Wednesday, September 12, 2018 // The Statement
6B
Re: Union
I
n late April, I walked up the stairs
to the Michigan Union, as I’d
done many times before. It was a
warm day — warmer still with the winter
semester finally over and the summer
near. I’d walked up those stairs in every
possible state: wet, hot, cold, disheveled,
elated,
disappointed,
happy,
tired,
content, angry, heartbroken. Most of the
time, though, I was just hungry. And on
this late April day, I was hungry for an
Au Bon Pain sandwich. For two years,
I ordered the same thing, the Turkey
Avocado, but out of fear of becoming a
regular, I’d go long stretches avoiding
the place when I felt myself becoming
too predictable.
But most of the time, each day at noon,
there I was, like clockwork running up
and down the Union stairs, stuffing
my Turkey Avocado into my backpack,
already late for my discussion. A text
from my friend in class would read,
“Dude you still coming? I have a seat.”
This whole operation of having my
lunch in class would have gone a lot more
smoothly if I was a quiet eater. But I
have a habit of getting food everywhere,
crinkling paper bags too loudly, chewing
at the quietest times in lecture. My
friend,
the
“still
coming?”
friend,
would look at me with a mix of humor
and humiliation. I could never figure
out which was stronger. Nonetheless, I
persevered, for lunchtime is lunchtime,
and who am I to disrupt it?
Eventually, I learned to stop taking
classes at noon.
The point here is that on this day in
late April 2018, the front doors to the
Union didn’t open. I tried them a few
more times. In the moment, I tried to
think of a single time in my three years
at the University of Michigan when the
Union doors wouldn’t open. I couldn’t
think of one. I’d opened those doors
from nine to five and every hour before
and after. But indeed, this time they
were locked, and it took me a minute to
remember, oh, that’s right, the Re:Union.
The Re:Union is the name of the
massive
renovation
project
the
University is undertaking to overhaul the
Michigan Union. It will take two years
and $85 million, and aims, according to
the website, to “restore and reactivate
the Michigan Union while maintaining
its historic fabric and reasserting its
role as a vibrant social hub and locus
of inclusivity, innovation, activism and
involvement.”
That’s quite a mouthful. A lot of
moving parts there. Still, I don’t think
one student who has walked through the
Union would disagree with the premise,
that the place needed an overhaul. It
took me three years to realize there was
a piano hall, just to the left of the front
entrance, where I’d walked by a hundred
times before. It took me just as long to
find all the damn printers.
The first floor always felt strangely
empty. The second was easily forgotten.
On Yom Kippur, I’d ascend the steps to
the conference hall upstairs, where
they occasionally held services,
and rediscover that not only did the
second floor exist, but that it had a
pool table and bathrooms and —
during Yom Kippur — a lot of well-
dressed Jews.
The Union was secretive in
that way — filled with unexplored
hallways and dead ends and rooms
and rumors of access to the roof.
There
was the Tap Room
without
a tap, a Mediterranean
restaurant that
sold
Mexican
food,
a Barnes & Noble that
never
seemed to have your
books and that never seemed to
be
open when you needed it
(and most egregiously, somehow
always ran out of Blue Books the
morning
of your midterm).
There
were
couches
that
looked
like someone dropped
them
off from a yard sale and
couldn’t
figure out where to
fit
them; food shops that sold
exam
packets; sober dances
ripped
straight out of high
school; phone booths I did interviews
in for jobs I didn’t get; a tech store with
overpriced headphones I purchased four
times a year; a Wendy’s open late but
never late enough; small rooms for club
meetings I’d attend two or three times
before asking to be removed from the
email list. This was part of its allure —
the confoundedness of the building.
My first Welcome Week, a few kids
I’d met at orientation decided to explore
it. One of them suggested that we could
get to the roof via a hidden stairwell. He
said there might even be a pool up there.
His older brother had found it, he swore.
It was just a matter of finding the door.
