“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

