ann arbor is overrated. » Blog Archive » Can You See Them, Talking About Us?

Can You See Them, Talking About Us?

ABORT ABORT ABORT! They’re on to us. They being Talk About Town:

The author of our favorite anti-Ann Arbor blog, “Ann Arbor is Overrated” (formerly known as Ann Arbor Sucks and now located at www.annarborisoverrated.com) recently floated the question of an Ann Arbor is Overrated meetup to his readers. They seemed enthusiastic about the idea; the post generated 48 comments at last count. But when it came down to suggesting a site, the prevailing preferences - Leopold Brothers, Ashley’s and Old Town - were all in Ann Arbor. Shouldn’t a group united by the opinion that Ann Arbor is Overrated meet in Ypsilanti?

Props to them for getting the word out about our new virtual location.

A letter in Thursday’s News oh-so-subtly - as is our wont here in the genteel Midwest - implies that it’s students and faculty driving up the price of A2 housing. “Who will see to it that those of us without tenured professorships or monthly allowances from our families will be able to afford to live here?” asks Abigail Glogower. We can assure her that those with monthly allowances from their tenants are also managing to hang on.

50 Responses to “Can You See Them, Talking About Us?”

The huckleberries in this town just don’t get it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — if it’s students and faculty members who are driving up the rents in this precious little town, then let the University pack its bags and move out of Ann Arbor. Though I hope Ms Glogower realizes the chances of her finding a fair-trade organic chai latte to suck down while browsing in a second-hand bookstore will decrease significantly should UM leave town. Maybe that would be a good thing for these local yokels — with the U gone, it would open up a lot of real estate and could usher in the glorious return of Bill Knapps. The Second Coming, if you will. I’m sure there are many Annarbourites rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of a gleaming new Bill Knapps rising majestically on the site of what is now the grad library.
posted by Boris on November 30th, 2003 at 11:31 am
A seven-story Bill Knapp’s - it’s beyond anything that Ann Arborites have dared to dream. First floor could be all things made from graham crackers. Go up a level for chicken tortilla/tortellini soup. From there, the sky - or the Old Country Buffet loyalist faction - is the limit.

In a way, it is the University driving up the cost of housing, because they refuse to build new dorms. In Cambridge/Boston, there’s a great deal of pressure on the universities to build new housing for this very reason. I really wish that the townies here would focus their energies on the ‘U’ instead of blaming their problems on its employees and undergrads. (And then maybe my dream of UM-New Buffalo, or UM-Chicago, would come closer to fruition.)
posted by ann arbor is overrated on November 30th, 2003 at 12:45 pm
Maybe they are right. Maybe we SHOULD me in Ypsi.
posted by __earth on November 30th, 2003 at 9:27 pm
I would’ve suggested Abe’s, but it’s hard to get to without a car.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on November 30th, 2003 at 9:32 pm
I know Ms. Glogower, Ms. Glogower is a friend of mine. And frankly Boris, your moronic blather totally misses the point of what she’s saying. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, one of the hallmarks of a U of M education is that you think everything is about you. But cheers to the Bill Knapps idea, dipshit. If townies annoy you so much, why don’t you go to school at MSU?
Or how about this- those townies that serve you your iced chai latte need a place to live too, and with housing competition from students who don’t have to pay their own rents and can afford to work jobs for substandard pay, it makes it harder for the rest of us to keep our heads above water. And the U’s policy of not granting tenure (if they can at all avoid it) and firing a lecturer or assistant prof. after two years (to avoid having to start tenure proceedures) means that there is a sizable income gap in this city. Instead of thinking about the U’s medical school, think about all of the staff that work at the hospital and can’t afford to live in Ann Arbor.
While I realize that the U is a large part of the local economy, they could do much more to encourage community involvement, fair labor practices and drive down housing costs in Ann Arbor. So if you can’t deal with a little townie resentment from time to time, I suggest you move to Lansing, where there’s no town to get in the way of your education.
posted by js on December 1st, 2003 at 9:13 am
I think I made it pretty clear that the U of M has a lot to do with the housing shortage. What I resent is the implication that students are privileged brats with “allowances from their families” who have no trouble paying for housing, and that professors are the only Ann Arborites with salaries high enough to afford a house here. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a professor in the Old Fourth Ward association, or quoted in an article about the Washtenaw-Hill historic district. They can’t afford to live there either.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 1st, 2003 at 10:07 am
js — You completely misunderstand my point. I suggested that UM pack its bags and leave town precisely so that people like you and Ms Glogower can go back to some edenic pre-U past where Annarbour rents were low, housing fell from the skies like manna, and the Huron River flowed with fresh tortilla soup (ala Bill Knapps). Jobs will be less plentiful, but hey, your rent will be lower and you won’t have to “compete” with all those horrible “privileged” students. You’re right, though, that people who make iced chai lattes need a place to live too. So make mine to go, chump, and step on it.
posted by Boris on December 1st, 2003 at 11:42 am
JS — The tenure rate at UM for assistant professors is actually quite high for a competitive university. Have you ever checked out the statistics? The last I heard it was 70% of those who make tenure cases. Plus, you can’t really fire an assistant professor after two years, unless there’s something I don’t know about the current round of contracts. Even if one could, in principle, it is exceedingly rare and it is very expensive to recruit new faculty, especially in the sciences (lab renovations, set-up money, moving expenses, etc. etc.). Given that they want to have senior faculty, they are much better off if they can justify promoting a professor from within rather than deal with the astronomical expense of recruiting a senior faculty member (which can cost well over $1M).

