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2 — Friday, April 14, 2017
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

 

CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES

Art Opening 

WHAT: The Residential 
College will be hosting a 
reception to commemorate 
the unveiling of an art exhibit 
featuring the work of RC 
seniors, which will be open 
through April 29.

WHO: Residential College

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

WHERE: East Quad, RC Art 
Gallery

Music Recital 

WHAT: Zachary David Crowle, a 
Music, Theatre & Dance student, 
will be performing selected pieces 
from composers such as Schubert, 
Bizet, Ives, Mendelssohn and 
Schumer on the baritone horn.

WHO: School of Music, Theater 
& Dance

WHEN: 8 p.m.

WHERE: McIntosh Theater

Social Psychology 
Lecture

WHAT: Spike Lee, a professor 
at the Rotman School of 
Management, will be giving a 
talk about the psychology of 
mind-body relationships.

WHO: Deptartment of 
Psychology

WHEN: 11 a.m. to noon

WHERE: East Hall, Room 4448 

Pirates of Penzance

WHAT: The University of 
Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan 
Society is hosting a showing of 
the 1879 classic play “Pirates of 
Penzance.” This is the first night 
of the performance series.

WHO: University of Michigan 
Gilbert and Sullivan Society

WHEN: 8 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.

WHERE: Lydia Mendelssohn 
Theater

Clements Library: A 
Century of Collecting, 
1903 - 2016 

WHAT: An open house at the 
Clements Library to display the 
maps, manuscripts, books and 
prints in the collections.
WHO: William L. Clements 
Library

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

WHERE: William Clements 
Library, Avenir Foundation Room

6th Annual Sankofa Film 
Series

WHAT: The UM Detroit 
Center will be hosting a film 
viewing featuring five films 
highlighting life in the inner city, 
mass incarceration and Black 
nationalism.

WHO: UM Detroit Center

WHEN: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

WHERE: Detroit Center

Board Games at Markley

WHAT: The residents of 
Markley Residence Hall will have 
the opportunity to gather for a 
bonding event featuring a wide 
selection of board games and 
WiiU games.

WHO: Casual Gaming Club
WHEN: 9 p.m. to midnight

WHERE: Mary Markley 
Residence Hall

Santa Fe Institute 
Symposium 

WHAT: A daylong symposium 
about contemporary and ancient 
topics in ecology and evolutionary 
biology. 
WHO: The Center for the Study 
of Complex Systems

WHEN: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

WHERE: Rackham Graduate 
School, fourth floor

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Getting ready to go live by 
#TheCube on the @umich 
campus...

Overheard @ Michigan
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“Imagine playing Carillon for 
a living. People would ask 
what you do and you’d be like 
‘Oh, I play buildings.’”

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holy wow I love @UMich

The Cube on the University 

of Michigan’s campus, located 

next to the Michigan Union, is 

a staple for prospective student 

tours, Instagram picture and club 

meetings. Now, thanks to a group of 

Michigan Engineering students, a 

new cube has come to campus — this 

time, in the form of a Rubik’s Cube 

on North Campus.

The project, which was unveiled 

on Thursday in the southwest 

corner on the second floor of the 

G.G. Brown Building, was created 

and designed by two teams of 

mechanical engineering students.

The first group of students — 

Kelsey Hockstad, Dan Hiemstra, 

Martin Harris and Samuelina 

Wright — worked on the cube for 

two years, but graduated in 2016. A 

new group of students took over the 

project this year, with the original 

team advising them. 

The idea for the cube came on 

Pi Day in 2014, when two students 

were hanging out in the College of 

Engineering honors office, playing 

with a Rubik’s Cube. Suddenly, one 

of the students in the office, Harris, 

had a groundbreaking idea: He 

wanted to make a massive version, as 

a competitor to the cube on Central 

Campus.

Harris, who now works as an 

engineer for Herman Miller in 

Holland, has always liked playing 

with Rubik’s Cubes, according to a 

Detroit Free Press article.

“The Rubik’s Cube has been a 

consistent source of relaxation and 

mystery for me over the years, which 

is what I love most about it,” he said. 

“Since high school, I have thought 

of it as a physical representation of 

entropy. By inputting enough work, 

it’s possible to make the cube more 

organized, but its natural tendency is 

toward chaos.”

The idea got approved as a 

capstone senior design project, 

and so, a group of mechanical 

engineering students were tasked 

with creating a cube that people 

would be able to spin from all sides. 

