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Thursday, May 27, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
STATEMENT

Town or gown: the two sides of Ann Arbor

Painting the rock at the corner 

of Hill Street and Washtenaw 
Avenue is much more than just a 
longstanding campus tradition. 

In 1953, Michigan students and 

their Michigan State counterparts 
began vandalizing each other’s 
campuses with paint the week 
before a rivalry football game, a 
tradition that escalated to student 
arrests and suspensions. While 
the vandalism subsided on campus, 
the Spartans tried to get the final 
word, painting “M.S.U.” on the side 
of a limestone boulder in an Ann 
Arbor park sometime in the late 
1950s. The tradition of “Painting 
the Rock” persists at both schools 
today. Almost every time I drive 
down Washtenaw, the Rock looks 
different after a new student group 
or sports team has covered it with 
everything from “Go Blue”s to 
students’ names to political slogans.

But the Rock had a life long 

before the 1950s. If you were to 
scrape off the hundreds — maybe 
thousands — of layers of paint, you’d 
find a copper plaque depicting 
the stone’s original purpose: “To 
George Washington this memorial 
erected in celebration of the two 
hundredth anniversary of his birth, 
1932.” For years after the painting 
began, there was a push to preserve 
the monument’s integrity with a 

sign erected as recently as the 1970s 
begging people not to paint the 
memorial, but the tradition was too 
cemented in campus culture to be 
shut down. 

For at least some residents in 

the area, the Rock represents a 
lot more harm than good. Despite 
its co-optation by the University 
community, 
the 
Rock 
sits 
in 

George Washington Park, on city 
property. For Lauren (whose name 
has been changed due to her fear 
of retribution to her business by 
University clients), a born and 
raised Ann Arbor resident, the 
rock is the perfect depiction of the 
University’s relationship to the 
broader community. 

Lauren expressed her frustration 

to me in a recent phone call. She’s 
one of several local residents who 
have complained about the littering 
of paint buckets or concerns of 
toxins getting into the gutter. In 
2016, Nehama Glogower, another 
resident, wrote an article for the 
Ann Arbor Observer about her 
experience slipping in wet paint 
on 
the 
surrounding 
sidewalk. 

According to the women in both 
cases, they were unable to get their 
concerns heard.

“(Residents) 
resent 
(the 

University’s) entitlement,” Lauren 
said. “Where (the students are) a 

transient population, they don’t 
have 
a 
sense 
of 
placemaking 

because this isn’t their permanent 
home. And the University sort of 
allows that for their brand, and they 
don’t have a sense of collaboration.”

Colin 
Smith, 
Parks 
and 

Recreation Services Manager for the 
City of Ann Arbor, gets occasional 
complaints about the park, mostly 
when paint gets on the sidewalk or 
beyond. He said his department has 
to maintain the park at least twice 
a year, which he estimates costs 
about $500-$750 per visit when 
accounting for the materials needed 
to repaint the sidewalk and the 
labor. However, Michael Rein, U-M 
director of community relations, 
said he has never heard complaints 
about the Rock.

What is remarkable about the 

history of tension between the 
University and the town is how 
seldom it is addressed. Ann Arbor 
is constantly ranked among the top 
college towns in the country and is 
considered one of the University’s 
biggest assets. The school is so 
intertwined with the surrounding 
area — geographically, culturally 
and economically — that town 
and gown problems can seem 
nonexistent.

Ann Arbor was founded in 

1824 by John Allen and Elisha 

W. Rumsey. The two men headed 
west from Detroit in January of 
that year and reached what is now 
present-day Ann Arbor by early 
February. The pair purchased a 
collective 2.6 square kilometers of 
land for $800 (what would be about 
$22,000 today) and opened up 
the Washtenaw Coffee House, the 
town’s first structure. Ann Arbor 
— named in honor of Rumsey and 
Allen’s wives, both named Ann — 
started to expand as an agricultural 
trading center. 

The University of Michigan, 

which had been founded in Detroit 
in 1817, relocated to Ann Arbor in 
1839 while both school and town 
were in their infancy. Less than 20 
years after its founding, the city had 
a population of 2,000, a courthouse, 
a jail, a bank, four churches and 
two mills. The University was even 
smaller. During its first year in the 
new town, the University had just 
seven students and two professors. 
Now, the city’s population stands 
at over 120,000, and the school’s 
total enrollment is over 44,700. 
Michigan and Ann Arbor have 
grown, simultaneously, but not 
necessarily together. 

While most state constitutions 

give state legislatures power to 
provide 
for 
higher 
education, 

Michigan is one of the few that 

mentions 
specific 
institutions 

and enumerates specific forms of 
governance and autonomy. Most 
states’ public higher education 
systems 
are 
controlled 
by 
a 

governing board, while Michigan’s 
15 universities are independent 
schools. Each has their own school 
board that generally supervises the 
university’s actions and controls 
its finances. The governing bodies 
of 
Michigan’s 
three 
flagship 

institutions — the University of 
Michigan, Michigan State and 
Wayne State — are given almost 
complete 
autonomy 
over 
the 

universities’ operations. This has a 
number of implications, one being 
that the University isn’t bound by 
the Ann Arbor local government 
in nearly any form — it doesn’t pay 
taxes or follow the same zoning 
regulations — which, naturally, 
can cause some town and gown 
problems.

“The University doesn’t need to 

follow any of our rules,” Ann Arbor 
Mayor Christopher Taylor said. 
“They don’t follow our zoning; they 
don’t follow our planning. And, of 
course, they have the resources to 
do what they want when they want 
to do it.”

BY LANE KIZZIAH

Read more at michigandaily.com

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