For the first time, grad students are going to be paying premiums on their GradCare health insurance - an estimated $569 in 2006 for a student with no dependents. We encourage everyone affected by this to go to their departmental GEO meetings. Why hasn’t the Daily run anything on this yet?
Turns out that the “student ghetto” (defined here as Greenwood Avenue) isn’t so bad after all. Why not? Well, the city now gives 24-hour warnings to houses where “the trash situation” is “out of hand,” as determined by anonymous callers. And furthermore, students are more “respectful” to the “several young families” who live there. Really, what else could students ask for?
The writer of The Ann Arbor News’ “Connection” recipes column reads this blog and decided to engage in a little self-parody this week. That’s the only explanation for the top recipe, “Bread Pudding Like Old Country Buffet.” The recipe is an improvement on an earlier one that didn’t quite succeed in capturing the Old Country Buffet flavor. Further down, you’ll find a reader’s request for “an ‘oldie’ recipe for a salad using raw uncooked sauerkraut.”
Also, the Daily has a story about how, “despite tensions,” the police think they have a good relationship with students. How can they say that with the controversy over the party patrol, you wonder? Well, the officers they interviewed were from DPS, not the AAPD - throughout the article, the distinction between the two groups is mentioned only when a student who says she was treated roughly by officers wasn’t sure whether they were campus or city police. Most of the other students complaining about police tactics seem to be referring to the AAPD. What could have been a very interesting story, an opportunity to explore the attitudes Ann Arbor police have toward students, instead becomes a frustrating muddle.
An Ann Arbor News reader is unhappy with the News’ U of M party scene “expose” we linked to a while ago. “In my view, the problem behavior as described in the story is glorified by front page photography and text and makes it seem the ‘cool’ thing to do.” We have to admit that we never considered the possibility that the story, which portrayed college students as beer-swilling, disruptive lawbreakers right at the time when the tactics of the party patrol were being held up to some scrutiny, could have the effect of making drinking seem “cool” to the middle-aged “All Things Considered” listeners that make up the News’ audience. But maybe it’s time the party patrol started keeping an eye on the Whole Foods wine section. You know, just in case.
“Why isn’t Ann Arbor the mecca of hip it might seem to be?” asks the News in another “cool cities” article. Among the reasons they give: Detroit’s “image problems” and cold weather. That is, nothing that A2 has any control over.
Also, we’re waiting eagerly to see if a retired professor sick of waking up to band practice at 7 a.m. on Saturdays gets the same consideration as the “neighbors” of Leopold Brothers. After all, the News is under the impression that “most Ann Arborites” are asleep by 10 on Friday nights.
Yet another article on the tired theme of “pampered” university students, this time in The New York Times. Apparently, a lot of colleges are building student centers and other facilities with aquariums and other fancy extras. “Whatever the students want is pretty much what they’re getting,” a spokesman for something called the National Association of College Auxiliary Services says. (The idea that prospective faculty may also be enticed by such amenities gets part of a sentence.)
Somehow, the U of M is not mentioned anywhere in this piece, even though it does have a “food court,” considered an extravagant frill by the Times writer.
Also, the Daily has a terrific editorial on the “unacceptable” A2 housing situation. Right now is the time to be looking for housing for next year, unless you think you’ve got housing for next year and your landlord rents the place out from under you in April. Not getting thrown out on the street is a frill that we should ask for, because whatever students want, they get.
“I can’t image [sic] why a student would bring a car, and where they would put it,” says Diane Brown, a U of M facilities and operations spokeswoman in a recent News article.
We at Ann Arbor is Overrated possess a good imagination, and by letting it run free, we can offer a few reasons why students might bring cars to campus:
They want to eat. On a campus where living in dorms is severely stigmatized for undergrads and unheard of for grad students, and the nearest grocery store is two miles away, cars provide a means to get food.
They want to go somewhere after 9 pm. This is the latest that city buses run, although the University provides some late-night transportation.
They don’t want to be the victims of random attacks while walking alone. Although this didn’t work for that cab driver.
Astronomical rents force them to live outside of Ann Arbor. Living as far out as Brighton isn’t unheard of.
Where to put the cars requires more imagination than even we’re capable of. But it’s a little alarming that a University spokesperson could be so out of touch with the student experience.
A Johanna Hanink column from yesterday’s Daily ties together two current stories: the University’s efforts at recruiting female faculty and the University’s efforts at discouraging female students from drinking by telling them that they’ll never have a “meaningful relationship” and they’ll get vomit all over their pretty clothes. But how about this confluence: the “party patrol” tickets students, male and female, for drinking and noise violations. The University’s anti-alcohol posters imply that being “taken advantage of” is at least partially the fault of a female student who drinks. Two women are assaulted walking home late on weekend nights, the most recent attack taking place over by the Law Quad. Is it fair to connect the dots here? Well, the AAPD, responsible for the party patrol, and the University group responsible for the anti-drinking announcements have nothing to do with each other. And there’s no hard evidence that the AAPD’s alcohol enforcement efforts detract from their ability to catch real criminals. But it’s an interesting juxtaposition, at the very least.
The Law Quad attack wasn’t even the only violent incident recently in which the victim doesn’t remember what happened. A 15-year-old boy woke up in a downtown parking structure with a bump on his head and a missing wallet the day after the Law Quad incident.
Craigslist carries an open letter to the “Nicolls [sic] Arboretum Bearded Masturbator.” A subsequent post, titled “It may be small, but i like to see my own” sounds like it should be on the same theme, but instead it’s the disturbed ramblings of someone who posted two fake “Missed Connections” in order to increase the number of posts on our admittedly pathetic local Craigslist. “Checking the detroit postings and seeing my two brand new entries excited me beyond regular contentment.” Now that’s sick.
“Somebody call the OED: is our beloved A^2 becoming a byword for yuppified pseudo-urban landscapes?” writes a sharp-eyed reader. The evidence: A Gary Shteyngart article in The New York Times Magazine about New York as “the city of stories.” In it, Shteyngart laments what he sees as a city “under siege by prosperity,” overtaken by “homogenization.” “Entire communities from Hoboken to Long Island City,” he writes, “change into local Ann Arbors and Chapel Hills.” Ouch.
Shteyngart’s fears may in fact be a little overblown. The new New York he deplores is a place where “You aren’t afraid of being attacked on Avenue C at 4 in the morning.” But if Ann Arborization is what he fears, he needn’t worry about an overabundance of safety. Among A2 crimes this week we haven’t blogged about are two fast food robberies - one of them a McDonald’s held at gunpoint while police patrolled outside, oblivious - and a taxi driver reporting being pulled from his cab and beaten near the medical school.