Not only does the UM tenure at a high rate, but assistant professors make on average more than those at at least four of the Ivies (the ones for which I have data; I’m on a cmt. that is assessing the competitiveness of our junior faculty salaries). Part of that is because Ann Arbor is such a crappy place for Assistant Profs to move to that they have to pay them more than they would if they were in someplace nice, like, say, Cambridge. Ann Arbor isn’t just a crappy place because it’s a crappy place to live, but it’s also a bad place to try to recruit faculty because there aren’t many good non-UM jobs for spouses (unlike someplace like Columbia or NYU or Harvard or Tufts or….).

Finally, the students at UM are actually a pretty hard-working bunch. Where I currently teach, very few of the students have jobs and almost all of them live on campus. They are a really smart, nice bunch, but they ones at UM are much more mature (if you can believe it…). Given that it is a state school, there’s a lot less parental money floating around the UM than at a lot of schools, and a lot of the A2 townies are actually can afford to serve the nonfat skim lattes because they are still being subsidized by their parents. Not only that, a lot of the “townies” are actually transplants from elsewhere (like…Lansing, for example), which makes it particularly gauling when they complain about the University, as if they didn’t know that the U existed before they moved to town.
posted by anna on December 1st, 2003 at 1:01 pm
Well said, Anna, as always.
posted by Boris on December 1st, 2003 at 1:19 pm
All right, enough posting for one day, I have to finish my dissertation so I can leave Annarbour and do my small part to alleviate the acute housing crunch. In truth, given the dim prospects for employment in my field, leaving this backwater town is the prime mover in motivating me to finish my diss.
posted by Boris on December 1st, 2003 at 1:21 pm
First, to Anna- The experiences I have had with assistant profs, adjuncts and lecturers all come from the Art and Design school, where Bryan Rogers has stated in faculty meetings that he not only has no desire to grant tenure to more teachers, he wishes to purge the rolls of current faculty so as to be able to impliment his own vision of what the Art and Design school should be (based on his work at Carnegie-Melon, which has a craptastic fine art program thanks to him). Sciences may be different (as they’re more involved with U-M’s prestige), but the art program is definitely more invested in a rotating cast of characters than advancing the staff they’ve got (and they’ve got some excellent teachers).
And while students at the U may be a hardworking bunch, they’re certainly much more subsidized than their townie non-student counterparts.
Again, I understand the tremendous positive economic impact of U-M, and certainly think that many U-M students do just fine, but that doesn’t mean that they’re an unqualified blessing on the town that we should humbly accept, like penitents before an indifferent God.
posted by js on December 1st, 2003 at 2:01 pm
And you completely missed my point, Boris- I suggested you go live in East Lansing, where the town won’t get in the way of your education. Or perhaps you enjoy engendering resentment from people who actually live here? In that case, since you obviously have no reason to try to make things better, I hope that you spend your entire grad school career here indoors, unaware of anything that Ann Arbor does have to offer (for example, I’d put the SE Michigan music scene far above, say, Boston’s, unless youlike Gaelic Punk).
posted by js on December 1st, 2003 at 2:05 pm
