121 Thursday, July 3, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com ~ekmritinMannDai Weekly Summer Edition Michigan Dailycom Ann Arbor, MI ONE-HUNDRED-TWENTY FOUR YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Thursday, July 3, 2014 ACADEMICS Chemistry prof. earns $1 million grant, set to improve intro classes DETROIT - Like most of the places oo Lyodoo Street, Jody Sackett's houose is small, white and boxy. Her lawn is cut, the yard filled with flowering shrubs. A wooden bench sits under a large tree. But the story of Lyndon Street is complicated. The house next door is vacant. Plenty of structures are visibly marked by blight -their roofs caved in, shells scarred by fire. A block over sits a tract of empty land so vast that a fam- ily uses it to ride their off-terrain vehicles. Some of the residents mow the grass in the vacant lots near their homes just to keep their stretch of street looking okay. Detroit's blight problem is no secret. But for years, community organizations and city administra- tions have struggled to find an ade- quate approach to tackle an issue spiraling so quickly out of control - until last winter, when an army of surveyors from Detroit's newly convened Blight Removal Task Force set out to catalog the condi- tion of every single land parcel. What they found is sure to directly impact the city's efforts to beat blight. But on top of that, the report is also likely to color the ways in which neighborhood alliances, preservation networks, urban planners and residents think about their blocks and the futures they'll have there. Blank Canvas Last fall, the Obama Admin- istration helped establish a local task force charged with develop- ing a plan to remove every single blighted parcel out of Detroit's 380,000 parcels of land, totaling 142 square miles. In May, the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force released a prolific report not only detailing the scope of the city's blight prob- lem, but also laying out a set of policy recommendations designed to both keep blight from spread- ing and tear down the houses that couldn't be saved. The cost of addressing blight on vacant lots, residential structures and small commercial buildings alone is expected to top $850 million. Of the parcels in that group, 40,077 structures and 6,135 vacant lots require immediate attention in the form of either demolition or lot clean up. Another 38,429 struc- tures display indicators of future blight. The report estimates 80 to 90 percent of those buildings will eventually face the wrecking ball. All together, about 22 percent of the city's land parcels have struc- tures destined for demolition. When the plan was presented to the public and city officials last month, Task Force co-chair Dan Gilbert, the chairman of morty. gage giant Quicken Loans, com- pared blight to a malignant tumor "because, like cancer, unless you remove the entire tumor, blight grows back." Sean Jackson is the 25-year-old Quicken Loans associate Gilbert appointed to lead the Motor City Mapping Project, the report's mapping component. Jackson said dealing with blight is in many ways a precursor to improving most everything else in the city, includ- ing education, crime, unemploy- ment and public health. Blight also affects the city's image, especially in the eyes of potential investors and residents. "Having this image of being the blight porn city when people come here and they want to go to the Packard Plant and see the aban- doned train station, that's not what you want your city to be known for," he said. "You want your city to be known for its tech commu- nity or its vibrant downtown or its arts and culture - not for having a ton of abandoned buildings in it." Last winter, the Motor City Mauctioning vacant homes at a rate of two per day. Buyers are required to occupy and fix-up the house within six months of purchase. Last week, the auction reached $1 million in sales. Claire Nowak-Boyd, the execu- tive director of Preservation Detroit, said her organization car- ried out its own building survey last year, in partto inform the land bank of houses prime for restora- tion. While Jackson saiddmost of the houses slated for demolition are the poorly constructed, mid- century box houses, Nowak-Boyd argues there are still some older houses subject to demolition that deserve saving. Last week, the Michigan Historic Preservation Network released a video called "Vacant, not Blighted." "To look at every building as blighted and needing to come down is a mistake," said MHPN preservation specialist Emilie Evans. In neighborhoods like the his- toric, tree-lined Boston-Edison neighborhood, the auctions are helping stymie any hint of blight by reoccupying the street's few vacant houses. "It keeps hope alive and it keeps history alive," said Raquel Rob- inson as she sipped a beer on the porch of her childhood home on Longfellow Street in Boston-Edi- son. For the rest of the story, visit www.michigandaily.com AttISON!FAR RAN D/ Dait Ann Arbor Police Chief John Seto takes notes on public concerns about game day road closures at a meetingat PiAneer High Tuesday. City holds