The first time I ever had to carry
grief that did not belong to me
was the day I began to report on
survivors of former University of
Michigan Athletics doctor Robert
Anderson. Over a span of 37 years,
more than 950 victims reported
thousands of incidents of sexual
abuse and misconduct at the hands
of Anderson, remaining as likely
the most sexual abuse allegations
against a single person in United
States history.
There is an untold grief in
reporting this kind of trauma, in
reporting the tragedies that affect
our schools and communities — the
people we love and know — and what
they ultimately leave behind. In time,
even grief that does not belong to us
has a way of becoming our own.
College journalists are especially
vulnerable to the weight of reporting.
The world sees them as too young
to understand the heaviness of
grief or to report on the shootings
that
fracture
their
campuses,
the homicides that destroy their
student bodies, the bomb threats
and sexual abuse scandals that
define the way they reckon with
themselves. But oftentimes, long
after national news outlets have left,
when press conferences become
a rarity and towns begin to quiet
again,
student
journalists
and
student-run newspapers become
the last to remain, to understand, to
painstakingly cover all that happens
in between. And at a cost few are
ever willing to make. What becomes
of college journalists in the face of
collective grief? What does it mean
to grieve, to process, to become
angry, to be in pain, to know joy and
love and healing as a journalist first,
and as a student last?
I’ve
spent
the
past
month
researching
college
newspapers
across the country, and more
importantly, college newspapers that
found themselves at the forefront of
national tragedies — those that have
had to contend with what it meant
to no longer feel safe in your own
libraries, classrooms, newsrooms
and homes. Over the past few weeks,
I spoke to Ava MacBlane, Editor in
Chief of The Cavalier Daily at the
University of Virginia; Haadiya
Tariq, Editor in Chief of The
Argonaut at The University of Idaho;
and Jasper Smith, Editor in Chief of
The Hilltop at Howard University.
These are their stories. This is the
weight they carry.
The
Cavalier
Daily,
The
University
of
Virginia,
Charlottesville, Va.
The Cavalier Daily — The CD or
The Cav, for short — is the University
of
Virginia’s
independently-run
student newspaper. It employs
approximately 400 staffers and is led
by Editor in Chief Ava MacBlane. The
Cavalier Daily’s offices are located
in the basement of Newcomb Hall,
a student center that also houses
the campus’s main dining hall.
Staff sometimes take long naps on a
couch chock-full of Squishmallows.
A life-size cut-out of Will Ferrell
sits in an odd corner, and there are
lopsided frames of old newspapers
from decades ago hung on the walls.
Meetings are held in an area fondly
dubbed “The Office” and on Fridays,
when the production schedule is
pleasantly light, the Copy staffers
spend hours at one of the few empty
tables gossiping about the day’s latest
happenings. The newsroom here
is well-loved. It’s the kind of place
people visit just because they can.
On
Sunday,
Nov.
13,
2022,
University of Virginia students
and football team members Devin
Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel
Davis Jr. died after a gunman
opened fire on a bus returning from
a University of Virginia class trip
to Washington, D.C. Two other
students were wounded. A shelter-
in-place warning issued a campus-
wide “Run, Hide, Fight” alert that
lasted well into the next morning.
Students spent the whole night
cramped into libraries and a variety
of campus and academic buildings,
trapped in an uncomfortable state of
limbo and a terribly unsettling cloud
of fear, in search of a reason why.
MacBlane,
who
was
the
Managing Editor of The Cavalier
Daily at the time, spent the entirety
of the next 72 hours following the
shooting, on the ground reporting.
She missed meals and sleep, and
much of her grief was experienced
as a journalist first. Reporting on her
community became one of the only
ways she carried her grief, or rather,
the only way her job as a student
journalist allowed her to.
“You want to feel connected to
people and to your community, but
you can’t because you’re still the
media,” MacBlane told me. There is a
heaviness that comes with reporting
on fellow peers who left the world
so violently, a half-removed kind of
grieving.
While
it
became
the
sole
responsibility of MacBlane and The
Cavalier Daily to print the victims’
names, their hometowns, what they
studied, the lovely, wonderful tiny
things that made them who they
were, there is also the realization
that the journalists are students,
too. They might have run into the
victims of the shooting somewhere
in line at a coffee shop or in the
library, or the victims might have
picked up a copy of The Cavalier
Daily, because Devin Chandler,
D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr.
were here as fellow students, and
now after a senseless act of violence,
they no longer were.
SARAH AKAABOUNE
Statement Deputy Editor
The weight we carry: college journalism’s untold grief
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
This is not an essay about
watching movies — this is an essay
about going to the movies, about its
likeness to ceremony, about how it
makes me feel quite a bit less lonely.
About how it saves my weekends.
About why sometimes, (and I never
know when that sometimes is
going to be) being alone in public is
comforting.
