Opinion
JENNIFER CALFAS
EDITOR IN CHIEF
AARICA MARSH
and DEREK WOLFE
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
LEV FACHER
MANAGING EDITOR
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan since 1890.
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Why I’m basic and proud to be
I
t’s
government’s
primary
responsibility to make and sell
all the products and services
that
private-
sector business
can’t or won’t. I
believe the most
basic of these
responsibili-
ties to be infra-
structure. So, I
want to take this
column to talk
about our infra-
structure. Most-
ly because I’m
trying to bore
you all to death.
Let’s quickly define our infra-
structure in the local context. To be
simple, let’s call it our roads, bridg-
es and all the pipes that run beneath
our streets. To be even simpler, let’s
just talk about our roads.
In Michigan, 40 percent of the
major urban roads are in poor con-
dition. To give some context, that
puts our state at fifth-worst in the
nation in a list including Washing-
ton, D.C. But why care? The simple
answer is it costs you money. The
average Michigan driver will spend
$686 per year in added vehicle
repair costs from poor road condi-
tions. That’s the third-highest rate
in the nation.
Now drive 50 miles south and
notice that Ohio has better roads
than we do. How is the worst state
in the Union able to do road repair
right? The simple truth is Ohio
spends more on roads than we do —
by just $60 per person per year.
While I’m not a statistician, I do
understand that correlation may
not mean causation. Surely a state’s
economy is more complex than the
health of its infrastructure. But let’s
ask again: Why care? The complex
answer is that better roads mean
more trade, more trade means more
business and more business means
more jobs.
It seems as though when Demo-
crats — full disclosure, I am one
— want to demonstrate a positive
effect from increased government
spending, we point across the pond
to Europe. When Michigan Repub-
licans want to claim the opposite,
they cite the Mackinac Center for
Public Policy. It’s startling then
that both the European Union and
the Mackinac Center hold the same
to be true: Investment in infra-
structure grows the economy, and
the return on investment is huge.
Better roads decrease the cost of
transportation for everyone. That
means a better bottom line for com-
panies operating in Michigan. Those
companies grow and hire more.
And specialized manufacturers and
service providers thrive in that eco-
nomic environment. The effect is so
evident that the return on invest-
ment can be as large a 0.24- percent
growth in the economy per 1-percent
increase in transportation spend-
ing. In Michigan, that would mean
almost $450 million in economic
growth for every $10 million invest-
ed in our transportation system.
But despite everyone’s advice, the
majority of our state’s legislators
in Lansing disagree; Ann Arbor’s
delegation is not among them. The
result of this disinvestment in our
basics is too many broken roads
and crumbling bridges. Michigan’s
general-fund revenues are nearly
the same size they were 15 years
ago — in real dollars, not adjusted
for inflation. I think a lot of bad pol-
iticians are proud of that fact. But
good public servants would only
take pride in that fact if their state
were healthy and wealthy. Seem-
ingly, ours is neither.
The blunt truth is, when it comes
to our roads, Lansing has failed the
people of Michigan. Now it’s up to
local governments, from progressive
Ann Arbor to conservative Grand
Rapids, to clean up the mess — a mess
that can be measured in flat tires,
decreased business and lost jobs.
Now, these are the fixes we need
today. However, I challenge us to
expand our understanding of infra-
structure from one that gives sin-
gular priority to the car to one that
knows the only solutions to a city’s
needs will take the walker, biker,
bus rider and rail user into account.
I challenge us to understand that
the car cannot and should not be
the future of the American city.
But if you can’t trust your gov-
ernment to get the basics right, how
can you trust them to tackle the
exceptional?
In Ann Arbor, we want to tackle
the exceptional. So let’s ceaselessly
strive to get the basics right. Let’s
ensure our streets are maintained
and safe, let’s clean up our customer
service, and let’s pick up recycling
and plow snow on time, every time.
If I can be of any help, when it
comes to the basics or the excep-
tional, feel free to reach out.
— Zachary Ackerman is an
LSA senior and the Democratic
nominee (Ward 3) for Ann
Arbor City Council. He can be
reached at zdack@umich.edu.
Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh,
Adam Morton, Victoria Noble, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Melissa Scholke,
Michael Schramm, Stephanie Trierweiler, Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
ZACHARY
ACKERMAN
O
n a rainy Saturday after-
noon, I anxiously sat on a
large, mildly heated tour bus
that was driving
around
Detroit
for
the
course
History
and
Future of Detroit.
