The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Monday, April 5, 2010 - 5A
i
EMU student dead after State Street fire
From Page 1A
condition, Brown said.
In an interview with The Michi-
gan Daily Saturday night, Brown
refused to comment on the spe-
cific cause of the fire, but said that
"upholstered couches on porches
present an incredible life safety risk
for apartment residents."
Ann Arbor Fire Marshall Kath-
leen Chamberlain said in an inter-
view with the Daily Saturday
afternoon that the cause of the fire
is still under investigation.
"There's damage to the whole
house," Chamberlain said.
According to the release, a wit-
ness driving down State Street at
about 5:15 a.m. noticed a fire on the
porch of the house.
The press release stated that the
witness pulled over to notify the
occupants of the house, but the fire
quickly spread to the interior of the
building.
According to the release, five peo-
ple were inside the house at the time
the fire began, three of whom were
taken to the University Hospital.
Of the four residents who were
not transported to the hospital, at
LECTURERS
From Page 1A
decision to reappoint or not reap-
point the lecturer is made.
But LEO officials say Herold's
follow-up evaluation was met with
additional concerns that were not
brought up in her initial remedia-
tion plan. As such, LEO President
Bonnie Halloran said Herold was
not given the appropriate time to
address the English Department's
concerns.
University spokeswoman Kelly
Cunningham said she could not
comment on the matter because
it involved a specific employee.
However, Cunningham did say
that, as in any reappointment
proceeding, University officials
would have followed the proper
steps as outlined in the Univer-
sity's contract with the lecturers'
union.
Associate Vice Provost Jeff
Frumkin is the senior director
of Academic Human Resources
and the University's chief nego-
tiator in the bargaining of labor
least three are University students.
Bryan Vessels, a University
senior who lives on the house's
main floor, said in an interview
with the Daily that he was able to
escape the house without injury.
"I was in my room in the back of
the house," Vessels said. "I got out
the back door."
Al Girard, a University senior
who lives across the street from
the house, said he woke up at about
5 a.m. and witnessed the blaze as
firefighters came.
"The whole front of the house
was on fire," Girard said.
Girard said that about a min-
ute after the fire trucks arrived,
he saw a woman on fire run out of
the house. According to Girard, the
woman ran across the street before
a firefighter intervened and sprayed
her with a fire extinguisher.
According to an annarbor.com
article, one person jumped from a
second story window, while two
others were rescued from the roof.
Captain Jim Budd, an Ann Arbor
firefighter, said in an interview
with the Daily that he arrived on
the scene at about 6 a.m.
By that time, Budd said the three
contracts with the various unions
at the University. In an interview
Friday, Frumkin said the Univer-
sity typically makes decisions to
reappoint or not reappoint Univer-
sity lecturers at this time each year,
with decisions made by April 1.
Frumkin said he could not
discuss the specific incident sur-
rounding Herold, but said he had
not been informed of any improp-
er handling of a reappointment
case and that as of Friday morning
no grievances had been filed.
Frumkin said to his knowledge
the established process for reap-
pointment had been followed.
"It hasn't been brought to my
attention that there have been
any procedural irregularities," he
said.
However, Frumkin said the
evaluation process is open to
interpretation as it can be difficult
to definitively quantify many per-
formance areas.
"All of these decisions involve
a certain amount of judgment,"
Frumkin said. "People can dis-
agree as to whether someone has
met the criteria or not.",
injured residents had been trans-
ferred to the hospital, but the house
"was still smoking."
At about 2:20 p.m. on Saturday
firefighters removed the caution
tape surrounding the house and
cleared the way for three employ-
ees of the' Belfor Property Resto-
ration group, who subsequently
began boarding up the house.
In another incident early Sat-
urday morning, students living
in The Abbey apartment building
were forced to evacuate after a fire
charred three cars parked below
the building, causing smoke dam-
age to some of the units above the
smoldering cars.
Though the crime alert refer-
enced several fires outside resi-
dences near campus, Brown said on
Saturday evening that she couldn't
confirm a connection between the
State Street fire and the fire below
The Abbey.
Officials are still investigating
the cause of the fire at The Abbey.
Investigators first arrived on the'
scene at about 3:15 a.m. Saturday
morning, according to Ann Arbor
Fire Department Battalion Chief
Kevin Cook.
LEO President Bonnie Halloran
said in an interview Friday that the
University handled Herold's reap-
pointment procedure improperly.
"She made the kind of changes
that were outlined in the reme-
diation plan and then at the end
of this process they came up with
additional problems that they had
identified in her teaching that
they had never ever talked to her
about before and terminated her
at the end of this year," Halloran
said.
Halloran added that this is not
the first case in which the Univer-
sity has used its own interpreta-
tion of evaluation criteria to get
rid of a lecturer.
"(The criteria) are vague. They
can be used however people want
to," Halloran said. "If you have
good scores, they think you're a
bad teacher because you give good
grades, if you have low scores
you're a bad teacher."
Halloran continued, "Things
are very aloof and departments
can use (criteria) however they
want and they're not held account-
able."
