On 
Tuesday, 
March 
7, 
University President Santa Ono 
gave his inaugural address to 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan. 
In it, he focused on setting an 
optimistic tone for his term, 
outlining his plans for DEI 2.0, 
achieving carbon neutrality and 
restoring the health of the U-M 
community. Through these bold 
ideas, he successfully energized 
students and professors, ushering 
in a new era of leadership. 
While the plans he discussed 
represent critical components 
of 
the 
University’s 
long-
term success, his speech was 
noticeably light on details for 
short-term 
improvements 
that could make an immediate 
impact on student life. Though 
the University is known for its 
bold projects and wide reach, 
an 
overemphasis 
on 
major 
initiatives can often detract from 
basic improvements that are 
easier to achieve but still highly 
impactful. As Ono embarks on 
his first term, it’s imperative that 
he not allow the administration’s 
long-term focus to lessen its 
involvement 
in 
smaller-scale 
campus issues.
One of the first areas the 
administration 
could 
make 
an immediate impact on is 
hiring resources. While certain 
colleges, such as the Ross School 
of Business, have access to 
extensive resources, including 
school-specific portals, industry-
tailored 
career 
counseling 
and 
numerous 
major-specific 
recruiting events, many of the 
University’s other schools and 
colleges lack similar support. 
Though 
promoting 
student 
recruitment 
is 
critical 
for 
the University, it has made 
surprisingly little progress in 
allocating resources to other 
schools. 
Even 
in 
popular 
departments 
like 
economics 
and computer science, where 
students 
achieve 
starting 

salaries well above the median 
U-M undergraduate, most hiring 
is self-directed, with limited 
U-M involvement. The gaps in 
recruiting support across those 
majors are primarily filled by 
student organizations such as 
consulting groups and project 
teams, but other majors lack 
similar resources.
In departments with more 
niche 
recruiting 
processes 
and smaller alumni networks, 
students are often left grasping 
for 
career 
guidance. 
With 
professors 
serving 
as 
major 
advisors 
for 
most 
students, 
undergraduates 
not 
pursuing 
academia often lack insight into 
industry recruiting processes. 
Since most professors haven’t 
worked outside academia, they’re 
typically ill-equipped to provide 
the type of support students need 
for other career paths.
In order to improve U-M-wide 
recruitment, 
administrators 
should 
hire 
more 
industry-
specific career counselors for 
each department and allocate 
greater 
funding 
toward 
organizing 
recruiting 
events 
that bring employers to campus. 
As one of the top universities 
in the country, U-M graduates 
are highly sought after across 
industries, so the University 
has an opportunity to make a 
tremendous 
impact 
through 
a concerted effort to connect 
more company recruiters with 
U-M students. In addition, by 
offering industry-specific career 
counseling, 
students 
would 
have the opportunity to meet 
with 
counselors 
who 
better 
understand recruiting timelines 
and networking strategies for 
their desired fields.
Implementing 
these 
basic 
strategies 
could 
have 
an 
immediate impact on current 
undergraduates and significantly 
boost the value of a U-M degree. 
Further, 
compared 
to 
other 
long-term initiatives like carbon 
neutrality, the cost of hiring 
additional 
counselors 
and 
restructuring 
hiring 
support 

is relatively low, making it an 
easy area for the University to 
dedicate resources.
Another critical area where the 
University falls short is its merit 
scholarship offerings. Though 
the University maintains an 
extensive financial aid program, 
it has only a small number of 
merit 
scholarships 
available. 
Especially when competing with 
other top universities for student 
talent, these programs serve 
as critical differentiators that 
convince top students to attend 
the University. In addition to 
their financial support, programs 
like the Stamps Scholarship offer 
students 
individual 
research 
budgets and internship funding 
that enable them to thrive at the 
University. 
Sadly, 
with 
the 
Stamps 
Scholarship being phased out 
and the Bell Scholarship and 
Bentley Scholarship among the 
few remaining at the University, 
most departments lack access to 
scholarship budgets that could 
help existing students and bring 
additional talent to colleges. In 
order to revitalize this critical 
component of the University’s 
undergraduate experience, the 
administration 
should 
work 
with donors and college heads 
to create department-specific 
scholarships for students. By 
doing so, the University would 
have an opportunity to cultivate 
talent through specialized grants 
supporting 
undergraduate 
research, internships and other 
programs.
The final area where the 
University 
should 
dedicate 
immediate 
attention 
is 
the 
ongoing 
professor 
shortage 
across 
departments. 
As 
the 
student body has grown rapidly, 
several 
popular 
departments 
have been unable to keep up with 
hiring goals. As a result, many 
professors have been forced to 
teach increasingly large lectures, 
with 
individualized 
student 
attention suffering as a result.