meeting on game day road closures HHMI awards funds to-encourage undergraduate interest in science By STEPHANIE SHENOUDA ManagingEditor The 2,000 students expected to take Chemistry 211 next year are in for a surprise. Chemistry Prof. Anne McNeil was recently awarded $1 million from the Howard Hughes Medi- cal Institute to improve under- graduate chemistry education for the coming academic year. McNeil is one of 15 science educators to be selected. The institute's stated pur- pose in funding each educator is to encourage more students to engage with science, math and engineering and maintain Ameri- can leadership in those fields. McNeil's main focus with the grantwill be revamping introduc- tory chemistry courses at the Uni- versity, namely Chemistry 211, an introductory laboratory course, which she believes are important because they're required for many science and engineering majors and careers and are often stu- dents' first experience in a scien- tific lab setting. McNeil has observed that 37 percent of students changed their course of study after taking intro- ductory chemistry courses, which she attributed to the class's cur- 6 I. a CL AA Seto saf fO0 John Chief, Tuesda and c footbal ing Int game b and Re Follt from th Securit PD Chief John the University, several roads were closed before and after football talks traffic and games this year. Planned modifications from last ety concerns for year's closings include blocking off Main Street southbound one hour tball Saturdays prior to kick off instead of three, prompted by community input. By EMMA KERR While Main Street northbound will Daily StaffReporter remain closed three hours prior to games, both north and southbound Seto, Ann Arbor Police traffic on Main Street will be open led a community meeting after the game. ty to discuss traffic concerns Community complaints expressed hanges during University at the meeting included a lack of l games and the upcom- police officers directing traffic after ernational Champions Cup the games, traffic control strategy 'etween Manchester United alterations for the upcoming soc- al Madrid. cer game, making more one-way owing recommendations streets to create more movement te Department of Homeland out of the city post-game and the :y in 2013 and a request from need for more communication between attendees about what roads will be closed and how the traffic flow is managed. Various modifications, such as the Main Street closure, will occur for all seven of the Michigan foot- ball games this fall, including the Slippery Rock University game. Along with manual control of traf- fic lights, officers will be sent out to observe traffic and report issues, various streets will be closed and contingencies are being considered to deal with possible construction. Seto cited weather and a lack of available officers to execute more extensive traffic planning as the cause for extreme delays, specifi- cally post-game. Another cause of the extensive traffic jam post-game is drivers not utilizing all available See FORUM, Page 2 rent nature. "Chem 211is a class that mostly freshmen take, either first semes- ter or after they take General Chemistry," she said. "The general consensus is that the class is kind of boring and not challenging, because it can be a recap of what students have already learned in high school, and many people lose interest." McNeil said students' first lab experience should be engaging because it's crucial for success and eventual advancement in a pleth- ora of careers. She added that she doesn't want students to decide against being doctors because they didn't enjoy their first chem- istry class freshman year. Though time and large enroll- ment numbers have proved to be an obstacle in the past, McNeil plans to make the lab an oppor- tunity for students to get excited about chemistry by allowingthem the chance to make and test more of their own original hypotheses and creating lab exercises with more practical application, so they're more relevant to students' lives. One of the experiments she anticipates will be popular involves converting vegetable oil used in restaurants into biodiesel. While a large portion of higher education funding is generally allocated for graduate students, McNeil said she believes invest- ing in undergraduate education is important because it's the time that studentsbegin fostering their interests and deciding on careers. See PROF., Page 8 INDEX Vol. CXXIV, No. 113 (P2014 The Michigan Daily NEWS..........................2 OPINION....................4 A RTS .....................................6 CLASSIFIEDS ...........8 CROSSWORD .... .......8 SPO RTS...............................10 I I i a) * - ._ * - NEWS Passenger pigeon Musuem of Natural History unveils exhibit on the history of the species. >> SEE PAGE 3 OPINION Water crisis From the Daily: DWSD must ensure rights of all citizens to water supplies SEE PAGE 4 ARTS Electric Forest Two Daily Arts Editors chronicle their adventures at the iconic music festival >>SEE PAGE 6 SPORTS Beilein's vigil As three players head to the NBA, one coach holds out hope for a fourth >>SEE PAGE 10 I