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Town or gown: the two sides of Ann Arbor

LANE KIZZIAH

Statement Correspondent

Painting the rock at the cor-
ner of Hill Street and Washt-
enaw Avenue is much more 
than just a longstanding 
campus tradition. 

In 1953, Michigan students 
and their Michigan State 
counterparts began vandal-
izing each other’s campuses 
with paint the week before a 
rivalry football game, a tradi-
tion that escalated to student 
arrests 
and 
suspensions. 

While the vandalism subsid-
ed 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 tradi-
tion of “Painting the Rock” 
persists at both schools to-
day. Almost every time I 
drive down Washtenaw, the 
Rock looks different after a 
new student group or sports 
team has covered it with ev-
erything 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 me-
morial erected in celebration 
of the two hundredth an-
niversary 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 beg-
ging 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 Wash-
ington 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 resi-
dent, the rock is the perfect 
depiction of the University’s 
relationship to the broader 
community. 

Lauren expressed her frus-
tration to me in a recent 
phone call. She’s one of sev-
eral local residents who have 
complained about the litter-
ing of paint buckets or con-
cerns 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 be-
cause this isn’t their perma-
nent home. And the Univer-
sity sort of allows that for 
their brand, and they don’t 
have a sense of collabora-
tion.”

Colin Smith, Parks and Rec-
reation Services Manager for 
the City of Ann Arbor, gets 
occasional complaints about 
the park, mostly when paint 
gets on the sidewalk or be-
yond. He said his department 
has to maintain the park at 
least twice a year, which he 
estimates costs about $500-
$750 per visit when account-
ing for the materials needed 
to repaint the sidewalk and 
the labor. However, Michael 
Rein, U-M director of com-
munity relations, said he has 
 never heard complaints 
 
 

 about the Rock.

What is remarkable about 
the history of tension be-
tween the University and 
the town is how seldom it is 
addressed. Ann Arbor is con-
stantly 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, 
cultur-

ally 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 De-
troit 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 struc-
ture. Ann Arbor — named in 
honor of Rumsey and Allen’s 
wives, both named Ann — 
started to expand as an agri-
cultural 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, si-
multaneously, but not neces-
sarily together. 

While most state constitu-
tions give state legislatures 
power to provide for higher 
education, Michigan is one of 
the few that mentions specif-
ic institutions and enumer-
ates specific forms of gover-
nance and autonomy. Most 
states’ public higher educa-
tion systems are controlled 
by a governing board, while
Michigan’s 15 
universities 

are 
independent 
schools. 

Each has their own school 
board that generally super-
vises the university’s actions 
and controls its finances. 
The governing bodies of 
Michigan’s three flagship in-
stitutions — the University 
of Michigan, Michigan State 
and Wayne State — are given 
almost complete autonomy 
over the universities’ opera-
tions. This has a number of 
implications, one being that 
the University isn’t bound by 
the Ann Arbor local govern-
ment in nearly any form — it 
doesn’t pay taxes or follow 
the same zoning regulations 
— which, naturally, can cause 
some town and gown prob-
lems.

“The University doesn’t need 
to follow any of our rules,” 
Ann Arbor Mayor Christo-
pher Taylor said. “They don’t 
follow our zoning; they don’t 
follow our planning. And, 
of course, they have the re-
sources to do what they want 
when they want to do it.”

The perfect example of this 
dynamic is the 27-foot-tall, 
48-foot-wide billboard be-
tween 
Michigan 
Stadium 

and the Crisler Center. The 
huge electronic sign was put 
up in 2013 much to the dis-
may of permanent residents. 
At the time, then-City Coun-
cilmember Taylor urged the 
University to take it down, 
arguing that it was a dis-
traction to drivers. Former 
University President Mary 
Sue Coleman responded by 
saying that it is the responsi-
bility of the driver to not be 
distracted.

18 — Thursday, August 5, 2021
Statement
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

