For the University of Michigan community, 2022 has been a whirlwind of a year. In January, University President Mark Schlissel was fired and replaced with his predecessor Mary Sue Coleman as interim president until Santa Ono took office in October. The University transitioned out of the pandemic – at the beginning of the year, classes were either online or fully masked and by the end, students could talk to their professors face-to-face again and almost all clubs and events were back in person. In May, the class of 2020 returned to campus for a “Comeback Graduation” and in November, the football team defeated Ohio State (again) in Columbus, Ohio, marking the first away game win against the Buckeyes since 2000.
But 2022 hasn’t just been a big year for the University. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and the right to abortion was thrown into question across the country. In November, politicians vied for positions in local and state government during a historic midterm election, which led to a “Democratic trifecta” in the state of Michigan for the first time in 40 years.
This year more than ever, people took power into their own hands. Lawsuits were filed. Signs were made. Chants were screamed until their messages echoed from Main St. to the Diag. Unions on and off campus rallied for fair wages and better working conditions. After months of protests and the passage of Proposal 3, Michigan voters chose to enshrine the right to reproductive freedom in the Michigan Constitution.
The Michigan Daily’s photographers and reporters have been there through it all. We were in Columbus when the Wolverines triumphed over the Buckeyes. We were at the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. when Roe v. Wade was overturned. We were at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) at 1 a.m. when the last vote on campus was cast in the midterm election.
Before we toast to 2023, let’s take a look back at 2022 with this “Year in Photos.” We also encourage you to check out our photographers’ favorite photos from the year, and the stories behind them, which can be found here: 2022 Photographers’ Favorites.
January
Wolverine fans across the country rang in the new year on a sour note, after the Michigan football team was “eviscerated” by Georgia in the Orange Bowl, ending the team’s push for the National Championships.
U-M administration also decided to start the new year with a bang – or, with the firing of Schlissel for an “inappropriate relationship” with an employee. Students across Ann Arbor gathered outside Schlissel’s house in the freezing cold, many noting the firing was a “long time coming.”
To fill the gap Schlissel left, Coleman stepped up as interim University president, giving the University time to find a replacement.
February
When temperatures fell and campus became covered with snow and ice, February proved there was nothing U-M students needed more than a good snowball fight. Hundreds of students bundled up and flocked to the Diag for a wintry, every-Wolverine-for-themself battle.
Elsewhere on campus, things started heating up when the law firm WilmerHale launched an investigation into the Michigan hockey team based on alleged Title IX violations, workplace culture complaints and COVID-19 misconduct. Meanwhile, Starbucks employees across Ann Arbor announced they would be unionizing to improve working conditions for baristas and staff.
Just 140 miles southeast of Ann Arbor, President Joe Biden left the White House to visit Lorain, Ohio. During the visit, Biden announced that the federal government had committed $1 billion to cleaning up and protecting the Great Lakes. At the end of the month, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation” in Ukraine, with the subsequent invasion leading to a war that dominated conversations about international politics at home and abroad for the rest of the year.
March
After 150 days of protest, U-M administration removed Jonathan Vaughn’s campsite outside of the President’s House on South University Avenue on March 8 — five days before Vaughn planned to remove the site himself. In response, Vaughn chained himself to a tree outside the house on March 13 for 17.5 hours: one minute for every known Anderson survivor.
Across the world, war continued to wage in Ukraine, and the U-M community weighed in. U-M experts predicted worldwide implications of the war, including rising gas prices and domestic inflation. Coleman shared an email with the campus community condemning the invasion, and students expressed a desire for the University to take greater action in helping those impacted by the war. Members of the Ukrainian community, along with members of the Diversity Affairs Committee (DAC), held a vigil for victims of the war in Ukraine. Days later, the University announced it would be divesting from Russian investments and pulling its current investments “as quickly as practical,” including $40 million invested with private equity firm Russia Partners.
After nearly a full academic year of COVID-19 restrictions, the University announced that masks would no longer be required in most indoor spaces on campus including offices, residence halls and at athletic events.