JS, maybe your parents just send you all the money you ask for - but for the rest of us paying insane rent for crappy housing isn’t that simple. We have to get that money from somewhere besides a magical money tree.
posted by kate on December 1st, 2003 at 2:15 pm
Kate, did you read what I wrote? Not only do my parents not pay my rent, they also don’t pay my tuition. But in every house I’ve shared as a student, I’ve seen both.
posted by js on December 1st, 2003 at 2:41 pm
Do I enjoy “engendering resentment from people who actually live here”? Well, *I* actually live here, js, and have for seven years. What I don’t enjoy is the divisive rhetoric of local yokel townies who try to personalize all social and economic issues into an us vs. them dichotomy — it’s “the students” (an amorphous mass of faceless entities all laden down with sacks of cold hard cash, apparently) who are driving rents up and keeping wages down for the people “who actually live here.” I resent the implication that the people “who actually live here” are somehow being driven into poverty by the students per se. That’s ridiculous. There are inequalities and there are injustices. But if anyone’s to blame it is the University and the City itself who need to search their souls. The City should step in and implement rent controls. The University should raise wages for its non-faculty employees and staff members who have to drive in to work every day from Ypsi and Saline etc. because they can’t afford to raise families in this ridiculous town. Blaming the students (as the writer of the letter that spawned this thread) is just misplaced bile and symptomatic of other deeper pathologies and resentments. PS — Thanks for the suggestion, but I’ve seen what riches Ann Arbor has to offer; that’s why I can’t wait to leave.
posted by Boris on December 1st, 2003 at 4:28 pm
Err, I think we shouldn’t turn on the heat too much. C’mon guys.
posted by __earth on December 1st, 2003 at 11:20 pm
As someone who has been involved in politics both in East Lansing (1970-88) and in Ann Arbor (1990-now), I’m awestruck at the skewed perspectives here.

In East Lansing, MSU students make up almost 75% of the adult population, but less than a third of the voters in city elections. (Me, I was an MSU undergrad student of townie/faculty-brat origins and worked for years to increase student turnout via voter registration and absentee ballot drives; for a couple years I was the only MSU student on the planning commission.)

Over the last 30 years, hatred of students has been as central to East Lansing city politics as racism was in Southern politics in 1960. It generates rhetoric at least as bizarre and overheated, and not just from people on the political Right. Anyone who thinks MSU students don’t face any local resentment has never lived through an East Lansing city election, or attended a city council meeting.

By contrast, in Ann Arbor politics (and I am familiar with the scene, having been, e.g., a candidate for city council), students might as well not exist. The views or influence of UM students rarely come up in local political discussions.

Students who speak to the Ann Arbor city council are treated in a benignly condescending way, as if they were representatives of an interesting Uzbek community that nobody realized existed in our midst. By contrast, students who speak to the East Lansing city council, no matter what they have to say, are simply The Enemy.

It’s mainly via this blog that I hear about lunatics who want U-M to leave Ann Arbor. By contrast, with the help of some political heavy hitters, a very serious petition was drafted, circulated, and submitted with thousands of homeowner signatures, to expel Michigan State University from the city of East Lansing. I am not making this up.

