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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