" " " " " 0 0 10Fbuay 21 - h - - .. . S.Wedesay Wednesday, February 3, 2010 The Statement 7 ABOUTCAMPUS- the statement Magazine Editor:. Trevor Calero Editor in Chief Jacob Smilovitz Managing Editor: Matt Aaronson Deputy Editor Allie White Designers: Sara Boboltz Corey DeFever Photo Editor: Jed Moch Copy Editors: Erin Flannery Danqing Tang Cover photo: Jake Fromm The Statement is The Michigan vily's news magazine, distributed every Wednesday dsring the academic year. To contact The State- met e-mail calero@michigandaily. com THEJUNKDRAWER random student interview Hi. Is this Natalie? No. This is ... she's not here right now. This is her room- mate, Genevieve. Want me to tell her you called? No. Actually, maybe you can help me out. My name is Trevor Calero. I'm calling from the Daily. Do you mind if I interview you? Yeah, sure. So, do you have a boyfriend? No. [Laughs] Did you have one in high school? Um, yeah, I guess you could say that. Well, I mean ... [Laughs] What does that mean? Well ... I don't know. OK. You don't want to talk about it? No ... it's just. [Laughs] [Pause] I don't know. I know a lot of people come to Michigan and they want to look for that 'one person,' or whatever. Do you think about that at all? Not really. It's my freshman year. Yeah. Freshman year I wasn't looking for anybody either. But I've found it's hard to meet people here, I think. Agree? Disagree? I mean, I don't know. I go out rela- tively alot and, I don't know. Do you date? I haven't dated anyone since I'vebeen here. Would you date? Are you a dating type? If I met someone and really liked them. Uh huh. What do you look for in a guy? Cause I've been having problems getting dates, so can you maybe give me some advice? Are you kidding? Maybe. [Laughs] Do you really want me to answer that? Yeah. What do you look for in a man? Um, OK, um, someone who is kind ... OK. I think I've got that one. Funny... I think sometimes I'm funny. Um ... just easy going, laid back, fun to be with ... That's pretty broad. I think that's a lot of people. Tall? Short? Bru- nette? Blond? Come on, give me some specifics. I guess tall. Do they have to be taller than you? Um, no, but I guess that's preferable. Have you ever heard of the pro- gram This American Life? Yeah. I don't know if it was two weeks ago but they had some thing, the show was about these physicists or statisticians and they wanted to calculate the odds of them find- ing a date. And it was surprisingly depressing, the chances of finding a compatible person. So they're from Boston and they took the amount of people in the city and divided that by two,'cause half of them are women ... Right. ... and if you, like, once you factor in all of the characteristics you're looking for - height, intelligence, age - it's very slim. It's kind of dis- sapointing. Yeah. I guess that would be, especially if you break it down statistically like that. Exactly. So what's your favorite Ann Arbor dining establishment? Actually, this past weekend I went to Sava's. Oh, Ijusthad Sava'sfor dinner. Really? Oh it's great. What did you get? I got the tomato bisque soup. You gotta try the pecan chicken sandwich. My friend was gonna order that but they were out of it. Oh that's disappointing. Where would you go on a date? I know you don't date, not the dating type, but where would you... I never said I'm not the dating type. I just said I'm not dating right now. Oh, OK. If you did go on a date with someone where would you go? Maybe I'd ask him to take me to Sava's. That's probably a good choice. It's a good first date venue, I think. - Genevieve is an LSA freshman. Last we heard, she's still single. LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED BY SAM WAINWRIGHT in the mid-50s, a group of wayward Michigan State hooligans defaced the surface of the stoictmonument with three hig green letters. Ohvi- ously, this could not stand. The "M.S.U." insignia was quickly covered with a coat of paint, and a tradition was born. While the city initially attempted to keep the rock clean - and have continued to try at the behest of graf- fiti-averse neighbors - their efforts have failed in the face of the over- whelming popularity of the pastime. So we're only talking about SO years of paint here, right? Wrong. According to Ann Arbor native THE STATEMENT IS CURRENTLY TAKING SUBMISSIONS FOR ITS ANNUAL LITERATURE ISSUE. If you would like to submit original works of poetry or fiction, please e-mail calero@michigandaily.com. Spin the Cube. Sled in the Arb. Get steamy in the stacks. These are the things your campus tour guide told your starry- eyed high school self had to be done before graduating. After all, what is being a Michigan Wolverine without some tried and true collegiate tradi- tions? In your quest to complete