Ann Arbor is a popular place to live, and as a market-ordained result, rents and house prices are high, and salaries are low. A great many people who live in Ann Arbor commute to jobs in much better paying places like Lansing, Flint, or Southfield. For some years, my wife and I commuted more than an hour in opposite directions. Thae fact that long-distance commuting makes economic sense for Ann Arborites has zero to do with the economic influence of students, and (except here) I never heard anyone argue that it does.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 1st, 2003 at 11:36 pm
Larry — I believe that Ann Arbor is a popular place to live (if one wants to or has to live in Michigan), and it’s obvious to me why that leads to high housing prices (esp. since there is almost no way a student can live more than about a mile from campus given the parking situation, the bus situation, etc. etc. etc.) but I don’t really understand how “market forces” lead to low wages. My impression is that what leads to low wages was the fact that A2 is basically a company town with almost no other industry aside from UM? And since high-paying blue collar jobs are largely a thing of the past, the only jobs for that demographic (people who didn’t go to college or have chosen not to parlay a bachelor’s degree into a white collar job, maybe partly because they want to live and work in A2 and there aren’t many jobs of that sort there) end up in service jobs. Does high demand for living always necessarily lead to low wages according to your view? Not challenging your position, just curious about how you arrived there. Anna
posted by anna on December 2nd, 2003 at 11:24 am
Reading comprehension time, Boris: Do you have a tenured professorship? Do you recieve a monthly stipend from your family? If no, then you’re not one of the people the letter mentioned. So, slowly, unwad your panties and relax.
And Boris, from your comments, it seems that you reside here, you do not live here. There is a difference. That difference comes from active involvement in the community around you, which happens to extend outside of the Ivory Tower of Academe.
There are many students here in town that add a great deal to the life of the town, and then there are a great many who are at best oblivious to the town and at worst openly antagonistic to people that live here. While good deeds are often ignored, the students who are giant assholes definitely impugn the character of the rest.
posted by js on December 2nd, 2003 at 11:37 am
JS — You may want to switch to decaf. Or try Xanax… soooooo soothing. Love, Anna
posted by anna on December 2nd, 2003 at 11:44 am
Can’t we all just get along?

I don’t know how to make AA life any better, but I’m pretty sure it’s much worse without a sense of humor. Having to live here sucks, but it’s not an experience you want to take too seriously.
posted by Nick on December 2nd, 2003 at 12:00 pm
Anna- Reminds me somewhat of a frequent refrain from message boards: Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you’re still retarded.
posted by js on December 2nd, 2003 at 12:27 pm
I still don’t understand why everybody thinks Ann Arbor is so bad. Maybe it’s just because Princeton really does have all of the problems that people say Ann Arbor has (or because Princeton has all of them much more strongly). Imagine an Ann Arbor with everything but the Old Fourth Ward removed, and with all of the students (and all of the OFWers) possessing ten times as much money as in Ann Arbor, and set it in the middle of New Jersey sprawl, and you’d be begging to get back to the real Ann Arbor. Admitted, the real Ann Arbor doesn’t have a train to NYC on campus, but still. In the grand scheme of things, Ann Arbor could be much, much worse.

Meanwhile, thanks for the Uzbeks, Larry….
posted by Murph on December 2nd, 2003 at 3:18 pm
Wages and salaries are low in Ann Arbor because there’s an enormous oversupply of highly talented and credentialed people here, compared to the jobs available for them. Competition for professional and even quasi-sorta-professional jobs is intense.

Just for example, ask Kinko’s how many applicants they get when they offer a fulltime desktop publishing job with benefits.

Admittedly Ithaca has it worse; people with high-powered degrees work as cabdrivers and dishwashers because they love living there, or because a spouse has a university job. Ann Arbor is less isolated, so the commuting option takes some of the pressure off.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 2nd, 2003 at 3:53 pm
Murph: You mean to tell me that you’ve been reading this website all along and you are wondering why people complain about Ann Arbor? Let me recap some of the highlights:

1) Organic gluten-free marshamllows for use with expensive choclate and hand-made graham crackers — for s’mores that take a day to make. Not to mention suggested elegant chocolate pronounciation.

