T

he opener introduced 
himself 
at 
our 
University of Michigan 
stand-up club, Amateur Hour, 
and told his first joke. The 
audience was rowdy. The venue 
didn’t have enough seats for 
everyone. People were standing, 
drinking from pitchers and 
talking among themselves. I 
ran through my set in my head, 
nervous but prepared. I stepped 
up to the microphone when my 
time came and started with 
crowd work.

I hoped for a few answers 
from the front row. The entire 
room erupted — and didn’t 
stop. It was related to my 
questions at first, but quickly 
devolved into random chitchat. 
I tried to regain control of the 
situation, but the microphone 
and speakers were too quiet. 
So I waited, stiff and awkward, 
until their attention returned.
Comedy is a difficult art form, 
maybe the most difficult. When 
it works, the audience doesn’t 
think twice. They walk into 
the club expecting to laugh and 
leave with their expectations 
met. It works because they 
paid for it. But when it fails, it 

fails hard, and the audience is 
quicker to rage than sympathy. 
I’ve failed hard, and more than 
once, so take it from me: The 
comedian is always angrier 
than the audience after a bad 
show. You gave up one night to 
hear their material; they gave 
up months trying to write it. 
We need slack to operate. 
Comedy is based on poking in 
all the wrong places in all the 
right ways to get laughs. When 
we don’t get laughs, it can feel 
like we’re just jabbing where it 
hurts for no apparent reason. 
But we’re not. Writing jokes is a 
process — they crash and burn 
more often than they land.

At one of my first-ever open 
mics, I remember trying a new 
bit about infant mortality. It 
felt like trudging knee deep 
through 
mud, 
just 
trying 
to reach the end before the 
crowd could start booing. A 
few shows later, I repurposed 
the punchline. The crowd was 
hanging on every word, their 
laughs growing louder after 
each sentence. It was like 
magic.
We’ve got to love the magic 
more than we hate the mud, 
or the magic dies. And it 
is 
dying. 
Dave 
Chappelle’s 
Netflix special “The Closer” 
is perhaps the best example 

of this trend. The roughly 
hour-long 
set 
provoked 
outrage, in part because of 
Chappelle’s 
statement 
that 
“Gender is a fact.” In July 
2022, a Minneapolis comedy 
club 
canceled 
a 
scheduled 
Chappelle performance over 
the controversy. When the 
show was moved to a different 
location, protesters harassed 
fans waiting outside the new 
theater, even throwing eggs at 
them, Chappelle said.
Comedy requires thick skin 
to watch, particularly if you are 
watching Chappelle’s brand. 
That’s why it’s voluntary. Turn 
off the TV, don’t click on the 
special — but don’t get in 
the way of a good joke. Let 
nothing be off-limits or 
too offensive to talk about. 
Comedy needs freedom to 
flourish, and right now, that 
freedom is shriveling.
Many of America’s largest 
companies take on humor 
in 
their 
anti-harassment 
policies. From Amazon to 
Apple to Google, jokes in 
the workplace are becoming 
increasingly less acceptable. 
In 2018, a CareerBuilder 
survey found that 54% of 
employers 
had 
decided 
not to hire someone after 
looking into their social 
media footprint. Now, even 
jokes made before getting 
the job are under scrutiny, 
and the implications for 
aspiring comedians like me 
are clear.
A few months ago, I went 
to a meeting of my stand-up 
club with a new one-liner 
I had written (that I won’t 
repeat here). I tried it out 
— and the other members 
laughed. 
But 
they 
were 
uncomfortable. I asked for 
feedback, and someone said 
something to the effect of, 
“it’s funny, it’s really funny. 
But what if someone records 
it? Do you want a future 
employer to hear that?”
He was right — in today’s 
political 
environment, 
I 
wouldn’t want what I said 
heard out in the open. 
That’s the problem. Those 
performing comedy need 

a welcoming environment to 
succeed, not one that throws 
eggs or ruins careers. Instead, 
we’re coming up on the five-
year anniversary of Kevin Hart 
being forced out as host of the 
Oscars over a gay joke, and the 
one-year anniversary of Will 
Smith slapping Chris Rock over 
a joke about his wife.
Some comedians are truly 
mean-spirited 
and 
full 
of 
malicious intent. The people 
I’ve discussed are not. Cruelty 
has no place in comedy. But 
more obstruction is not the 
answer — it results in good 
comics like Chappelle, Hart 
and 
Rock 
being 
unfairly 
condemned. 
We 
can 
fight 
hateful jokes by refusing to 
watch those who spew them 
when they perform at a club, 
rather than shutting down the 
clubs themselves.
A 
liberated 
stage 
means 
hearing 
things 
you 
don’t 
necessarily like, but it also 
means a liberated audience. 
The freedom of a comedian to 
say anything guarantees the 
freedom of the crowd to hear 
anything — uncurated by the 
establishment or mob. That’s 
what America needs right now. 
Comedy shows us things about 
ourselves and our world in a 
way no other art can. It cuts 
deep through the veneer of our 
culture and society, but when 
done right, we’re too busy 
laughing to feel the blade.
I’ll never forget sitting in bed 
one night, shortly after the end 
of the COVID-19 lockdowns, 
watching a clip of Jon Stewart 
talking about the origins of 
the pandemic. I had been 
feeling down, confused and 
angry about everything that 
had happened. I felt as though 
the media had over-politicized 
the issue until I didn’t know 
what to believe. And then I 
listened as Stewart picked it 
all apart, everything he said 
making sense, and my emotions 
improved.
The world is a dark and 
dishonest place, in dire need 
of comedy. We cannot destroy 
it, especially now, with all the 
good material the last several 
years have given us.

