10
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
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