2) Parking, parking, parking (don’t people ever tire of talking about it??).

3) Grad school wanna-bes who hang out in cafes literally all day and claim either that they are going to go to grad school someday, or claim that sometime, when they can get motivated, they are going to write the Great American Novel — when they aren’t busy complaining about UM students. You know the cafes and people of which I speak.

4) Art fair

5) Rapes and assaults that happen around campus without even a second-page news story, much less a first. If they were happening in the OFW, the town would be a police-state.

6) Burglaries, ditto.

7) Meijer is obscene. It’s US consumerism at it’s most disgustingly over-indulgent extreme. Though, hold your fire, I acknowledge that Meijer may not technically be in Ann Arbor.

8) Bill Knapps and that buffet place (country star? Country buffet? Whatever). Buffet places in general. See #7.

9) Being single and in your mid-late twenties. Oh. My. God. As they say about Alaskans — the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

10) The Ann Arbor Observer. As if.

Okay, excuse me, I need to go thank my lucky stars.
posted by anna on December 2nd, 2003 at 4:01 pm
You know, anna, I’ve been hearing that complaint from women (and men) in this town since the day we opened. Of the women I know, I have made the following betdescribe the qualities you are looking for in a mate, and I will find him/her within a month, and get you a date with them (I have set up 3 women who had enough courage to let me do the work—-all 3 are happily still with their mates).

It’s not hard, good people are everywhere in this town, particularly at my bar. We put the long tables and the board games in at our place for a reason…it is the easiest and most disarming way to meet people that you will ever find.

I am dropping the gauntlet—-go to Leopold Bros., and ask for Todd—-i’ll take it from there. If I can’t get it done, I owe you a coke. Good deal, or what?
posted by todd on December 2nd, 2003 at 4:30 pm
js, I’ll leave it you to parse out the niceties of distinction between “living here” and “residing here.” If it makes you feel any better, I’m content to be labeled in the latter category. I still think you’re wrong, though — the antagonism is almost exclusively on the part of townie yokels who resent the “rich” undergrads who roll into town every autumn with enormous sacks of money. Of course, those horrible students pay rents (often exorbitant, but whose fault is that? The landlords’.) which is pumped into the local economy. They buy books, they eat at restaurants, they drink coffee, they spend money in bars, they go to movies, they shop in stores, they pay parking tickets and “snow emergency” tickets that help fund the City apparatus, they go to shows in bars and other venues. But even though they spend all this money I guess they don’t “live” in Annarbour, they just “reside” in an ivory tower (which, by the way, is a hackneyed image that you should really get over). Of course, much of the townie resentment is just sour grapes and ill-concealed envy. It reminds me of an Onion headline from a ways back: “Area Roofer Badmouths College.” Anyway, good luck with that art degree, pal.
posted by Boris on December 2nd, 2003 at 6:00 pm
Todd, That is a terrific offer and your place sounds great. It didn’t exist when I lived in Ann Arbor (or existed shortly before I left and I was holed up writing my diss). Maybe the advent of LB will help the normal A2 singles find each other. I knew they were out there but they were awfully hard to meet. All I know is that within three weeks of moving out of A2 I acquired a serious boyfriend after dating a series of nimwits and freaks in grad school. Anna