The University closed out the month of March with multiple victories. The hockey team secured its first Big Ten Championship title since 2016 with a 4-3 win against the Minnesota Golden Gophers. After upsetting Tennessee in the second round of March madness, the men’s basketball team fell to Villanova in the Sweet Sixteen, 63-55. The wrestling team placed second in the NCAA Championship. Rackham student Nick Suriano also won the title of National Champion, the wrestling team’s first national champion in a decade. For the first time ever, the women’s basketball team contended in the Elite Eight, finishing the season with a 62-50 loss to the Louisville Cardinals.
MUSIC Matters hosted its first in-person Michigan’s Got Talent, inviting a variety of student performers to help fundraise for different causes across the Ann Arbor community. International hip-hop dance team Dance 2XS Michigan won “most entertaining performance,” Gimble A Cappella won “most creative performance” and Music, Theatre & Dance junior Kiran Mangrulkar won “most moving performance” for his rendition of “Falling” by Harry Styles.
April
April showers brought a flood of activism and excitement to the U-M campus in 2022. The Diag was rarely empty, with thousands gathering to celebrate half a century of Ann Arbor being a haven for cannabis-users at the 50th annual Hash Bash. Before the semester came to an end, students celebrated the nomination of Ketanji Brown to the Supreme Court — who officially became the first Black woman justice to serve on the nation’s highest court when she was confirmed on April 7.
The ninth annual SpringFest, hosted by student organization MUSIC Matters, rocked Palmer Field with the sound of student-produced music for eight hours straight. Meanwhile, Jon Vaughn returned to campus, retaking his post outside the President’s House and once again calling upon interim President Mary Sue Coleman to take action against sexual assault on campus. Vaughn, students and other members of the campus community also marched across Ann Arbor to advocate against sexual violence in April at the 44th annual Take Back the Night rally.
A couple of weeks later, Central Campus was once again filled with sounds of change as members of the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums subsection of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization (LEO-GLAM) cried out chants of “Hey, hey, what do you know, admin’s moving mighty slow,” in light of ongoing contract negotiations.
Legendary NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick also visited the Michigan football team and led a workout at the Maize and Blue Spring Game scrimmage. The month wrapped up with a breath of fresh air for campus as the University announced that masks would be optional in classrooms and on buses for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
May
As spring arrived in Ann Arbor, The Big House was decked out for two weekends of commencement ceremonies, one for the class of 2022 and a “Comeback Commencement” for 2020 and 2021 graduates, featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci as commencement speaker. Four Starbucks locations in the city voted to unionize, and the draft opinion that would eventually overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked to the public.
June
The Michigan baseball team started the summer on a high note, winning the Big 10 Championship against Rutgers, despite an imperfect season.
The Diag welcomed “March for Our Lives” activists from all around Washtenaw and Wayne counties, who organized a march in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. The shooting in Uvalde, Texas, took the lives of 19 students and two teachers, and prompted the over 400 people to gather in Ann Arbor in hopes of ending gun violence.
June also saw the country celebrate 50 years of Title IX, a civil rights law banning discrimination based on sex, by acknowledging the progress made and all the disparities that still exist.
LEO-GLAM kept up their negotiations with the University and renewed their activism, holding a demonstration on The Diag to rally support. Just days later, the University of Michigan Professional Nurses Council at Michigan Medicine also hosted a rally to increase support for their own contract negotiations with the University, prior to that month’s Board of Regents meeting.
The month ended with the overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973), the landmark Supreme Court ruling that had set precedent for the right to an abortion in America. The removal triggered many abortion bans to go back into place leaving states to decide the fate of reproductive rights as well as an increase in activism for reproductive rights across the country.
July
After a long selection process, the University announced that Santa Ono would become the University’s 15th President. U-M President Santa Ono was a former president of the University of Cincinnati and the University of British Columbia.
Ono sat down with the Daily on his first day as President to discuss goals for his tenure. Ono said he wants to build a foundation of trust: to listen and work together to understand concerns across the campus community.
Marking the end of July, Lollapalooza – one of the largest music festivals in the world – was held at Grant Park in Chicago. Over 400,000 attendees, including several U-M students, gathered to celebrate summer by jamming out to headliners like Machine Gun Kelly and Italian band Måneskin.