I 

was 
frustrated 
and 
saddened 
to 
see 
the 
recent opinion piece in 
The 
Michigan 
Daily 
about 
“Michigan Math.” As a current 
Graduate Student Instructor 
in the Math Department who 
has taught MATH 115 and is 
currently teaching MATH 116, 
I would like to try to address 
some of the points made in this 
article. Many of us in the Math 
Department would have been 
happy to talk to the author, 
and I’m disappointed that they 
didn’t reach out to hear from 
us. 
The author focused on the 
idea that math courses at the 
University of Michigan follow a 

“flipped classroom” model, and 
pointed to a meta-study that 
found little benefit to flipped 
classrooms. 
While 
MATH 
115 instructors indeed expect 
students to read the textbook 
before class, the intention is 
not that this takes the place of 
all direct instruction during 
class. We are told to give small 
lectures during class to explain 
key ideas, clear up points of 
confusion and provide extra 
examples. Since every MATH 
115 course relies on the course 
lecture content, it is debatable 
whether the MATH 115 setup 
even qualifies as a flipped 
classroom. 
Further, 
asking 
students to read outside of class 
and to answer a few questions 
before class is a standard 
practice across many subjects 
(imagine 
an 
English 
class 

where you didn’t have to read 
outside of class). 
The Hechinger Report cited 
by the author finds that the 
success of a flipped classroom 
relies on what actually happens 
during class. The University’s 
introductory math program is 
rare in higher math education 
because it actually tries to 
put in place decades-worth of 
research, much of it from U-M 
scholars. The research shows 
that doing group work for the 
majority of class time is not 
only better for the learning of 
all students, but also provides 
even 
stronger 
educational 
gains for women, non-binary 
folks and students of Color. 
While I agree that flipping a 
classroom does not necessarily 
lead to better learning on its 
own, the research is definitive 

that using class time to have 
students work collaboratively 
to solve problems with the 
support of an instructor will 
lead to higher quality, more 
equitable education.
The author referred several 
times to the idea that students 
have 
to 
teach 
themselves 
outside 
of 
class, 
implying 
that the time spent in class 
working on problems is not 
“teaching.” This is problematic 
for a number of reasons — 
chiefly because an effective 
teacher 
employs 
numerous 
pedagogical strategies, not just 
lecturing, and they are all part 
of teaching. This denigration 
of teaching, which is present 
in many spaces throughout 
education 
in 
general, 
can 
have a multitude of harmful 
effects, many of which are 

contributing to the low pay and 
poor working conditions that 
characterize the profession in 
many 
different 
institutions. 
Personally, I think this comes 
from a lack of understanding of 
all that goes into teaching — it 
is not just lecturing.
Where I did find common 
ground with the author was in 
their frustration that math GSIs 
receive little training before 
they are sent in to teach MATH 
115. You might be stunned, as I 
was, to learn that your MATH 
115 instructor generally has 
one week of training before 
they arrive in your classroom. 
We receive a small amount of 
additional training throughout 
our five to six years here in the 
form of course meetings, but 
these tend to focus more on 
logistics than pedagogy. I think 

it is important to note that, 
from speaking to colleagues 
from 
doctoral 
programs 
at 
more than 25 peer institutions, 
this amount of training is 
standard, and so your math 
lecturers and even your math 
professors don’t have any more 
training than us.
The author is calling for a 
major overhaul of a program 
that serves tens of thousands 
of students, is driven by the 
work of hundreds of GSIs and 
lecturers and is rooted in the 
research of hundreds of well-
regarded scholars. I would 
encourage the author to solicit 
information from sources other 
than a few fellow students and a 
single research study. Certainly 
there is work to do, but let’s not 
waste time pointing in random 
unhelpful directions.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
13 — Wednesday, March 15, 2023 

KATIE WADDLE
Math GSI

JACK BRADY
Opinion Columnist

You can never escape the M

Design by Sara Fang 

Design by Evelyn Mousigian

Don’t cancel comedy, it’s too important

Letter to the Editor: ‘It’s time to stop dreading 
“Michigan Math”’ misses the mark