Most students were allowed
back in to the building, located
at 909 Church St., early Satur-
day morning. But at about 3:15
a.m. those students whose apart-
ments are located directly above
where the parked cars caught
fire were still waiting to find out
when they would be able to move
back in.
Cook said firefighters had to
knock down the doors of the most
affected apartments - which face
the alley behind the front entrance
of the building - and students
would not be let back in until the
doors could be properly locked or
replaced.
"I don't know if it will be done
tonight," Cook said in an interview
early Saturday morning.
As of Sunday evening AAFD offi-
cials said they couldn't comment
on whether the displaced residents
were allowed to move back into the
building.
Students at the scene said they
first became aware of the fire some-
time between 1:45 a.m. and 1:55
a.m. on Saturday.
Rackham student Robbie Brant,
who lives ina house near the build-
And while LEO bargainers are
advocating for a change in the
evaluation criteria and process in
an effort to make it more trans-
parent and hold departments
more accountable, some LEO
representatives believe the deci-
sion to terminate Herold's future
employment is a form of "union
retaliation," since Herold is on the
bargaining team and was serving
as the team's grievance officer.
"We have reason to believe that
there is union retaliation going on
here in the English Department
and we're very concerned that this
happened while we're in the pro-
cess of bargaining," Halloran said.
Adjunct Prof. Joe Walls, who
serves on LEO's bargaining team
and acts as a spokesman for the
group, said there are details sur-
rounding Herold's non-reappoint-
ment and the decision process
more generally, which he can't
make public, that have made some
LEO officials even angrier.
"We know more details about
the decision process, and what
was involved in the process but
we really aren't in a position to
ing, said he first called 911 at about
1:45 a.m., adding that he doesn't
think he was the first to call 911 to
report the fire.
"We could hear the popping," he
said. "I heard people screaming,
what I thought was fighting, and I
saw the car was on fire."
Engineering junior Saahil
Karpe, who lives in The Abbey, said
he first saw the fire from outside his
window.
"I came home from the bars and
was hanging out by myself and saw
some lights from my living room,"
Karpe said.
Karpe added that he was told to
evacuate the building by firefight-
ers on the scene and called his
friends who live in the building to
tell them to evacuate.
Michigan State University soph-
omore Austin Brooks said he was
on his way back to a friend's house
nearby when he first became aware
of the fire.
"I was walking outside and I
heard a huge pop," Brooks said.
He added that he saw the middle
of the three cars catch on fire first
and then the fire spread to cars to
the right and left.
reveal any of that information,"
Walls said. "There's some things
we know that we can't reveal that
make us even more angry than we
might be otherwise."
Walls said he finds the timing of
the incident a little strange, given
that contract negotiations are cur-
rently underway.
"We think the timing is rather
interesting that this is happening
in the midst of our bargaining and
she is on our bargaining team,"
Walls said. "On the other hand,
this is the time when these things
are supposed to be announced."
Contract negotiations are con-
tinuing as planned, but Walls
said he expects that negotiations
- originally planned to end next
week - will continue beyond Fri-
day's deadline.
"Theoretically next Friday is
our last day of bargaining, but the
contract doesn't expire until the
middle of May so we could con-
tinue to bargain past next Friday
and we think we probably will,"
Walls said.
Walls said he also expects that
Herold's non-reappointment will
LSA sophomore Vishal Shah said
when he got home from a party he
found that his car had caught on
fire. Shah said his car was the far-
thest right of the three.
"The middle car blew up and
mine just got caught up in the
mess," Shah said.
He added that he hadn't fully
comprehended the effects of the
fire.
"This will probably hit me
tomorrow," Shah said.
LSA sophomore David Baum-
stein said he didn't find out about
the fire until he was woken up by
Karpe, adding that if Karpe hadn't
called him he probably would have
never known about it.
"I was sleeping and then (Karpe)
called me and I just ignored the
phone call," he said. "Then I woke
up to the fire truck and I called him
back and he said 'you need to get
out of the building."'
Baumstein said he didn't hear
fire alarms going off in his apart-
ment or in the building's hallways.
"I didn't hear anything," he said.
- Daily Staff Reporter Devon
Thorsby contributed to this report.
change the overall mood of nego-
tiations.
"Certainly the bargaining
team's mood has changed," Walls
said. "We don't know how the
rest of the membership will react,
but we anticipate that quite a few
members will be very unhappy
with this."
LEO is set to e-mail members
about this week's bargaining
efforts, at which time they will
inform members about Herold's
situation.
At negotiations Friday, LEO
bargainers left Herold's seat at the
table empty. Doing so was a pur-
poseful decision, according to Jim
Anderson, an English lecturer at
the University's Flint campus.
"We left her seat open today
symbolically and expressed our
anger with what has happened,"
Anderson said. "It's pretty rare,
I would say, for management to
fire a member of the union's bar-
gaining team during the middle of
negotiations."
- Daily News Editor Stephanie
Steinberg contributed to this report.
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