would discuss the data’s clinical
implications at the next lab
meeting. Now, as a junior, I am
currently completing my Honors
senior
thesis
through
this
lab. Having been given near-
autonomy over a 10-week long
project involving the inhibition
of
atherosclerosis
in
mouse
models, I have grown to be a
published author, researcher and
confident MD/PhD candidate.
During the “in-betweens” of
experiments,
moreover,
my
PI hosts personal statement
workshops, gives us research
papers to read, helps us rehearse
our poster presentations, lets us
conduct shadowing visits during
his clinic days and gives us so
many more opportunities for
unquantifiable career moves.
Education proves to be a
guiding principle of this lab,
as is proper at a research
institution which happens to
be
inseparably
joined
with
one of the largest educational
institutions
in
the
country.
Most importantly, though, these
kinds of researchers, professors
and faculty demonstrate how
colleagues
unreceptive
to
facilitating
undergraduates’
early research careers are sorely
out of place at a University.
Furthermore, if a U-M lab or
research
conglomerate
has
never hosted a UROP student
since its inception, less funding
and support from the University
should be allocated.
I think back to my early
rejections from U-M professors
and researchers who were taken
aback that a freshman would
even consider soiling their holy,
million-dollar ideas by joining
their lab. To them I ask: Whom
are you a Leader and Best of,
exactly? At the end of the day,
their drosophila (the species
of fruit flies used in many
labs) will die but the palpable
enthusiasm
of
a
Wolverine,
cultivated by working in their
lab, will not. Any opportunity
we as undergraduates receive,
in research or otherwise, leads
to an exponential effect on our
worldview and educational goals.
Our
current
understanding
of, and researchers’ obsession
with, H-Index should include
the measure of impact made
on students and trainees in its
calculation.
The
world
of
academia,
here in Ann Arbor and abroad,
recognizes that citations are
a measure of the extent to
which one piece of research
informs the next. The politics
of doctoral life, especially at a
rigorous and prestigious center
like the University, makes it
easy to get carried away by the
allure of acceptance to a top
journal,
international
award
or fancy funding. How often,
between the fine print of a
Nature or JAMA publication, do
we appreciate how mentorship
of young people informs the
next generation of researchers?
With every research project
involving
an
undergraduate
comes an unnoticed benefit
years down the line. The silent
slow-burn that is undergraduate
mentorship influences the very
plane, scope and trajectory of
scientific fields in the same way
citations do.
By using college students
as a medium, my PI will have
materialized
over
a
dozen
avenues to further his cardiology
research long after he chooses to
retire. I, as one of his avenues,
hope to one day use both my MD
and PhD to pick up where he
leaves off.
Researchers and professors
here at the University who
not only recognize the caliber
of
undergraduate
students,
but apply their plasticity and
potential to research projects
have, dare I say, the greatest
H-Index. I urge those in positions
of research leadership here at
the University to consider the
undergraduate as the tabula rasa
(blank slate) they are. Introduce
them to your research specialty
— whether that be 20th-century
Russian poetry or the failures of
Themistocles at Sparta — and I
guarantee that your impact, in
the academic sense or otherwise,
will multiply.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
10 — Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Design by Serena Shen
Dear Professors, Your H-Index Can Wait
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
NAMRATHA NELAPUDI
Opinion Columnist
Voting is at the heart
of democracy
TIAN YEUNG
Master’s of Social Work Student
Why you should be friends with a
Trump supporter
I
t’s no revelation to say
that America has likely
never seen a more divi-
sive figure than former Presi-
dent Donald Trump. Even
after his term ended, he was
almost as popular as President
Joe Biden himself. Over a year
and a half later, not much has
changed. Trump has retained
relevancy by continuing to
appear in the public eye: the
Jan. 6 committee hearings,
public endorsements in Repub-
lican primaries, the frivolity of
his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm
Beach, the question over who
will be the Republican Party’s
presidential candidate — all
timely,
frequently-covered
concerns that involve the for-
mer president, which alone do
not explain America’s obses-
sion with him. Many other
politicians are equally rele-
vant but less talked about.
Let me be clear: The title
of this article is purposefully
incendiary. It could just as eas-
ily be called “Why you should
be friends with a Bernie Sand-
ers voter,” except that, for this
paper’s audience, Trump is the
more radical figure. So I want
to make my intentions clear,
dear reader, before you embark
upon my train of thought.
First, you need to know where
I’m coming from. I am Argen-
tinian, not American. I am
neither a citizen of this coun-
try nor a green card holder. In
short, I do not vote in Ameri-
can elections.
So, what authority do I have
to offer up my perspective?
Argentina has been sociopo-
litically divided since the ’50s,
also at the hand of a populist
leader. I grew up not being
able to talk about politics with
anyone who I might have sus-
pected to vote for the opposing
party because of the sheer rage
their opinions would cause
me. Therefore, I know first-
hand what it’s like to surround
yourself with people that think
exactly like you do, and how
hard the shock hits when you
burst out of your bubble.
