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who Tanner knew from high school.
Tanner and her team's desires came at a conveniently fortu-
itous time. The state had just passed Proposal 2, a ballot initia-
tive that ended affirmative action, which meant the University
had to look for away to continue its commitment to racial diver-
sity in what Ward called a "newly restrictive context."
The University had also recently opened the Detroit Center
on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit, which would even-
tually provide the home base for the Semester in Detroit pro-
gram headquarters.
The four students spent the winter 2007 semester in weekly
meetings, and in May, Tanner, McCullagh and Nelson graduated
knowingthey would never be able to participate in the program
they had spent their senior years creating. It was Sagdeo who
assembled a new team to push for another year with the hope of
launching the program during the winter 2009 semester.
On the final day of the Semester in Detroit program in 2009,
Tanner returned to Detroit to sit in on the class in which stu-
dents discussed the impact the city had on their lives and the
changes they helped to bring about that term.
"I just remember being so happy," Tanner said. "It wasn't
faculty-driven, it wasn't administrative-driven, it was students
saying, 'We want to live and learn and work in Detroit' ... Just to
see that actually happen made meso happy."
Still in its infancy, the program has made its mark in Detroit -
more than half of the graduates have returned to live and work
in the city. And with the momentum the program has gained, it
will be launching its first spring semester in Detroit this May.
WE ARE NOT MISSIONARIES. WE ARE NOT
SAVIORS. WE AREN'T FIXING THE CITY.
Semester in Detroit Program Director Craig Regester sits at
his desk, leaning forward to make his point. He says it again. His
brown-rimmed glasses lay atop the bridge of his nose and his
dark brown hair carelessly tousled. He's a younger man with a
family. His wife and two young children smile at him constantly,
from a portrait pinned to the bulletin board behind his com-
puter.
On the opposite wall stands his bookshelf lined with pieces
of literature and novels. When he attended the University, he
wanted to be a teacher. He applied to be a volunteer with Teach
for America in New York City, but there was something about
Detroit that was drawing him there.
In college, he organized the University's first-ever Alterna-
tive Spring Break trip to Detroit where he and 12 other students
worked within the city for one week. The more he realized how
far Detroit felt from Ann Arbor, the less he wanted to travel the
distance to New York.
Before inviting me into his office, I sat ina classroom with his
19 students. They were participating in one of their first semi-
nars where they reflect upon their experiences within the city.
It was one of Tanner's demands when she came up with the idea
for the program - that students have the opportunity to share
their experiences.
I entered the room an hour into the meeting and was able
to catch the tail end of the first day's task. Regester had the
students collaborate based on their internship's mission state-
ment and discuss how the internships could use each other as
resources.
It seemed straightforward enough.
The next task became more involved. Their first assignment
from the program was to ride a Detroit Public Transportation
bus and reflect upon their experience.
A few girls had ridden the bus together and said they felt like
fools for not knowing how to use their passes. They fumbled
at the card reader until eventually the bus driver waved them
through, and they didn't have to pay. Another student in the
program rode the bus at night by himself, and a few students
looked impressed. The other young man in the program had
met an interesting older individual and conversed with him the
I think Detroit's
voice is what' s
been missing in my 7
personal curriculum.
entire ride. Finally, another girl had seen Eminem on her bus
ride.
"You have to spend some time in the city to really begin to
understand it, as you would in any city," Regester told me later
when we were sitting in his office.
"I would argue that in Detroit, it's a more complicated place
to understand than most urban areas. It's a city of extremes - of
really high highs and really low lows, but lots in between. And
that kind of experience, or identity of the city, lends itself to
being caricatured in many inaccurate ways - overstating and
romanticizingthe heyday and overstating or romanticizingthe
low points," Regester continued.
Detroit isn't broken, and it doesn't need fixing, Regester said.
He saw the confusion in my face and heard the skepticism in my
voice. And as per the professor in him, he jumped at the chance
to teach me.
"This is not a program for people who are coming in here to
save Detroit. We're not saviors, we're not missionaries," he stat-
ed in a patient voice.
"Sometimes there's this very romantic idea that we're going
to go in there and fixthings. Now, clearly what we're tryingto do
is to become part of solutions and contribute, it's not like there
isn't a common project - helping Detroit to become a better
place, but there's alot of assumptionsbehind that idea of fixing."
Regester was not talking about his job. He was talking about
the city he loves, and he was talking about his home. When he
talks about the future of the city, he sees the future of his chil-
dren - the two young children smiling back at him in the por-
trait.
HEY! DO YOU HAVE A DOLLAR?
On one of the first days that LSA senior Kit Solowy moved
into her dormitory at Wayne State University she was walking
down the street and talking on her cell phone to her mom when
a homeless man approached her asking for spare change.
She laughed as she recalled how her mom "freaked out," but
maintains that she was simply concerned.
"Well, should she be?" I asked.