August
August held bittersweet summer endings for many and brought U-M students back to the Diag as the fall 2022 semester kicked into full swing. Meanwhile, LEO-GLAM was hard at work ratifying their first contract with the University of Michigan.
On July 28, eight months of negotiations ended when 98.4% of LEO-GLAM members approved the contract, which gave librarians, archivists and curators an overall salary increase and clarified policies on workload and remote work.
Mid-August, the Michigan Nurses Association filed a lawsuit against the University amid negotiations with the University of Michigan Professional Nurses Council. The suit alleges that the administration violated state law by refusing to negotiate with the union over nurses’ workload.
Over at the Michigan hockey team, the WilmerHale investigation report was disclosed. The report included claims of harassment and bullying of support staffers and players within the program. Michigan Athletics Director Warde Manuel ultimately decided to fire Michigan coach Mel Pearson.
Off the ice, Michigan athletics lost the most successful coach in NCAA history when Michigan softball coach Carol Hutchins retired. After 38 seasons and 1,707 career victories leading the Wolverines, Hutchins established herself as a trailblazer and pioneer for women in sports.
September
As the leaves changed colors and students settled into campus, it was time for everyone’s favorite time of year – Michigan football season. The season started with a dominant win against Colorado State, 51-7, but tension was in the air over who would earn the coveted starting quarterback position.
The decision was ultimately up to Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, and after reviewing the performances of both senior quarterback Cade McNamara and sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy over the first two games, McCarthy secured the position.
On central campus, students had to redirect their normal route to classes due to ongoing construction on State Street, and multiple locations across campus offered the new COVID-19 bivalent booster vaccine. The University Health Service (UHS) partnered with Walgreens to set up pop-up bivalent booster and flu shot clinics for all U-M students, faculty and staff hoping to combat the “high” transmission levels at the time.
September also marked milestones for two pressing issues on campus. A $490 million settlement between the University and survivors of late U-M athletic doctor Robert Anderson was approved and finalized, more than two years after the federal lawsuit was filed in June 2020. Additionally, the Michigan Nurses Association-University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council (MNA-UMPNC) announced a tentative contract agreement with Michigan Medicine after over six months of negotiations. The tentative agreement addresses concerns about overworking and understaffing.
October
University President Santa Ono took office on Oct. 14, becoming the third person to serve in the role in 2022. Ono wasn’t the only president to come to Michigan in October — former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama appeared at rallies to campaign for their respective party candidates. As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Tudor Dixon sparred in two gubernatorial debates, campus community members debated the ethics of feeding the squirrels.
With abortion access on the November ballot, activists and elected officials alike paid visits to Ann Arbor to rally for reproductive rights. Artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh installed six murals across campus to amplify the experiences of students of Color. Former DTE Energy CEO Garry Anderson spoke at the Ross School of Business as sustainability advocates and public power supporters protested. On Halloween, Ulrich’s bookstore closed after 88 years, while Harbaugh and other Wolverines weighed in on the tunnel incident following a win over Michigan State.
November
Leading up to Election day, Bernie Sanders, Gov. “Big Gretch” Whitmer and Pete Buttigieg all arrived in Ann Arbor to get out the vote on campus. The historic Nov. 8 midterm elections saw hours-long lines at on-campus voting stations, the passage of reproductive rights initiative Proposal 3 and resounding wins by Michigan Democrats as they reclaimed a statewide trifecta for the first time in 40 years.
The Black Student Union kicked off their “More Than Four” campaign on the Diag, calling on the University to increase Black student enrollment and support Black students on campus. The Graduate Employees’ Organization also took to the Diag to rally ahead of their 2023 contract bargaining. Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro received mixed reactions after speaking at the Rackham Auditorium. To round off the month, the Wolverines triumphed over Ohio State for the second year in a row.
December
As temperatures dipped under the pressure of the looming winter, flurries covered Ann Arbor, turning the turf at the Big House white. After beating the Buckeyes for the second time in two years and earning 12 consecutive wins, the Michigan football team faced Purdue for the Big Ten Championship game in Indianapolis. Ultimately, the Wolverines secured their second consecutive Big Ten Championship for the first time in over a decade.
The Michigan Daily photo, news and web staff can be reached at photo@michigandaily.com, news@michigandaily.com and webteam@michigandaily.com.