For the past three weekends, I’ve
spent a Friday or a Saturday or both
at the Michigan Theater and State
Theatre. The stretch began with
the hotly anticipated, box-office
hit “Dune” in a packed showing
room at the Michigan Theater. The
following weekend it was a quieter,
charmed “The French Dispatch”
in their largest auditorium, and a
rowdy “The Rocky Horror Picture
Show” seen (for the first time) from
the upper mezzanine the same night.
“Dune” again the next weekend in
the Michigan Theater. The night
after, a chilling “Last Night in Soho”
from the cozy, elevated rows of
the State Theatre. An anniversary
showing of “Blade Runner” is slated
for this coming weekend.
It’s not like I had outright planned
to spend my October and November
weekends this way. It just sort of
happened, as these things often do. I
saw “Dune” and realized what I had
missed so much about a communal
viewing experience, and so I went
again. And again. And again.
I’m enjoying this stint, as I tend to
indulge in things for weeks at a time,
only to abandon it once the novelty
wears off. Next month I may be
fervently knitting scarves that won’t
see their ends, tossed in baskets
with the needles still clinging to the
last row I attempted. But I will have
occupied myself for the month of
December.
Like my pocket-sized copy of
“Slouching Towards Bethlehem”
that protects against preventable
boredom, going to the movies
ensures a thing to do, it is something
to put in your calendar. You can
use it as a crutch. You can say, hey,
I’m sorry. But I’ve got plans with
red velvet seats, Bill Murray and
incurable back pain tonight. And
you can’t reach me. It’ll be dark and
I’ll be happy. Or maybe not happy,
but convinced of the possibility.
I take care to treat moviegoing as
a ceremony, one I should smarten
up for: eyeliner, coiffed hair, heeled
loafers. A scarf? Let’s put on some
Etta James and dance a little (to my
playlist called “Songs to Secretly
Dance To”).
Like when getting ready for the
party is more fun than the party
itself, going to the movies represents
everything that surrounds the
experience — it’s not actually about
the movie, though I suppose it could
be — it isn’t usually for me (even
though “Dune” was actually quite
good). And it’s never about the party.
It’s about if the butter has
journeyed through to the bottom
of the popcorn bowl, or the blessed
moment the lights dim, finally
introducing the sanctuary of silence.
Sticky floors. A glorified night
to myself. A place where you are
commanded to turn off your phone
and where nobody can reach you. It
is a wonderfully liminal space where
you feel transported, not totally out
of reality, but somewhere perched
on its border.
~
Who is going to get offended when
I say that going to the movies feels
more religious than church? But
how could you deny the parallels of
a showing at the Michigan Theater:
veritable gold banisters winding
up to the second floor, the organ
playing that precedes each movie.
Gold leaf molding on the ceiling
— a truly divine display. Enforced
quiet. People congregating under
the bright marquee. I pay more
respect to going to the movies than
I ever did going to church — and that
should tell you all you need to know
about my Catholic upbringing.
At the movies, I am alone but
surrounded by people who are also
alone. It is comforting. At parties, I
am only surrounded by people who
are better at pretending that they
are not also alone. Or people — and
I write this with jealousy — who are
actually not alone at all.
I feel less lonely going to the
movies for obvious reasons, but
also for less obvious ones. The
presence of other people without
the responsibility of having to
interact with them is a nice thing.
You’re all connected by a desire,
however fleeting, to see this movie.
To eat popcorn loudly. To laugh at
the right time. To suck the air out of
the room by collectively gasping at a
jump-scare.
Durga Chew-Bose in her essay
“Summer Pictures” puts it this
way: “Going to the movies is the
most public way to experience a
secret. Or, the most secretive way to
experience the public.”
When going to the movies,
I am seeking out pleasure and
entertainment. But I am also
avoiding confrontation — I never
like to interrogate why being home
alone on a weekend night so disturbs
me, but I imagine that much of this
conception has to do with the social
mores of college and conflicting
ideas about solitude. Alas, it’s so
much easier to watch Anya Taylor-
Joy dance to “Downtown” with the
smugness of having escaped than
it is to admit what we are escaping
from in the first place.
~
This
past
summer,
a
“moviehouse” was built on the
western end of my hometown’s main
drag. Its construction was followed
by a minimalist bakery, a tapas
restaurant, and a “unique urban
market.” All of these establishments
were constructed within the same
year, which has given this street
a sort of faux-modernity. Like the
youngest child of five that wasn’t
planned, this street’s end is late and
too young to understand much.
From left to right: ANNA FUDER/Daily, ALUM BECCA MAHON/Daily, ANNA FUDER/Daily, JEREMY WEINE/Daily
8 — Graduation Edition 2023
michigandaily.com — The Michigan Daily
Statement
At the movies
TAYLOR SCHOTT
Statement Managing Editor
Two months ago, I received
an unexpected direct message on
Twitter. It was from someone I had
never met but vaguely recognized
from the University of Michigan
Twitter-sphere.