My
anxiety
stemmed
from
sitting on the bus,
pretending to be a
tourist in the land
I call home. I’m a
native Detroiter,
born and raised
in the place popu-
larly known as Motor City, the birth-
place of Motown, the Murder Capital,
post-apocalyptic and, most recently,
post-bankruptcy. Detroit is often asso-
ciated with negative attributes, yet
recent efforts to revitalize the city is
constantly challenging this narrative.
Because few people know the his-
torical landscape of Detroit, and often
formulate their judgements around
personal or second-hand experiences
with the city, their judgments about
the city’s current standing are often
ill-informed.
I’m a defensive Detroiter, because
I always feel the city is being scruti-
nized for its every action. I feel a duty
to be prepared to counteract any nega-
tive critique or generalized stereotype
of the city. Detroit is constantly being
watched so closely, so precisely, that
Detroit’s name appears in national
headlines on a regular basis.
Though I acknowledge that there is
a lot that cities can learn from Detroit,
I feel uncomfortable being observed
as an ongoing case study. By taking
the course, I was able to see Detroit
through the lens of these academ-
ics and journalists who were curious
about the city’s decline, and how it
would manage to climb out of what
seems like a rabbit hole.
A tour of Detroit was the central
component of the course. I took the
class to continue learning about the
history and contemporary conditions
of Detroit. I also had ulterior motives
to see what history, or whose history,
of Detroit was actually presented.
The class visited several neighbor-
hoods and landmarks in the city and
suburbs of Detroit, 95 percent of which
I had visited before and was familiar
with. Whenever students were let off
the bus, people quickly whipped out
their digital devices to collect their
own primary documentation of their
exposure to Detroit. I couldn’t help but
feel like a bystander, one who was anx-
ious to know people’s perceptions of
the images their cell phones captured.
I wanted to know what questions I
could clarify, or what misjudgments I
could rectify with information.
Despite being a life-long resident
of the city, I’m no expert on Detroit.
From taking the course, and even
from taking the tour, I have learned
a great deal of historical details.
Yet, there were points in lecture
and on the tour when I felt obligat-
ed to speak. While I couldn’t recite
historical dates or cite specific poli-
cies that have led to the systematic,
institutional and political demise of
the city, I could talk about what cit-
izens were doing to transform their
own communities. I could touch
on the intricacies of illusioned but
somewhat accurate bureaucracy of
the Detroit city government, bound
by both external (lost sovereignty
to an emergency financial manager
for the city and the school district)
and internal mechanisms (Detroit’s
City Charter).
I hesitated to speak for fear of
being labeled the know-it-all. Insert-
ing myself into the space of my
professor’s authority and offering
commentary felt intrusive. I felt as
if I actually didn’t belong with my
classmates on this tour; I belonged
on the streets, with the other people
going about their day.
This is sometimes the complete
opposite of how I have felt in class-
rooms, where I have been singled out
to speak on first-hand accounts of
living in Detroit, as if students from
Detroit were either the witnesses or
defense attorneys against the pros-
ecuting evidence of Detroit’s demise.
There never seems to be a comfortable
place to situate my identity as a Detroi-
ter at the University — I’m either a
tourist or a representative, a student
or a teacher. While these identities can
co-exist, they often come with inter-
nal tension.
I’m curious to know if this tension
exists for residents of other metropoli-
tan areas. I recently visited Boston.
Being the independent adventurer I
am, I mapped out a plan to visit Bos-
ton’s historic sites. I contemplated tak-
ing a trolley tour to give me a history of
Boston and visit its historic relics, but
the tour of the Freedom Trail that out-
lined landmarks of the Revolutionary
War didn’t include places that encom-
passed Boston’s Black history. There
was a separate Black Freedom Trail
(because, of course, in our society,
cultural histories are not a part of U.S.
history, just a diversion from the main
narrative) that I chose to explore in
combination with the Freedom Trail.
I felt my identity as a tourist exposed
entering into museums and other
obvious tourist destinations. Though
walking throughout the streets of
Boston, I wondered how often resi-
dents of a city get to know their own
history, their neighborhoods and their
people. Do residents travel to different
areas of the city? How frequently do
residents visit their own museums and
cultural centers? How often are we
confined to our immediate boundaries
that we never seek to know every part
of a place that we tie our identities to?
College students are easily sus-
ceptible to being confined in their
immediate space known as the college
bubble. Students come from all across
the world to expand their education,
though they sparingly capitalize on
supplementing their education with
becoming familiar with the area our
institutions are rooted in.
As residents of Ann Arbor, how
much do students know about Ann
Arbor history? How many people
know Michigan Stadium is the larg-
est stadium in the country, and the
third-largest stadium in the world?
Or that President Lyndon B. Johnson
revealed his plan of the Great Soci-
ety at the University in May of 1964?