Solowy stops. She looked for the right words to say. It was one
of the few times she pauses duringthe 30-minute interview.
"I guess you could get really scared if you let yourself," she
said quietly, but gained momentum with every sentence. "But
ultimately, I think people are good and that they want to help
you. People aren't scary. And I think Detroit is an easy place to
figure that out because it's such an amazing community that
engages with you as you walk down the street."
Solowy is spending this semester working at the Matrix The-
atre Company, a small 50-person theater in Southwest Detroit.
The street is quiet and the two-story brick building neighbors
two empty lots.
At the theater, her main projects are working with a com-
munity-involved story-telling group that will eventually write
a play and creating a marshland security project that promotes
the protection of natural spaces in Detroit. She explains that
the city was once an ecologically-rich marshland, but with the
amount of pollution and the empty lots that are being paved
over, the city is losingthe wildlife it once had.
Solowy went on to tell me about a fellow student who is
interning with a state official who fought to havea handicapped
man's water turned back on after the state turned it off.
It was one of those "real change" moments, she said.
She was genuinely proud and happy for her classmate and for
this man she didn't know. I asked her about her "real change
moment."
She believes it will come when her marshland security proj-
ect is completed. It will end with her and other community
volunteers putting on a surprise performance, also known as
guerrilla theater performances, dressed in frog masks to pro-
mote ecological awareness throughout the city.
"Frogs?" I asked, not sure I heard her correctly.
She led me out of the theater and up the narrow staircase
to show me the molds she made for the frog masks. Four large
lumps of newspaper sit wrapped in clear tape and saran wrap.
She explains each species - tree frog, bull frog - while point-
ing to each mask.
She told me that people have told her that the guerrilla the-
ater performance is unrealistic. People believe there won't be
enough masks completed, there won't be enough volunteers and
the community won't appreciate the message of the theater.
See DETROIT Pze B3
The foam nestled at the cop of the green mug. It was
my first time tasting Mexican hot chocolate, and I
was told I must try it from this corner coffee shop in
Southwest Detroit.
I sat inside the warm building as people passed by the large
windows going about their business. Some were carrying brief-
cases, others, all their possessions.
Sitting at the wrought iron table and brushing the cold, rough
surface with my elbows, I brought the mug to my mouth. The
hint of cinnamon in the hot chocolate surprised me. I hadn't
expected to taste the extra spice in the drink I thought I knew
so well. I wondered why I never thought of putting the two
together before. I sipped on my drink and made sure to thank
the owner before leaving.
"Come back anytime," he told me, his Mexican accent float-
ing on his words like the cinnamon on the chocolate.
I smiled, turned and walked out the door. The burst of cold
immediately made my eyes water and my body long to go back
into the coffee shop. The wind whipped at me, even throughmy
down jacket. In the distance, I could see the bridge that leads
east to Canada, and Iknew 40 mileswest, my friends and family
were in Ann Arbor.
[ was in the middle of those two places, standing on a street
corner in Detroit. "'
It is a city of circumstance built by the Industrial Age and
torn down by the media. It is a city that is, as some people say,
past its heyday and devoid of potential.
It is a city of boarded windows and empty streets, where
vacant lots serve asa constant reminder of what is said tobe the
substance of the city.
It is a city where Martin Luther King Jr.'s name is given to
a street where homeless men and women wait in line at soup
kitchens.
Like all cities, there is danger and war, pain and death.
But there are also the musical undertones, environmental
activists, political thought and social change.
And in the midst of all of this are 19 University of Michigan
students studying with the University's Semester in Detroit
Program.
They watch, from within, a city making strides toward
improvement and reinventing itself.
What they see is a city that is unexpectedly welcoming and
surprisinglyunique.
REACHING OUT TO THE CITY
Vhy do wehave a student program in Washington D.C, ut
na etroit? Why is it sMiicult foar t tt to meaningfully
engage in Detroit?"
It was the fall of 2006 when LSA senior Rachael Tanner was
sitting in Prof. Stephen Ward's Urban and Community Studies
course that she began asking these questions.
She had traveled to Washington, D.C. with the University's
Public Service Intern Program, she had been to Jamaica with
the Global Intercultural Experience for Undergraduates, and
she studied abroad in Salamanca, Spain, but never to anywhere
else inside the United States.
During her junior year she visited Detroit through two of
her political science courses, but didn't have an extended stay,
which limited her opportunities for involvement in the Detroit
community.
For her final project that semester, Tanner presented the idea
of an academic exchange program in Detroit. She envisioned a
program where students took classes and lived at Wayne State
University, where students spent 16hours each week working in
the community, and where students began to interact with the
city she was beginning to understand.
Three of Tanner's classmates jumped at the opportunity to
spearhead the program's development. She was joined by LSA
seniors Molly McCullagh and Jaime Nelson, with whom she
had worked with on an alternative springbreak trip and an anti-
Proposal2campaign, respectively, and LSA junior AditiSagdeo,