At this point, I should dis-
close that if I were American,
I would often vote blue, which
is why I will use “we” a lot
because this piece is directed
at Democrats who struggle to
find common ground with peo-
ple on the other side. Despite
being an honorary Democrat,
my convictions strongly insist
that we’re going about this in
the wrong way.
Virtually
every
serious
newspaper and magazine out
there that isn’t blatantly pro-
Trump regularly publishes Op-
Eds that continue to dissect
how his presidency impacted
America. Just this week, The
Atlantic analyzed how Trump
threatened the Constitution,
The New York Times studied
Trump’s behavior during the
Jan. 6 hearings and the Wash-
ington Post argued that Trump
should anger Christians more.
Why is he still so relevant?
I spoke with political sci-
ence professor Mika LaVaque-
Manty, who shed some light on
this matter.
“Trump has been able to
exploit what I think many
other populist leaders haven’t
been able to do before, which is
information technology, espe-
cially social media,” LaVaque-
Manty said. “The way social
media companies work is they
help exacerbate the polariza-
tion by each of us having our
own echo chamber. And not
just the people on the right —
it’s almost equally disturbing
on the left in different forms.”
I know that what I’m asking
is hard, and I even know it’s not
always possible. Conversations
are a two-way street, and there
are plenty of extreme Trump
supporters out there who don’t
want to engage in debate with
the other side. Plus, there are
certain conversations you sim-
ply shouldn’t have to have if
the person sitting in front of
you holds what you deem to be
abhorrent beliefs.
But we have to have some
conversations.
Otherwise,
how do we expect change to
happen? While marching and
rallying are helpful, they’re
not enough. Like CNN politi-
cal analyst Julian Zelizer, a
professor of history and pub-
lic affairs at Princeton, says:
Change comes via the ballot
box. Protests help to get people
involved in politics, which is
great, but those people would
probably have voted blue any-
ways.
To truly enact change, we
need to start having the diffi-
cult conversations we seem to
not want to have. And not just
with our opponent but between
ourselves, too. If we don’t stop
attacking each other, how will
we ever come to an agreement?
“I had a student a couple of
years ago during the campaign
leading up to the 2020 elec-
tions,” LaVaque-Manty said.
“That student was a big Eliza-
beth Warren supporter, but she
began to doubt herself because
she was so viciously attacked
by Bernie Bros.”
We’re talking about sup-
porters of two of the most left-
wing Democratic candidates
— if they can’t talk with one
another, how can we expect to
debate with someone so far off
as a Trump supporter?
There’s a broad consensus
that democracy is the best
form of government we have
been able to come up with. As
Winston Churchill famously
said, “Democracy is the worst
kind of government — except
for all the others that have
been tried.” Well, Trump is
probably what Churchill meant
by “worst” in that phrase. But
we still have to make it work,
and we still have to keep hav-
ing debates with one another
because I refuse to believe
that the 74 million people that
voted for Trump in the 2020
elections were racists, xeno-
phobes and misogynists. We
can’t continue to demonize
and alienate them because,
if so, who’s to say an equally
debasing candidate won’t win
in 2024?
“(Trump) is not quite as
unprecedented as some people
sometimes suggest,” LaVaque-
Manty said. “In some ways, he’s
tapping into conventional right
populism: grievance against
elites and a sense of disenfran-
chisement and marginaliza-
tion. If you have a rhetoric that
offers simple explanations to
perfectly legitimate grievanc-
es, like rural Americans who
have suffered the demograph-
ic shifts towards the cities,
and say, ‘Here is a story that
explains why you have been
screwed,’ of course people are
going to support you.”
We
keep
talking
about
Trump so much because, like
all
other
populist
leaders
before him, he runs on a plat-
form of social division. And
despite the transparency of
his use of these well-known
techniques, we fell into the
trap. We encouraged the divi-
sion and patted ourselves on
the back for it. We’re calling
them out, we thought to our-
selves. We are opposing a rac-
ist, sexist, xenophobic tyrant.
We were. But in the process
we may have lost ourselves.
We exchanged our democratic
values for a strict outlook that
became more and more bina-
ry, to the point where people
willingly cut ties with lifelong
family and friends because of
who they voted for.
“I’ve talked to students who
are conservative who feel,
understandably, and I think
legitimately, like their per-
spective is silenced,” LaVaque-
Manty said. “We should give
people
the
benefit
of
the
doubt.”
These rifts may be motivat-
ed by Trump supporters bring-
ing their true colors into the
light. But it also may be Demo-
crats refusing to see the appeal
of Trump. If your close friend,
who you love and respect, is a
Trump supporter, I don’t think
you should cut them off. I think
you should tune out all the out-
side noise and hear them out.
Because maybe that way, she’ll
hear you out, too. And America
AZUL BLAQUIER
Opinion Columnist