City Council was rocked
again
Monday
night
as
residents continued to show
resistance
against
a
$146
million
development
plan
on
Broadway
Street,
near
the University of Michigan
Hospital.
It
was
the
culmination
of yet another episode in
the
divisions
that
have
characterized
Ann
Arbor
politics
in
recent
years.
Though most council members
agree increasing density and
housing supply are crucial for
the city’s development, some
residents fear the character
of their neighborhoods will be
changed for the worse.
At
contention
was
whether to switch the zoning
designation of the Broadway
site
from
Planned
Unit
Development
to
Campus
Business Residential District,
or C1A/R. Proponents of the
switch, like Councilmember
Chip Smith, D-Ward 5, say
C1A/R is will provide seamless
integration
for
high-rises
to the surrounding campus
community.
“The campus has expanded
pretty greatly over the last
two decades. I think it’s
disingenuous to say that the
Medical Campus is not part
of the University complex and
therefore it shouldn’t count
(under C1A/R),” Smith said.
However,
the
highrises
Smith is envisioning under
C1A/R is the exact type of
situation many residents who
live on or near Broadway Street
would want to avoid. There
have been numerous rounds of
negotiations between the city,
residents
and
Morningside
— the developer that also
owns the land — on what the
final development will look
like, some residents are still
disgruntled. One resident said
having
a
downtown-sized
building in a quieter low-rise
neighborhood would never be
a prudent idea.
Another
resident,
Steve
Kaplan,
questioned
the
amount of commercial activity
that
a
C1A/R
designation
would bring, arguing that
businesses must gather around
an area organically.
“We could build the hollow
boxes on the street and then
hope for another decade they
would fill up with hat shops
and bodegas,” he said. “I don’t
think they’re going to come.”
When a pro-development
resident
criticized
those
opposed to the development
as not thinking about long-
term benefits and called them
“NIMBYs,”
condemnation
came
quickly
from
all
Rosie the Robot Maid in “The
Jetsons” and R2-D2 in “Star
Wars” are highly advanced robots
that can clean, prepare meals and
even send secret messages. While
the robots of today have not yet
reached this level of intelligence,
Dmitry Berenson and Jason Corso,
associate professors of electrical
engineering and computer science,
are working with teams of graduate
students in the hopes that they one
day will.
Their
current
research,
supported by the Toyota Research
Institute,
involves
developing
algorithms to make a robot able
to search for and find objects in
assortments
of
several
items.
They refer to the project as
“Manipulating Piles of stuff.”
Berenson’s group focuses on the
motion-planning and manipulation
components — figuring out how to
make the robot actually move the
objects. Corso’s group focuses on
the robot’s perception of the objects
and the surrounding environment.
Rackham
student
Abhishek
Venkataraman, who works with
Corso’s team, emphasized the
michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
GOT A NEWS TIP?
Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail
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INDEX
Vol. CXXVII, No. 42
©2017 The Michigan Daily
N E WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
O PI N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
S U D O K U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
CL A S S I F I E DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
See ROBOTS, Page 3
‘U’ groups
developing
household
friendly AI
RESEARCH
Engineering team finds
success with robotic arms
to boost accessibility tech
LIZZY LAWRENCE
Daily Staff Reporter
ARNOLD ZHOU/Daily
Ann Arbor City Council and the public convene for the City Council meeting in Council Hall Tuesday.
City Council, residents demonstrate
resistance against new developments
Questions of zoning, cost continue to surface in contentious council meetings
ISHI MORI
Daily Staff Reporter
michigandaily.com
For more stories and coverage, visit
See CITY, Page 3
Michigan is one of eight states
in the country with more opioid
prescriptions than people. As a part
of a public awareness campaign,
the University of Michigan has
organized an online teach-out
course to deleve into the roots of
the crisis—the freee course opened
for public access Monday.
James DeVaney, associate vice
provost for Academic Innovation,
explained University teach-outs
are done in a collaborative effort
from a variety of departments
throughout the school and offer
a platform on which faculty,
students and global audiences can
communicate through.
