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