Opinion

President Ono, let’s focus on 
immediate problems alongside 
long-term initiatives

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
7 — Wednesday, March 22, 2023 

NIKHIL SHARMA
Opinion Columnist

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St. 
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

SHANNON STOCKING 
AND KATE WEILAND
Co-Editors in Chief

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JULIAN BARNARD
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

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Managing Editors

Debates 
on the 
Diag

A

ltruism 
is 
a 
characteristic 
that 
all graduate schools 
seek in potential candidates. 
It’s a soft skill that admissions 
committees 
find 
in 
students’ 
essays, extracurricular activities, 
letters 
of 
recommendation, 
interviews and lived experiences. 
After all, the way you use your 
free time says a lot about what 
you truly value and how you 
will contribute to your future 
profession. 
Historically, 
the 
most straightforward and sure-
fire way undergraduates have 
demonstrated 
a 
commitment 
to serving others is through 
volunteering. For the past three 
years, for example, 92% of the 
University of Michigan Medical 
School’s incoming class had at least 
one community service experience 
listed on their application.
While there is no hard and 
fast rule about what kind of 
volunteering looks the best on an 
application, the competitiveness 
of graduate school admissions 
has driven students to pursue 
larger-than-life and disingenuous 
volunteering 
projects. 
Volunteering at local food banks, 
nursing homes, hospitals and 
homeless shelters is no longer 
enough for aspiring professionals; 
when everyone and their second 
cousin is logging their hours at 
local organizations, many have felt 
compelled to take their free labor 
to places that will score them more 
brownie points. And thus, pre-med 
students have joined in the trend 
of voluntourism, a form of tourism 
in which travelers participate 
in volunteer work. Developing 
nations, in particular, are most 
affected by these undergraduate 
“saviors,” although the net impact 
of their “charity” work is often 
severely overestimated.
Various pre-medical, pre-law 
and other pre-graduate school 
clubs 
and 
organizations 
on 
campus host alternative Spring 
Break trips and short summer 
trips to underserved areas to give 
their members an opportunity 
to gain volunteer experience. 
The U-M pre-medical club, for 
example, hosts a whopping eight-
day 
alternative 
Spring 
Break 
trip to the Dominican Republic 
each year. Students participate in 
health education advocacy, the 
installation of water filters and 
the construction of structures 
that promote health. While well-
intentioned, trips like these don’t 
do much to actually affect the 
long-lasting change that local 
communities 
need. 
Instead, 
students purchase plane tickets 
worth hundreds of dollars for 
a trip during a convenient time 
for them to witness enough 
disparities to blast on social media 
as a pivotal “I’m more aware now” 
moment. With the majority of the 
University’s student population 
being both white and in the top 
20% for family income (as of 2017), 
I doubt that students have the 

