Michigan vs. Wisconsin

Kyle Shenfeld
This weekend my fraternity and I took a bus trip to Wisconsin University to see some of our friends and to attend the Michigan vs. Wisconsin football game. I had a great time with the kids I met and knew at Wisconsin. I didn’t do much thinking at all throughout the weekend but one thing stuck in my mind.
Wisconsin was one of the other schools I got into beside Michigan so I paid fairly close attention to what was going on around me when I was in Madison. I noticed a lot of similarities and differences between Michigan and Wisconsin that I found fairly interesting.
One of the main things I noticed was the difference in the football. Obviously we are both big 10 schools with impressive and upstanding programs. However, the stadium and atmosphere at Camp Randall was much different than The Big House.
Camp Randall stadium is like a normal professional sports stadium. It is built straight up out of the ground and it is set up with indoor concession stands and fairly technological and modern innovations. The stadium had several extremely large screens that were designed to motivate the crowd.
The most intriguing difference was the modernization of Camp Randall. The fans were constantly glued to the big screen in the students’ section of the stadium. There was constant cheering and dancing. I thought it was fun and interesting but I noticed that all this fun and excitement was greatly distracting people from the game. My friends and I felt like we were the only people paying attention in the game.
At the game the Wisconsin fans were belligerent. They were passionate and cared deeply about their team, which I respected very much. However, I found their actual knowledge of football to be far less than that of the fans in Ann Arbor. After Ryan Mallet played the entire game, fans were yelling Henne sucks after Ryan Mallet threw an interception. In The Big House, the fans know what is going on in the game far more precisely than the fans in Camp Randall
I thought about his for a while on the walk back from the game as the Wisconsin fans yelled and made fun of us. It occurred to me that the difference in fans and even personality was in the setup of the school.
Wisconsin felt like a place where people were paying for the fun of it. The game reminded me of Disney world. It was like a show. It was very urban and commercial but fun nonetheless.
At the end of the day I enjoyed myself greatly. My point is that the reason the fans were so different was because of the way the stadium and the school is set up. In Michigan we’re more about understanding and loving the game while in Wisconsin they were more about having a good time. This is no coincidence considering Michigan is very basic while Wisconsin runs makes an effort to entertain their fans and students with more than just football.

Diversity at Michigan

Hira Hussain
November 11, 2007

When I chose to come to the University of Michigan in the fall, I thought it would very difficult to leave home. Not only was I leaving my family members but I was also leaving a cultural environment. My feelings were mixed. I was very scared and excited at the same time. The first couple of weeks at Michigan were horrible in terms of transition. I wanted to leave right away. I was home sick. I missed my cultural food, my people, and most all of my customs. I felt as if I could not practice my customs here. Until I was introduced to an organization called Muslim Students Association (MSA).

MSA made me feel at home. The people were so friendly and willing to help with the transition from home to dorms. They made me realize that I was not away from home but very close to it. During the religious month of Ramadan they hosted many dinners and prayers in tower plaza. They arrange for a Friday prayer at the Michigan League every week. Friday prayer is very important in Islam. As time passed, I realized how diverse Michigan was. MSA was not the only religious student organization. There were all kinds of cultures that were portrayed in many student organizations. I was not the only one away from home but so many people were. People who were open to the other cultures. I remember meeting a friend in my chem. 130 discussion who was so curious about my culture and my religion. I started to make all kinds of friends. Realizing that each was different. After coming to MI is when I learned about numerous other cultures.

Jen Noborikawa’s (attempt to) blog

I’ve been thinking about the new take that popular culture has on love. So many times, a person in love will let go of their happiness in order to pursue other dreams and become successful. After all, the “American Dream” is all about giving everything you’ve got to get to the top.
Work, work, and more work. Our society is obsessed with stress, and it shows through our addiction to coffee. Time? What is that? Ah yes, it’s that thing we never have enough of. Like Lee Ann said in class a few weeks back: she gets sick, and relies on Robitussin rather than sleep to make her well because she doesn’t have the time for sleep. This concept should be very familiar to all of you; we are all college students after all. This sad fact about our culture leaves me wondering: Have we redefined our unhappiness as our “happy ending” because true happiness has become unattainable?
The movie, “Prime,” my constant stress, and lack of sleep has spurred this tangent of thought. The plot of the film is the basic love story for the most part—classic, funny, and quite girly. But the ending really got me thinking. In the end, the woman, Uma Thurman, lets go of her man, Brian Greenberg because he has the dream of being an artist. She knows that if they stay together, he won’t be able to attain his dreams. I suppose that modern times has given us this amazing freedom to be able to choose how we live our lives—what our careers will be, when we’ll have kids, etc. And don’t get me wrong, I am all for this freedom. At the same time though, have we taken this freedom too far? Have we lost sight of ideal “happy endings” through convincing ourselves that success is a synonym for happiness? (Sorry about the girly topic boys…)

Peter Gao’s Blog

Last week, my psychology professor set up an activity to assess the classes’ stance on a series of social justice issues. The one thing that opened my eyes was the overwhelming majority of my peers that opposed the use of affirmative action in college admissions. Last November, there was a vicious campaign to pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, more commonly known as Proposal 2, which would ban the use of race, gender, and ethnicity in granting government positions and more importantly in university admissions. Michigan voters passed MCRI by a large margin, making us the third state to ban affirmative action, thereby eliminating any preferential treatment in admissions.

As our usual rebellious selves, U-M took a defiant stance against this ban, and just one day after the election, President Mary Sue Coleman, an outspoken advocate of affirmative action, delivered a passionate speech on the Diag in which she pledged to maintain campus diversity, “We will not be deterred in the all-important work of creating a diverse, welcoming campus,” further saying, “[U-M] will find ways to overcome the handcuffs that Proposal 2 attempts to place on our reach for greater diversity.” This later lead to the creation of the organization dubbed Diversity Blueprints, which would work to find innovative solutions to maintain diversity despite Proposal 2.

However, our class of 2011 is already starting to feel the effects that have precipitated from the ban of affirmative action. With U of M’s rolling admissions, Proposal 2 only started to take effect in January but admissions this year reported that enrollment of underrepresented minority groups declined slightly from 12 to 11 percent. I am sort or split on the issue; I believe we should maintain a system of equality so that scholarship is maintained but at the same time, diversity would not be compromised. On a different note, I think that we should make it a higher priority to target people who are granted legacy admission into universities due their families’ wealth and affiliation, for example, George W. Bush who was admitted to Yale because of this legacy system.