“The opioid epidemic is a perfect
topic for the U-M Teach-Out
Series,” he said. “It is a complex
problem
that
requires
wide-
ranging expertise in order to begin
to develop meaningful solutions. It
is a discussion that is strengthened
by experts at U-M and the lived
experiences of public learners
around the world.”
Opioids are commonly known
painkillers that have a high rate
of addiction, abuse and overdose.
See TEACH-IN, Page 3
New teach-
out to delve
into opioid
epidemic
ACADEMICS
Participants, experts to
explore national health
emergency in free course
RENATA TERRAZZAN
For The Daily
University
of
Michigan
police officers are currently
investigating
an
armed
robbery that occurred Monday
night in West Quad Residence
Hall. Three unknown male
suspects were involved in
the incident with three other
student
victims,
according
to Division of Public Safety
and Security spokeswoman
Diane Brown. The suspects
fled from West Quad, but
their
whereabouts
remain
unknown.
Brown said a gun was
brandished
and
property
was demanded in the assault.
Around 9 p.m., Brown said,
three unknown students were
in a resident room in West
Quad. An hour later, two of
those students were physically
beaten by the suspects, though
it remains unclear who exactly
was party to the assault.
Police were notified around
10:30 p.m.
Residents
were
initially
asked to stay in their rooms
as a precaution in both West
Quad and South Quad — as a
possible person of interest was
initially wrongly suspected to
be in the latter residence hall
— but as of late Monday night,
residents were free to move
around.
“There is no lockdown,
and no shooter,” Pieknik said.
“We are still investigating
… residents are OK to move
around.”
Resident advisers in both
halls
speculating
about
the incident initially asked
residents to stay in their
rooms,
close
their
blinds
and turn off lights. These
preliminary
precautions
were lifted by DPSS shortly
thereafter.
West Quad resident Carola
Jansohn, an LSA freshman,
said she did not hear about the
robbery until she saw officers
in the South Quad lobby.
“They said it was an armed
robbery
and
he
escaped,”
3 suspects at
large for role
in robbery at
West Quad
Bipartisan panel on tax reform
contends with hasty Congress bill
See CRIME, Page 3
ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily
University President Mark Schlissel, Former Republican Congressman Dave Camp, and Public Policy Dean Michael Barr discuss the federal tax reforms in Annen-
berg Auditorium Monday.
CRIME
Unknown males reportedly brandished
gun, demanded property from 3 students
RIYAH BASHA
Daily News Editor
Despite GOP support, many worry bill will hurt low-income families, graduate students
With a new tax bill on the
horizon, the Ford School of Public
Policy organized a panel on tax
reform with Public Policy dean
Michael S. Barr and former U.S. Rep.
Dave Camp, R-Mich., moderated by
University of Michigan President
Mark Schlissel.
The
panel,
which
was
arranged earlier in the semester,
coincidentally
took
place
Monday afternoon just as House
Republicans passed their version of
the tax reform bill mid-November
and Senate Republicans passed
their
version
early
Saturday
morning.
Camp served in the House of
Representatives from 1991 to 2015,
and as chairman of the House
Committee on Ways and Means
from 2011 to 2015. Barr served
as the U.S. Department of the
Treasury assistant secretary for
financial institutions in 2009 and
2010.
The panelists discussed different
aspects of the tax reform bills — the
corporate income tax, impacts on
higher education — as well as bills’
potential and expected economic
impacts, and what happens next.
“Right now, we’ll be looking at
a conference committee and that’s
typically what happens after a bill
passes. Under our system, the exact
same language has to pass both the
House and the Senate before it’s
sent to the president,” Camp said.
“These bills are different in many
ways, so they’ll have a conference
committee. Now I think this will
be a relatively short conference
committee because they’re on
this time deadline. And the time
deadline really is (regarding) the
election in Alabama, that they don’t
want to lose any votes.”
As chairman of the House
Committee on Ways and Means,
Camp worked on the Tax Reform
Bill of 2014, which was never signed
into law. He said the bipartisanship
in writing the 2014 bill differed
from the recent bills that have been
passed along party lines in the
House and the Senate.
The proposed reduction of the
corporate tax rate has been a key
COLIN BERESFORD
Daily Staff Reporter
See TAX, Page 3