language and professional skills 
to truly connect with indigenous 
populations and build lasting 
structures. 
In fact, a study of 162 Americans 
conducted after 1998’s Hurricane 
Mitch found that years after the 
Honduran natural disaster, their 
work in building houses didn’t 
even make a difference. Instead, 
the houses that didn’t fall over 
were given a price tag 10 times 
the annual salary of the average 
Honduran. It was also found 
that 15 times more houses could 
have been constructed had the 
Americans donated money instead 
of their time. And, sometimes, the 
damage from voluntourists had to 
be rectified by locals themselves. 
M-Heal, 
an 
engineering-
focused club of over 250 students, 
prides itself on innovating health 
care technologies intended for 
underserved 
communities 
in 
countries like Ghana, Bangladesh 
and Mexico. However, many of 
their annual service projects occur 
during a series of one-week Spring 
Breaks. It is not believable that a 
group of 10-15 students can both 
gauge the landscape of health care 
needs of an entire community and 
“uncover” disparities from a days-
long trip they are centered in. 
While 
M-Heal 
does 
have 
partnerships 
with 
local 
organizations 
in 
their 
target 
countries and spends the rest of 
the year designing technologies, 
their trips do not adequately 
entrench their group into the 
communities’ long-term needs. 
While it is quite venerable of them 
to have designed perioperative 
warming 
devices, 
portable 
exam tables and solar fridges, 
a community may have acutely 
different health care challenges in 
the span of just a few months. The 
2014 Ebola epidemic illustrates 
this discrepancy. For over three 
years, West African countries were 
fighting a lethal and potent virus 
— one that had treatment centers 
overflowing 
and 
physicians 
rationing care. Collegiate health 
care and biotechnology groups 
previously working on projects 
related to, say, surgical innovations 
for this region, were deaf to the 
larger climate of infectious disease 
transmissibility and the precedent 
effect it would have. 
In their Michigan in Color 
column “The Problem with white 
saviorism,” 
columnist 
Victoria 
Tan 
succinctly 
characterizes 
organizations like M-Heal when 
she writes, “People participating 
in white savior behavior may also 
presume that they know better 
and hold all the solutions because 
their higher education makes them 
intellectually superior. However, 
it is more complicated than that. 
The issues the residents have been 
dealing with are not ones that can 
be fixed in a three-week getaway 
because they are the consequences 
of much more intricate problems.” 
They continue to cite author Pippa 
Biddle, who notes that during a 
high school service trip to Africa, 
her bricks were relayed in the night 
by local Tanzanians altogether so 
that the resulting buildings would 

stand correctly. 
While many other campus-
specific examples remain, one 
common truth stands: the money 
used to cover lodging, travel 
and 
accommodation 
fees 
for 
voluntourists would be much 
better 
spent 
supporting 
local 
leaders whose physical presence 
can work to enact the grassroots 
change communities need. In 
the same vein, supporting local 
leaders shifts resources back onto 
the shoulders that know how 
to use them best. In this way, 
global aid is done with reverence 
to the thoughts, opinions and 
independence 
of 
the 
local 
community.
The 
pandemic 
was 
an 
opportunity to see another way 
to run volunteering missions. 
International service organizations 
switched many of their positions 
to fully remote work, changing 
the invasive relationship between 
international 
volunteers 
and 
underserved communities. New 
tasks such as online fundraising, 
advocacy and administration from 
volunteers thousands of miles 
away contributed greatly to the 
efforts in host sites. For example, 
Habitat for Humanity, a Christian 
non-governmental 
organization 
focused 
on 
building 
houses, 
hosted successful “virtual builds” 
during 
the 
pandemic 
where 
volunteers connected asylees with 
information, coordinated staffing 
and raised money — all from their 
own homes.
But 
online 
volunteering 
is 
just one way to put an end to 
treating projects in developing 
nations as an accessory. From 
Ann 
Arbor, 
students 
can 
produce 
journalism 
covering 
global disparities, organize food 
drives, lobby for foreign aid to 
underserved places, engage in 
workshops or advocacy panels, 
contribute 
to 
socioeconomic 
disparities research and even 
learn threatened languages. Not 
only are the possibilities to effect 
change from home endless, but 
local efforts also do not force aid; 
they redirect acknowledgements 
to on-the-ground volunteers and 
they place you where you are most 
useful. I’m confident that the 
interpersonal skills and experience 
garnered from the aforementioned 
initiatives will do just as much of 
a service for undergrads’ future 
endeavors as a short mission trip. 
We would find it bizarre 
if 
college 
students 
from 
impoverished countries spent eight 
days volunteering at the Maize and 
Blue Cupboard, and then offensive 
if they later wrote about their 
experience in graduate school 
applications as taking part in a 
heroic and life-changing endeavor 
for voiceless Americans. With this 
all-too-manufactured 
narrative 
about 
“helping 
impoverished 
people abroad” in mind, consider 
ways to make a difference in your 
home community. After all, local 
impact over four years ultimately 
empowers you to see projects 
through to the end — long after 
you’ve submitted your application 
to grad school.

Voluntourism won’t get you 
into grad school

MOSES NELAPUDI
Opinion Columnist 

Design by Hannah Wilingham

Design by Joanne Jung

Flowers won’t do

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