“I think my roommate found your
fake,” they wrote. “It kinda sucks
btw.”
Said ID was not, in fact, my
fake ID. It was my real Michigan
driver’s license. It had disappeared
somewhere between my apartment
and Babs’ Underground Lounge
after a night out about two weeks
prior. I had been frantically looking
for it ever since, tearing through
my car, backpack and bedroom on
a desperate mission to find it. In the
meantime, I endured the humiliation
of taking my passport to bars.
I didn’t blame the Twitter
stranger for assuming my ID to be
fake. My driver’s license photo was
exceptionally bad. I looked terrible
in it — I had forgotten you were
allowed to smile so it looked more
like a mugshot than a driver’s license
photo, and I was still hungover from
the night before. I wouldn’t blame
someone for thinking it was taken
in a dorm basement with a digital
camera from the 1990s. And ever
since I turned 21, I’ve been paranoid
that my license would be confiscated
at Rick’s or the liquor store because
there’s something about it that just
seems so unconvincing.
But there was something so
stereotypically
“college
student”
about that message that it was
almost comical. It was a reminder
of the absurdity of the fake ID
phenomenon; they’re so ubiquitous
that any driver’s license found left
behind on the street is assumed to
be a piece of fraudulent government
documentation.
Fake IDs have become almost
synonymous with college life since
the legal drinking age was raised to
21 from 18 with the passage of the
National Minimum Drinking Act in
1984. The law was a bizarre quid-pro-
quo that withheld federal funding
for highways from states unless
they raised the drinking age, meant
to circumvent a provision in the
21st Amendment that prohibits the
federal government from regulating
alcohol. Four years after the National
Minimum Drinking Age was passed,
all states were compliant and 21 was
the de-facto federal age.
Suddenly, 21 became the most
important — and in my opinion, most
arbitrary — social division on college
campuses. Perhaps in recognition of
how meaningless the divide really
was, students almost immediately
began trying to circumvent it with
fake IDs. Utter disregard for the
law became the norm. In one study
published in 1996, 46% of college
students admitted to using a fake ID
to purchase alcohol.
For the most part, obtaining a
fake ID is low risk and high reward.
Minors can effectively purchase
unlimited access to alcohol, weed or
any other illicit substance. And it’s
currently easier than ever to get high-
quality “novelty IDs” online, usually
produced in China, that can be
swiped and scanned. Sure, there’s the
small risk of it getting confiscated by
the bouncer at Charley’s, but chances
are you’ll make it past him just fine.
Still, using a fake doesn’t come
entirely
without
risk.
Under
Michigan
law,
it’s
illegal
to
“intentionally
reproduce,
alter,
counterfeit, forge, or duplicate an
official state identification card or use
an official state identification card
that has been reproduced, altered,
counterfeited, forged or duplicated.”
And using a fake ID to “purchase
alcoholic liquor” is punishable by
up to 93 days in prison and a $100
fine. Students have been arrested
for
possession
of
fraudulent
identification before, often when
police officers are waiting near the
lines going into popular bars. In
2010, immigration agents arrested
2 U-M students and 1 MSU student
after intercepting a package with
48 fake IDs arriving from Toronto.
Regardless, it still seems like many
illicit
transactions
do
proceed
everyday and uninterrupted, as
students hand their ID to the cashier
at Campus Corner, perhaps verifying
their “address” or “date of birth,” and
go on their way.
Fake IDs are so common that it
can be easy to forget the insanity
of the concept: Minors have the
opportunity to significantly improve
their social lives and overall college
experiences by committing federal
crimes on a weekly basis. This isn’t
to say underage drinking is bad or
that people should boycott fake
IDs; I actually personally support
the lowering of the drinking age.
Rather, I’d argue that this fake ID
phenomenon that’s accompanied by
ample, even grave risk is too often
taken at face value.
If you don’t have a fake ID, there’s
a good chance one of your friends
does. One could go as far to say that
the never-ending stream of parties,
tailgates and smoke sessions that
are so integral to campus life stand
entirely on an informal network of
fraudulent identities. And I think
it’s time to confront this network for
all it’s worth and all it does for this
campus community.
These are the real fake IDs of the
University of Michigan.
***
“I thought I was totally screwed
and lost everybody’s money. I was
freaking out,” a Ross sophomore
explained. The student, who wished
to remain anonymous due to fear of
legal and professional repercussions,
will be referred to as Eric.
Eric had placed a mass order
of 14 fake IDs for himself and
fellow Michigan students. He had
meticulously
tracked
everyone’s
information in a spreadsheet and,
together,
their
false
personas
spanned the entire country — he had
ordered “novelty IDs” from Illinois,
Connecticut and Colorado, among
other states.
The real fake IDs of UMich
HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Correspondent
Read more at MichiganDaily.com