Wednesday, February 4, 2015 // The Statement
6B
W
hen West Quad Residence Hall reopens next semes-
ter, residents will have to walk into another Ann
Arbor city ward just to eat breakfast. Despite being
across the street, South Quad Residence Hall and West Quad
are in different wards — meaning they have separate represen-
tatives for Ann Arbor City Council. Situations like these arise
across the University as all five of Ann Arbor’s wards converge
on the Central Campus area.
In Ann Arbor, the wards are used to determine representa-
tion on city council. There are two city council members to rep-
resent each of the five wards. The Ann Arbor City Council is the
governing body of Ann Arbor and decides a number of impor-
tant issues from taxation to local smoking policies.
The general shape of the wards is no accident. The Ann Arbor
City Charter calls for the wards to have “the general character
of a pieshaped [sic] segment of the City” focused “near the center
of the city.” It has been this way since an amendment was passed
in the election of 1967. The ward map seems, on its face, to cut up
the student population of Ann Arbor into multiple wards. The
Michigan Daily wanted to see if this was actually true.
To come up with the distribution of students across the city,
we cross-referenced public voter registration records for the
city of Ann Arbor, which include every voter’s full name and
address, with the University’s MCommunity campus directory.
While some students may have common names that incorrectly
matched with voters, we only looked at voters that registered
within the last 10 years whose full name matched exactly with
someone holding a current student designation.
Through this analysis, we were able to create a map of the
general distribution of students registered to vote in Ann Arbor.
This map clearly shows that no more than 29.4 percent of the
student population is contained within any one ward — despite a
clear concentration of students in certain areas of the city.
While we only found approximately 7,000 registered student
voters in Ann Arbor, for this analysis we assumed that their
general distribution is consistent with the overall distribution
of students across Ann Arbor. To see how this plays out with
the overall number of students on campus (43,710) we can sub-
tract international students ineligible to vote (9,047 as of 2014,
according to the International Center) as well as students under
18 in September (approximately 750 according to the University
Housing). This leaves us with about 34,000 students in a city of
about 117,000.
Given that there were only 37,098 votes cast in the most
recent November election in Ann Arbor, this is no insignificant
number. Despite this, multiplying our 34,000 estimate by the
distribution of students in each ward doesn’t result in a student
majority in a single ward.
If there is any doubt about where students are concentrated,
one look at our map should put that to rest. Traditional student
housing areas including Hill Street and South Forest Avenue
south of campus, Kerrytown north of campus, and the Geddes
and Oxford area east of campus all show clear student popula-
tions. A quick glance also shows that each of these areas is in a
different city ward.
It seems clear that the Ann Arbor ward map has the effect
of splitting the student vote, but there isn’t much student vote
to speak of. Out of the 7,000 students registered to vote in Ann
Arbor, only 1,900 voted in the most recent Ann Arbor election.
This raises multiple questions: if students aren’t going to show
up at the polls, do they deserve a dedicated ward? Or is it even
worth it for students to vote in Ann Arbor if their interests are
clearly split between wards?
Will Leaf has a unique perspective in this debate. An Ann
Arbor resident and University alum, Leaf was the co-chair of
the Mixed Use Party, a political group focused on a relaxed zon-
ing code in the city and ran several students for City Council in
the 2013 elections.
Beyond the apparent lack of engagement with local politics,
many feel that students do not have enough of a long-term stake
in the Ann Arbor area to warrant any type of voting accommo-
dation. Leaf disagrees. He believes that students’ unique posi-
tion as residing in Ann Arbor without strong ties to property
ownership actually gives them a longer-term perspective on
issues like the environment and property development.
This is not to say that when students vote, their votes are bet-
ter or worse — just different. However, Leaf feels they’re not
as different as they seem. He spoke of campaigning with the
Mixed Use Party and trying to appeal to student voters on issues
of alcohol and student housing, that they often were more inter-
ested in the same issues as the rest of Ann Arbor.
He painted a picture that was far from the idea of the radical
student liberal or uncaring college student, and suggested more
that increased student involvement was possible, albeit unlikely,
in the city.
High student participation recently became a reality at the
University of California- Berkeley.
The City Council in Berkeley passed a city charter change
that enacts a map including a student-majority ward into law.
One of the organizers of the campaign, Berkeley alum Safeena
Mecklai, explained that it was a lengthy process.
In some ways, their situation looked similar to what we’ve
described here. Students were split among the city wards and
weren’t able to have much representation in local government,
which ultimately resulted in tensions between students and the
city.
Mecklai recounted how they argued for a student ward large-
ly on the basis of it being beneficial for both students and the
city as a whole. With a government more responsive to student
needs in the campus area, those issues became more likely to
be addressed, and the issues less spread between different con-
stituencies.
But the ward change was no magic bullet. Once students had
a more consolidated representation, they had to register and
vote to maintain it. Mecklai spoke of a concerted effort to reg-
ister students to vote, not just anywhere, but in Berkeley specifi-
cally.
She believes both the years-long process of creating the ward
and the final ward itself made a substantial change in city poli-
tics. Students are now more engaged, and government leaders
listen to them as a valuable stakeholder.
What would that look like in Ann Arbor? While it’s difficult
to speculate on the impact on town-gown relations, there is a
way to see what the actual map would look like. It’s a bit more
difficult in Ann Arbor than Berkeley, particularly because of the
split between North and Central Campuses, but we believe it’s
an idea worth discussing. To take this beyond hypothetical, we
created a map using a mix of census data and the data we’ve col-
lected to make a potential student ward that holds about 4,000
of the 7,000 students.
Continuing with the same distribution we’ve been using, that
would make students about 19,500 of 23,000 total residents in
the ward — a definite supermajority.
Creating a student-majority ward would be no easy task.
Most likely a City Charter amendment would be required and
then an entirely new ward map would need to be created and
approved by the City Council.
While no proposal is perfect, Berkeley’s example as well as
pure appearance would suggest that a more concentrated stu-
dent ward would be worth examining further. Maybe students
would not be able to sustain a ward, but with a chance at repre-
sentation, at least they would have more of a reason to vote.
Drawing the Vote: Ann Arbor city wards split students
by Austen Hufford and Patrick Sier, For the Statement
AUSTEN HUFFORD AND PATRICK SIER/Daily
Ann Arbor’s wards are drawn so that students constitute less
than 30 percent of inhabitants in each one. Here, we show a map
of the current wards (above) and a map that we drew to include
a proposed student ward (below) as seen in Berkeley. Both maps
are overlaid with estimated student distributions. For interactive
versions of these maps, visit michigandaily.com/the-statement.