a 8B - The Michigan Daily - New Student Edition - Fall 2004 COMMENTARY Street fighting man - who needs cops anyway? No friends in City Hall ELLIOTT MALLEN IRRAT'IONAL EXUBERANCE STEVE COTNER MY BACK PAGES FEBRUARY 19, 2004 JULY 12, 2004 y now it's obvious, but it needs to be said: The members of the Ann Arbor Police Department and the Department of Public Safety should all be arrested for imperson- ating officers. They drive around in cruisers and wear blue uni- forms. They stick white envelopes on the hood of your car. They'll even drag you off the sidewalk if you're carrying a cup at night. But when it comes to keeping the peace - and that is their real title, peace officers - they're just show-cops: They show up and then they cop out. In my years at the University, I've seen officers harass homeless people, tell a harmless nonstudent to leave University property immediately and interrogate a guy named Silver because he had a "street" appearance. I've seen them stalk parties for young drinkers, empty wallets looking for fake IDs, enter houses unan- nounced. I've seen the inside of a cop car, with its computer dashboard and its plastic partition - I know how many seconds it takes for a court-date to print from their machine and how many months it takes to clear your record. And I've seen them ruin Ann Arbor traditions, breaking up block parties before they even started and ducking the heads of naked, cuffed runners into cop cars - police pressure took the Naked Mile down from 800 participants to a couple dozen in two years' time. I don't know what it is, but there is something about a peaceful student celebration that a cop just can't stand. And sadly, those are the good points because those are the times when the cops were around, as unwanted as they were. At other times, like the frat brawl earlier this week, students have called officers for help and found that no one really cares. They've discovered that the one time we do want to see a cop, the cops don't want to see us. The past week's happenings weren't just a fluke. AAPD Sgt. Tom Seyfried's state- ment that the fight was "childish non- sense" wasn't just one man shooting his mouth off. It is part of a policy to ignore students' pleas for help, to regard serious callers as tattlers with no backbone. Noise complaints, drinkers under 21 - those call for immediate action. But a fight? It will blow over. I had a run-in like this in the early fall when my house had an open-house party. Some wrestlers from down the street had stolen food from our pantry, and when one of my friends confronted them, five or six guys dragged him into the driveway, punching and kicking him. They all split, but the biggest of them returned a few minutes later with a friend, and then the fight really started. The big guy could take on anybody. He had been kicked off the team, so he didn't need to stay below any weight class. He head-butted. Honestly, who head-butts? A Native American neighbor - a nonviolent type who owns his grandfather's peace pipe - asked, "What are you guys fighting about?" and was thrown onto a car's hood, his nose bro- ken and bloodied. A few black neighbors came to our back and were promptly greeted by a word the wrestler must have learned from his parents. More punches, biting, etc. It went on like this forever. After forever, there were hospital visits. It was, in general, not a good night. Somewhere along the line, the girls next door called the cops, but they only showed up after it was done. A cop car had been stalking the house all night during the party, prowling for MIPs. At times, two or three were parked on the street. But during the fight they were in stealth mode, lest anyone know they exist. The cops said they couldn't bring charges unless we gave them names, and when we gave them names, they gave some other excuse. Later, a cop at the hos- pital had to ask for the whole story again and again - the earlier cops hadn't told him anything. Eventually, a report was filed, but nothing came of it. Of course, it's not manly to rely on cops when you should be able to bust someone's head yourself. That is the ethos that prevails among students at 3 a.m. But strangely, it's the police's attitude too. I don't like the idea of police keeping everything under lockdown - in fact I don't like police at all. But if they only did one thing, shouldn't it be to solve vio- lent conflicts? Michigan students com- prise a transient urban population with hardly any social bonds. On top of that, there are people like the wrestler who are mentally deficient, inherently violent and here on scholarship - it only takes one scholarship revocation to make Friday night turn ugly. Ultimately, this is more than just a criti- cism of the police. It's about all the enabling parties who keep assholes around at this university. I admit, sometimes I have the romantic notion of violence against institutions in order to save the individual. It's a fairly harmless idea, much more artistic and literary than it is practi- cal. But there are certain types - the frat brawlers, the drunken wrestlers - who use our institutions as