We went up the fluorescent staircase
by the north entrance, a little drunk,
a little stupid, making more noise
than those upstairs offices deserved.
Quickly lost, we started aimlessly
wandering around, reading literature
about programs we didn’t know the
University had and administrative titles
that seemed hopelessly bureaucratic. I
did, in fact, find a door to the roof, and
a window too, but both were locked,
and after some half-hearted attempts
at picking the bolts, we gave up and
descended the stairs.
We never found the pool, and I lost
touch with those kids afterward. I
never had much faith that that it was up
there (though the Union did, in fairness,
actually once have a pool). The pool-on-
the-roof is such a classic ploy leveled
against freshmen by their older siblings
that it would have been unfathomable
to believe it. I looked for a pool on the
roof as a high school freshman too, and
that didn’t exist either. But sometimes
it’s liberating to believe in something
because you’re expected to. You never
really know when the pool might be real.
I’m just saying it doesn’t hurt to check.
That wasn’t the last time I’d get lost
in the halls of the Union. It was absurdly
inaccessible,
extremely
difficult
to navigate — as bewildering for a
freshman as life smacking you dead in
the face. Hallways didn’t go where they
should have gone. There were rooms
that looked like they hadn’t been used
since the 70s, and certainly hadn’t had a
design update since then.
Getting lost in the Union was, in a
sense, a rite of passage. We all had to
figure out where the Tap Room printers
were. We all, in our own ways, stared at
grades below our standards on Canvas
in the cafeteria, read rejection emails on
the couches and fell asleep in the huge
chairs in the study lounge with a red eye
from Starbucks in hand — spilling it just
enough to wake ourselves up with the
burn.
Eventually, though, you found your
way through the Union. Eventually, you
learned where the hell the bathrooms
were and what the hell a red eye from
Starbucks was, learned who you wanted
to see in that cafeteria off Au Bon Pain,
and who you didn’t. You didn’t notice the
progression. One day you looked back
and realized it just sort of happened.
Will the class of 2024 experience
spring as tangibly with a Union courtyard
roofed by glass? Will they feel history as
present in the post-renovation “media-
rich zones” as it did in the sweltering
heat of a corroding study lounge?
Will breakups be as meaningful — as
quintessentially college — when they’re
no longer shared with the rest of the Tap
Room, done in those damp basement
corners over Subway sandwiches, in
hushed whispers still loud enough for
the rest of the room to hear? “It’s just
that… that at this point, well, I’m in
college, I’m trying new things out, and I
just think that I’m not in the place for…
something like this right now….” “What
is this…?” they ask back in a curt tone
— masking hurt. There’s never a right
answer.
Can this all exist in a “welcome and
flexible environment” like the newly
planned Idea Hub? Will it be — for all
this talk of collaboration and innovation
— ever so organic and shared again?
Sure. Probably. It seems senior year
has a habit of making people grossly
nostalgic, and I’ve easily fallen into the
trap. I’m a sucker, I admit it. I have no
doubt that when the Union reopens in
2020, the newly designed north entrance,
complete with a glass overhang, will
indeed promote an inclusive and open
experience, as the website claims. I’m
sure freshmen will walk through it just
as I did, looking for roof access they’re
likely to be disappointed by. Maybe that
glass overhang will be what keeps those
explorers in touch, rather than fall away.
What it will not be, unsurprisingly, is
the same. I won’t be around to see this
new, glorious hub of student interaction;
to learn new places to have discreet
phone calls and print assignments
rushed to the last minute; to fall asleep
on new chairs and couches and compose
breakup texts over whatever new food
options are available. And I’ll say, thank
god for it. I was satisfied with eating
my Panda Express while wet, hot, cold,
disheveled, elated, disappointed, happy,
tired, content, angry, heartbroken, and
writing out:
“I’m just … not in the mindset right
now …”
BY MATT GALLATIN, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY ROSEANNE CHAO