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Holocaust survivor Love it, hate it? ‘Shazam!’ brings visits campus Just use it fresh faces to DC Universe B2 A4 B1 VOl. 27, No. 16 A NATIONAL PACEMAKER AWARD NEWSPAPER MONDAY, APRIL 8, 2019 The student publication of Washtenaw Community College Ann Arbor, Michigan www.washtenawvoice.com Climate No tuition event urges increase for mitigation in-district BY DANNY VILLALOBOS Staff Writer students The Sustainability Literacy Task Force BY NICHOLAS KETCHUM hosted its first climate summit on March 28 to Deputy Editor educate about the effects of climate change and how to mitigate it. The board of trustees voted unanimously on “We can’t get rid of climate change,” said March 26 to hold in-district tuition rates flat at Emily Thompson, a WCC professor and head $95 per credit hour on-campus and $108 per coordinator of the Sustainability Literacy Task credit hour online for a second consecutive year. Force. “All we can do now is learn how to lessen A WCC press release characterized the deci- its effect and mitigate it.” sion as a “tuition freeze.” The summit was divided into three sessions, Small increases will be applied to out-of- each with three speakers. district, out-of-state and international students. “The speakers were picked on the idea that The largest increase will be levied on interna- it shouldn’t just be science instructors,” said tional students at four percent, which matches professor Smita Malpani, a co-organizer along overall inflation. with Thompson. “Each panel had a different William Johnson, vice president of adminis- tration and finance, cites a strong regional econ- LILY MERRITT | WASHTENAW VOICE omy and correlated strength in property values Building on 41 years of activism, “Take Back the Night” participants take to the streets as they march through downtown Ann Arbor. that allows flat tuition. 2019 Tuition Increases Marchers take to the streets (Per credit hour) to protest sexual violence IN-DISTRICT TUITION 0% % $ Take Back The Night in Ann Arbor celebrates 41 years OUT-OF-DISTRICT TUITION 2 ( 3) OUT-OF-STATE TUITION 3% ($7) BY CATHERINE ENGSTROM-HADLEY This year’s keynote speaker, Kevin Kan- Staff Writer tor, a spoken word poet and survivor, talked INTERNATIONAL TUITION 4% ($10) about using their poetry to “metabolize The Ann Arbor chapter of Take Back my trauma.” They performed their poem SOURCE: WCC BOARD OF TRUSTEES The Night, a movement to combat sexual “People You May Know” about seeing violence and violence against women, ral- their attacker on social media. Kantor dis- “We have a nice, strong base that’s grow- lied and marched into its 41st year of activ- cussed their struggle to be the “perfect sur- ing robustly with the growth in the economy, ism. vivor” and the pressure society and social so that’s really helped us a lot, in terms of Dozens of volunteers and community media puts on sexual violence survivors. the property tax revenue the college receives VARDAN SARGSYAN | WASHTENAW VOICE nonprofits organized to create an evening “The only responsibilities survivors through our millages,” said Johnson. WCC professor Kimberly Hill-Edwards speaking at the Climate of education, awareness and safety. have is to themselves,” said Kantor. “You According to the college, WCC is the sec- Summit on campus. “It takes a long time to plan this, we start deserve your joy, you deserve your rage, ond-most affordable community college in the [speaker] that would talk about how they inte- in September and work towards it all year,” now get to work.” state. grate sustainability into their field.” said Kaitlyn Colyer, one of the volunteers The men in the room were were given Nationally, the college’s affordability ranks According to both Malpani and Thomp- for TBTN and a freshmen at University the opportunity to sign a pledge of their well, compared to other community colleges. son, the idea for The Climate Summit came a of Michigan. TBTN started in Ann Arbor commitment to help fight sexual violence According to the American Association of week after the climate reports released by the in 1978 as a rally to speak out against all and speak up to others against sexual vio- Community Colleges, WCC’s in-district tuition Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forms of sexual violence for all people. lence. A video of the poem “Masks Off ” is 38 percent less than average, coming in at on Oct. 7. Nicole Denson, the current vice presi- by Jeremy Loveday was shown before the $2,280 at WCC vs. $3,660 at an average com- If the global temperature increases more dent of the Women’s March Michigan and signing. munity college, annually. than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the result will be ir- owner of MOSAIC Collective MC’d the “This culture of violence touches us Johnson credits steady enrollment trends reversible, the IPCC report said. To prevent evening. all,” said Loveday in the poem. “By dis- and eager community support for helping keep a global warming of 1.5 degrees will require “We have to acknowledge sexual vio- missing perpetrators as monsters, it allows tuition relatively low. rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes lence in our communities, and we need to us not to analyze our own actions.” “We’ve had steady enrollment. And if you in all aspects of society, according to the IPCC do it now,” said Denson. The crowd got charged up and marched look at the enrollment trends for community report. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer sent a video into the streets with live music, a burlesque colleges in the State of Michigan, we are one of The window of time to make these changes message for the activists on campus: “We performer and a reading of demands, to the stronger community colleges, which means is smaller than previously thought. The IPCC have a lot to work to do, so lets keep our wrap it all up. Take Back The Night is or- that our residents from the area put a stronger reports that we now have only until the year foot on the gas, and fight for the change we ganized by the Standing Tough Against value in education and they think that our pro- 2030. so desperately need.” Rape Society and University of Michigan grams meet their needs,” said Johnson. see climate, a2 students. Johnson says the college doesn’t predict bud- get cuts, deferments or other mitigations will be necessary in order to hold in-district tuition flat this year. “We’re actually forecasting growth; it’s going Film Fest rolls out arthouse features to be right in line with inflation,” Johnson said. “We are not forecasting we need to reduce bud- BY ZARA ZANGANA gets in order to help fund a tuition rate freeze Contributor for in-district students.” Johnson said that while risks are always pres- The Ann Arbor Film Festival celebrated its ent, planners at the college take precautions to 57th year last week, drawing 10,000 audience account for them. members to the Michigan Theater to experi- “The forecasting assumptions that we make ence more than 200 films screened at the fes- don’t assume strong growth; it assumes mod- tival. est growth. We always err on the conservative AAFF is an Academy Award-qualifying fes- side,” Johnson said. tival. Winners of The Ken Burns Award for However, if the economy—and the cor- Best of the Festival, the Chris Frayne Award related property values—significantly weakens for Best Animated Film, the Lawrence Kasdan or contracts during this period, the college may Award for Best Narrative Film, and the Best Ex- need to tighten purse strings. perimental Film Award are eligible for an Oscar “If the college were to lose a significant por- nomination. This year, the winners of those cat- tion of their property tax assessed value, as with egories and Oscar nomination-qualifiers were any institution that runs on property tax rev- “On Destruction and Preservation” directed enue, it would have to make some tough deci- by Maija Blåfield, “32-Rbit” directed by Victor sions,” Johnson said. “But both the administra- Orozco Ramirez, “Flowers (Flores)” directed tion and the board of trustees are very adamant by Vado Vergara, and “TROPICS” directed by about [ensuring] affordability for our students.” Mathilde Lavenne, respectively. SARA FARAJ | WASHTENAW VOICE see film fest, b2 The Michigan Theater hosts the 57th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival. A2 April 8, 2019 NEWS The Washtenaw Voice U-M economists expect slowing local economy Employment growth also predicted to slow BY NICHOLAS KETCHUM Deputy Editor Economists from the University of Michigan’s Research Seminar in Quan- titative Economics told the Washtenaw Economic Club they are not forecasting a re- cession in 2019. Gabriel Ehrlich, direc- COURTESY OF U-M tor at RSQE, and Donald Donald Grimes Gabriel Ehrlich Grimes, regional economic specialist at RSQE, spoke “We’re projecting real GDP That slow down reflects a during the April 28 luncheon growth to register a pretty dis- tightening labor market, a at the Morris Lawrence Build- appointing 1.4 percent at an slowing national economy, ing on campus. annual rate in the first quarter and continued below average “We’re not forecasting a of 2019.” growth in state government— recession, and that’s very im- Citing stateside employ- which is basically driven by portant to understand. This is ment statistics, Grimes said the University of Michigan basically as good as you can Michigan has nearly recov- and Eastern,” Grimes said. get, given how tight the labor ered to its pre-recession un- Grimes said he expects job market is in the county,” said employment rate. Washtenaw gains to reach about 1.1 per- Grimes, referencing a com- County has long since recov- cent through both 2020 and petitive job market in Washt- ered; in 2013 the county sur- 2021 in Washtenaw County.

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