That Ann Arbor was the birthplace
of the White Panther Party, which is
an anti-racist political organization?
That in 1975, Albert H. Wheeler was
Ann Arbor’s first African-American
mayor? Or how Ann Arbor’s historic
train depot was transformed into
a renowned restaurant called the
Gandy Dancer? Do students know
that the Office of Academic and Mul-
ticultural Initiatives was created as a
result of the first Black Action Move-
ment? Is our interaction with cities
transactional? Are students merely
tourists of the city that supports their
educational grounding?
Cities are transformational land-
scapes, most profoundly for the lives
of its inhabitants. It’s imperative that
residents have a grounding in the his-
tory and landscape of the city in its
entirety, which is why initiatives such
as place-based education are vital to
educating future generations. Being
a well-informed citizen doesn’t just
mean attaining a certain educational
level, but also knowing about the com-
munity that one inhabits.
Understanding your community is
a part of understanding your identity.
I encourage everyone to expand their
knowledge and identity by continu-
ously engaging with their communi-
ties through events and community
forums, visiting historic sites or learn-
ing the unconventional community
spaces that designate the unique
atmosphere of each city. Only through
understanding our history, and there-
by understanding ourselves, can we
build livable, inclusive and sustainable
cities for generations to come.
— Alexis Farmer can be reached
at akfarmer@umich.edu.
Through the looking glass
ALEXIS
FARMER
E-mail in Chan at tokg@umiCh.Edu
IN CHAN LEE
FROM THE DAILY
T
he First Amendment protects professional journalists,
alongside all other citizens, enabling them to print news freely
without censorship from the government. Unfortunately,
collegiate journalists at schools without independent papers are
not afforded the same protections from their governing bodies:
school administrations. Currently, there’s no legislation in Michigan
protecting the freedom of the student presses from administrative
censorship. Without a clear right to editorial freedom expressed under
law, collegiate newspapers, in both public and private schools, are at
risk of being taken advantage of by school administrators and others
seeking to repress students’ free speech rights.
Defending student journalists
Michigan must pass legislation to protect collegiate newspapers
At Northern Michigan University, the
newspaper staff’s investigations into the
administration
and
Board
of
Trustees’
actions resulted in the removal of journalism
faculty adviser Cheryl Reed. The newspaper’s
administrative board provided no clear reason
for the removal. In addition to removing Reed
as the faculty adviser, current managing editor
Michael Williams was prevented from taking
the position of editor in chief, even though he
was the only applicant. Reed and Williams
filed a lawsuit last month to defend their
rights as journalists. Clearly, some sort of legal
protection must be put in place to protect the
free speech of college journalists.
A similar incident occurred at Butler
University, a private school in Indianapolis,
when the student newspaper faculty adviser,
Loni McKown, was spontaneously removed
and temporarily replaced with a public
relations staffer from the university as an
interim adviser. The Butler administration’s
reasoning for McKowan’s removal cited her
accidental forwarding of a confidential e-mail
and her involvement in student editorial
decisions. Even though students from the
paper expressed their disagreement with
the latter suggestion, the university still
ousted McKowan as an adviser. Replacing a
journalist with a public relations employee
is an absurd action that limits the freedom
of collegiate journalism. The administration
acting for its own PR benefits at the expense
of journalists furthers the need for protection
of students that professionals have through
the First Amendment.
According to the Student Press Law Center,
only nine states have laws protecting students’
free expression, in varying degrees; addition-
ally, two states have adopted student speech
rights in their education codes. Of the nine
states with legal protections, California’s 2006
law allowing First Amendment rights to be
extended to high school and collegiate news-
papers from prior review and restraint from
their administration in both the private and
public sectors, is the most extensive. The state
of Michigan should adopt similar legislation
to protect free speech of all student journal-
ists and to ensure non-financially independent
newspapers remain editorially independent.
The objective of collegiate journalism,
beyond offering an outlet for students to be
connected to their environment, is to act as a
check and balance on the workings of school
administrations. Without the watchful eye of
the media, corruption may occur within the
offices of high-ranking administrators. This
combination of education and administrative
oversight is a valuable resource for University
communities to have. Administrators should
welcome the challenge of being held account-
able. Furthermore, just as student journalists
shed light on managerial administrative mis-
givings for the student body, they also bring
dishonest acts by students to the attention of
those with authority.
Censorship of journalism harmfully affects
the education of future journalists. If young
journalists are not allowed to report freely,
they will not properly learn and practice the
ethics of journalism and therefore not be able
to keep university administrators in check.
Ensuring their freedom of speech through law
is the only practical option to keep the college
press free.