this list of must do's, you've probably painted The Rock on the corner of Hill and Washtenaw. If you haven't, you will before you graduate. And if you don't, you will be seen as a college failure. While you were out in the cold at 3 am. pouring buckets of industrial- grade paint onto the wet surface, trying to convince yourself that you could successfully cover the old coats with your gallon, you probably had the following conversation with your friends/sorority sisters/campus group-mates: You: "Hm, I wonder how big the actual rock is?" Friend: "I bet it's tiny!" As I've asked myself this question before, I thought it appropriate that as my final act of required collegiate pride, I'd answer it for everyone out there who's ever wondered just how deep the years of paint on the campus landmark actually are. What follows is my quest to - literally - uncover a piece of campus legend. To start at the beginning, I'll admit I've always assumed The Rock had been slathered in paint since time immemorial. I imagined a basket- ball-sized stone somehow accumu- lating paint over hundreds of years to grow to its present day girth. Not so much. When I realized my error - start- ing with the fact that the University was founded in 1817, not the begin- ning of time - I headed to the Bent- ley Historical Library to see if their records could steer me in the right tiA _; t _ . k . - < - a ti < direction. ington's birth - February 22, 1732 - Here's what I found: the rock was and convinced the city to foot the $15 initially placed on the little triangle bill to transport the stone to its cur- of grass at the intersection of Hill rent location. and Washtenaw in the winter of 1932. There it has sat, atop a time cap- Ann Arbor Parks Superintendent, Eli sule and cement slab, unchanged this memorial erected in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of his hirth, 1932." I was starting to doubt the idea that paint was adding any kind of sig- nificant size to The Rock, so I looked for concrete, photo evidence. A 1991 article in the Ann Arbor observer featured a photo of the planting of the stone at its current location. Though its surface was paint-free, the boulder appeared fair- ly sizable even from the beginning. Further sleuthing in the Bentley revealed a number of photos featur- ing sororities from the 1950s through" the 80s happily painting a rather consistently-sized boulder. Yet, I still wasn't convinced. Old myths die hard, and I wasn't going to let this one go without some first-hand evi- dence. If it took Brian Durrance two days in the '80s, surely advances in pow- er-tools over the last 20 years could facilitate my investigation. - Under the cover of darkness, I took to the streets, ready to prove once and for all how big The Rock truly is under all of those layers. I fired up my drill and started in on the side, still hoping I'd end up arm- deep in fossilized paint. My core sample? One and a half inches. I stared incredulously at the small cylinder of dried paint I had extract- ed. I could see hundreds of thin layers of different colors, like multi- colored tree-rings, and looking into the hole I had just created, I could see the chalky grey rock just over an inch inside. Guessing that the paint had to be deeper than one and a half inches somewhere on the surface, I drilled into a large bump on the opposite side and got down three inches before hitting limestone. Better, but not by much. I took a final stab near the bottom just above the acrylic stalactites at what looked like the deepest point of paint. I only got five inches in before the limestone snapped my drill bit. Certainly not the endless depth of paint I had imagined. So there it is: the facts. The Rock is actually not much bigger than the original limestone Eli Gallup hauled out of the landfill 78 years ago. Myth busted.E W EdNEdAyS 17Opr $OO WELL DtiNks 3'/$_IZJ A~QEERt 3oM bs WANT TO INTERVIEW A RANDOM STUDENT? Come write for The Statement. E-MAIL CALERO@ MICHIGANDAILY.COM 3 Gallup, found a large limestone boul- der in a county landfill and became quite smitten with it. He decided the rock would make an ideal monument for the bicentennial of George Wash- barring the addition of a commemo- rative copper plaque in 1939 - and the paint. So, why do we paint the rock? The story continues: sometime ILLUSTRATION BY LAURA GARAVOGUA Brian Durrance, he himself chipped away the layers of paint over the span of two days in the 1980s to reveal the commemorative plaque's original message: "To George Washington GRADUATING THIS YEAR? WHAT'S THE ONE THING YOU'D LIKE TO DO WITH THE TIME YOU HAVE LEFT? The Statement is taking suggestions for its first ever Bucket List issue. Tell us what you'd put on your bucket list. Send your suggestions to calero@michigandaily.com.