“This is a truly amazing and 

unique kinematic mechanism that 

functions as a Rubik’s Cube,” Noel 

Perkins, a professor of mechanical 

engineering and adviser to the 

students, said in the same article.

Perkins noted the production 

of the cube is especially impressive, 

given the size of the project.

“There 

is no other 

human-

manipulable 

cube like 

this, to the 

best of our 

knowledge,” 

he said. “So 

to be very 

precise, it is 

the world’s 

largest 

stationary, 

human-manipulable Rubik’s Cube.”

Engineering senior Ryan Kuhn, 

one of the developers and producers 

of the project, is excited about having 

a cube on North Campus that can 

compete with the Central Campus 

landmark.

“Now North Campus has an 

iconic cube of our own,” he said. 

- ERIN DOHERTY

ON THE DAILY: NORTH CAMPUS GETS ITS OWN CUBE

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Members of Mentality Magazine pose with the print issue of their 
magazine at their launch party in Hatcher Gallery on Thursday.

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City Council will go ahead with 

a vote on a $10 million contract to 
sell the downtown Library Lot 
to Chicago-based real estate firm 
Core Spaces during its April 17 
meeting, despite the raising of legal 
questions regarding the contract 
by 
former 
Councilmember 

Stephen Kunselman.

Kunselman raised concerns 

the sale of the lot to a private firm 
would jeopardize the tax-exempt 
status of the Build America 
Bonds that were used to fund 
construction of the surface and 
underground parking lots the 
Library Lot is currently used for. 
Should the council approve the 
contract, the city will still continue 
operation of the underground lot.

According to Councilmember 

Zachary Ackerman (D–Ward 3), 
the contract does not put the status 

of the bonds at risk, based on the 
legal advice of Dykema Gossett 
PLLC, the city’s outside bond 
counsel. One of Kunselman’s main 
concerns was that a 2012 memo 
from Dykema was not signed and 
did not carry legal weight.

“Basically, the 8/9/12 Bond 

Counsel memo was written in 
response to the ‘hypothetical’ 
and certainly one would expect 
Bond Counsel to stand by their 
‘unnamed and unsigned’ advice 
on the ‘hypothetical’ cause they 
can’t be held accountable for that 
if the Core Space ‘private use’ 
proposal of the ‘bond financed 
facility’ is found to ‘jeopardize the 
tax-advantage status of the bonds,’ 
“ Kunselman wrote in an email 
Thursday to the council.

Ackerman confirmed that even 

if the legal advice from Dykema 
were invalid, it is insured, meaning 
any cost incurred to the city as 
a result would be covered by 
Dykema.

“So this issue was put to 

rest five years ago, and like a 
lot of things, information gets 
buried over time, especially 
when they’re legal findings,” 
Ackerman said. “It re-emerged 
now, as we’re approaching the 
vote, and the concern is that this 
memo from our bond counsel, 
Dykema, was never signed. 
We have since confirmed with 
Dykema that they still hold their 
finding to be true, and that any 
memo issued to a client is legally 
justifiable and covered by their 
insurance.”

Responding to the email from 

Kunselman, Mary Joan Fales, 
a senior assistant city attorney, 
noted the absence of a signature 
on the memo did not invalidate 
the advice or its insurance.

“Dykema’s 
professional 

insurance 
coverage 
applies 

to legal advice rendered in a 
memorandum to a client to the 
same extent as legal advice 

rendered in the form of an 
opinion letter,” she wrote. 
“Neither the manner in which 
the legal advice is rendered 
nor the inclusion or absence 
of a signature create any 
liability exposure for the City 
or alters the City’s right to rely 
on the legal advice provided. 
Bond Counsel has specifically 
confirmed 
applicability 
of 

insurance 
coverage 
and 

that 
the 
memorandum 

was 
prepared 
with 
the 

understanding the City would 
be relying on it.”

In his email, Kunselman 

suggested 
an 
alternative 

revenue-generating plan for 
use of the Library Lot –– 
building another library. This, 
he noted, didn’t run the risk of 
using the bond-funded lot for 
a private purpose, and the plot 
of land across the street, on 
which the current downtown 
district library stands, could 
be sold for private use.

City Council to vote on Library Lot 
sale despite legal questions on deal

Former Councilmember Stephen Kunselman raised concerns regarding the contract

ANDREW HIYAMA

Daily Staff Reporter

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

