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 
news@michigandaily.com and let us know.

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