cover for violence against individuals. If the police don't want to stop them, then they shouldn't fake it. People ought to understand that they're on their own. Cotner can be reached at cotners@umich.edu. nn Arbor C i t y Council. A harmless little enclave that deals with harmless lit- tle issues. Why should we, as stu- dents with busy schedules and no intentions of staying here after grad- uating, care one damn about what they do? We have no interest in heat- ed debates about when garbage pick- up day ought to be. Few among us have fiery opinions about the Machi- avellian maneuverings of the City Joint Caucus (aside from the obvious jokes its name provokes). I'd venture to guess that most students here don't even know who our mayor is, let alone how to pronounce his name. Local government is for the aged, the feeble, the trivial and the dull. The sad fact is, City Council members take advantage of this student apathy by passing legislation that negatively affects students without fear of reprisal. The recent proposal banning porch couches is one example of how the Ann Arbor City Council pushes an anti-student agenda with relative impunity. The voting districts of Ann Arbor are gerrymandered to ensure that stu- dents will never get a seat on the City Council. The city is split into pie-shaped wedges, with each con- taining a sliver of the student-domi- nated downtown and a much larger chunk of the surrounding homeown- er strongholds. Each wedge elects a City Council member, meaning stu- dents never have enough numbers in any individual wedge to field a pro- student candidate. A homeowner's most valuable asset is his home, and he will fight anything that could potentially lower the value of that asset (like living close to rowdy, unkempt students). Members of the Council all favor the more perma- nent homeowners over transient stu- dents, leading to legislation like the ludicrous couch porch ban. The idea that students can't even get their own City Council member suggests that they are but a small minority, and this simply is not true. Of Ann Arbor's 114,024 citizens, 39,031 are students. Renters outnum- ber homeowners 55 percent to 45 percent, putting homeowners in the minority. The college feel of Ann Arbor is further reflected in the fact that the 45 percent home ownership rate is significantly lower than the Michigan average of 74 percent. The relatively small number of property owners in the city makes their domi- nation of the Council all the more absurd. There's no doubt that Ann Arbor would not be nearly as pros- perous if it weren't for the Universi- ty. Without students, there would be no South University. There would be no football games drawing tens of thousands of fans into the city in the fall. Sprawl would surely have taken a much greater toll if there weren't thousands of students living and spending money in the city center. Property owners would have you believe that students are a blight on an otherwise pure city. In reality, we're a blight that's holding this town together. The students versus homeowners divide is not the expected Democrat versus Republican battle we've come to expect between the young and the old. The very people who want to ruin what little pleasant Michigan weather we get in the summer by taking away our porch furniture are the same people who most likely have a "Jobs Not War in 2004" sign in their immaculately manicured lawns. They'll gladly vote for Kerry, march in one of the more main- stream peace rallies and support striking Borders workers. Just don't ask them to sit idly while their stu- dent neighbors enjoy their uphol- stered furniture outside, potentially driving their property values down for living in close vicinity to such riff-raff. Any sense of camaraderie between students and homeowners that comes from shared liberal values is overridden as soon as property val- ues come into play. Seeing as students lack the power to vote City Council members out of office, more creative methods are required if students are to defeat the proposed ban. One person I talked to suggested we camp out on couches outside the next City Council meet- ing on July 19. Others have suggest- ed burning these couches on the steps of City Hall - East Lansing riot-style. One jittery, shifty-eyed man I spoke with at the Fleetwood fervently suggested we burn the City Council members themselves. What- ever students decide to do in response to the proposed ban could be prevented if students had the abil- ity to vent their frustration with the homeowners' associations through voting. Until that day comes, stu- dents have no choice but to find other ways to vent. Mallen can be reached at emmallen@umich.edu. Th~e m , g paiW5S1 i 't~e40 4 South University Merchant Association Central Campus' Full Service Grocery Serving Ann Arbor Since 1970 Full line of Groceries - Fresh Produce, Meat & Dairy Ice Cream & Frozen Foods - Bottled Waters, Juices & Pop School & Household Supplies - Magazines & Newspapers Wine - Spirits - Beer - Cigars & Lots More !! VILLAGE CORNER Great Food Gaantefllcd. 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