P.S. I did look up LB on the web when it came up the last time. I was trying to place the building — is that in the old Ark location?
posted by Anonymous on December 2nd, 2003 at 6:08 pm
js - regarding your special olympics comment…you should be ashamed of yourself. And everyone else, I think people are taking this all to personal-lighten up! Maybe there is no easy answer and I can understand your frustration at the animosity students feel. The Univesity lures you in and the town slaps your face.
posted by joani on December 2nd, 2003 at 7:34 pm
Boris- Let’s look at where those students shop and eat, huh? Thankyafuckin’much for Urban Outfitters and Starbucks, and the beautiful South U, students. I sure had a hard time surviving before Jimmy Johns showed up all over town.
Again, there are plenty of students who make Ann Arbor a better place to live. Certainly, places like Wazoo wouldn’t be able to survive without them. But it’s rare to know an undergrad who knows anything beyond State St, or gives a shit about the rest of the town. As far as the contention that us huckleberries wouldn’t have any culture if not for the U, take a look at Ypsi. Most of their cultural institutions are far away from the college, which is primarily a commuter school anyway. And guess what, for a town with half the population of Ann Arbor, they do all right for themselves. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Ann Arbor, and the moronic and arrogant bearing (a perception you’re not exactly dispelling) of a good portion of the students is a pretty prime one.
posted by js on December 2nd, 2003 at 8:01 pm
Actually, I started off life in Ann Arbor as a townie, and I have to say that even the most obnoxious Daddy-pays-for-it students were never as annoying as the average smug “local”.

Surely I can’t be the only one who remembers the NCAA basketball riots in, what, ‘89? where all the perpetrators arrested were locals–yet all we heard in the news for weeks was about “rioting students.”

js, what’s being pointed out to you repeatedly is that without the things you profess to hate (students with money) the things you love simply wouldn’t exist. Your wealthy students, by the way, aren’t the ones driving up housing prices. THOSE students can afford to live on Frat Row or in apartments/housing you would never have been able to afford in the first place. Housing prices are high because students MUST live somewhere, and landlords can charge all the market will bear. It’s not as though with the parking situation, your average student can simply commute in from Saline.

My mother, who is of an income bracket way above that of 99% of your UM parent families, moved out of AA proper because of costs related to housing, such as taxes, congested roads and other issues. Should I suggest to her that she start blaming the students?

There are lots of things I don’t like about Ann Arbor, which is why I no longer live there, but the horribleness of the students contrasted to the saintilness of the locals is not one of them.
posted by mythago on December 2nd, 2003 at 8:33 pm
Just a comment on the topic of student housing and money sacks. While I certainly was not among the top tier, I by choice (via loans/parental aid) paid for jacked-up rents near campus my senior year. I also worked full-time in the summers and close to that during the year. However, it is no myth that a hell of a lot of my friends acquaintances were fully subsidized by parents, didn’t have to work (or if they did could work unpaid internships to pad their resumes), and lived a pretty damned carefree life. Especially the out-of-staters. In any case, whether by loans, work, or parents, students are willing to pay top dollar for housing near campus, and yes the housing market is inflated due to this fact. Some will contend that students have no choice in this matter– in fact, I lived my junior year on the far Western edge of town for almost $200 less per month than where I lived on Packard. It was bland and suburban, but doable– I biked or bused in to campus every day. Contrary to some contentions, students are not somehow coerced into living within 10 blocks of campus– they choose to, and choose to pay those prices. Students do usually have nontraditional income (via parents/loans/other aid) and the will/desire to live near campus, and thus landlords raise rents because they can. I don’t know what is contentious about that… seems pretty factual. On the other hand, the U. and its students, faculty and staff are obviously the backbone of this town.
posted by Brandon on December 2nd, 2003 at 8:46 pm
Having BTDT, many students “choose to” live near campus because the alternatives–trying to find parking, relying on the bus system, or biking in all weather and in all conditions–can be pretty onerous. Not to mention that rent does not magically drop beyond the 10-block perimeter.

The U could alleviate this by being more accomodating of commuters, as it does with (say) its Dearborn campus. But it won’t, because it doesn’t want the downscale horror of being a “commuter campus.”
posted by mythago on December 2nd, 2003 at 9:25 pm
Mythago- Would you like more straw for your man? My points are (in no particular order)
A: I support Ms. Glogower’s two contentions (that more must be done with the Greenbelt millage to ensure responsible growth and that more should be done so that people whose parents don’t subsidize their housing can live here).
B: There are a great deal of obnoxious students who are rightly resented, and blaming locals for that resentment blithely ignores the fact that the University and all that it entails often has negative specific effects on the people that live in Ann Arbor and are not affiliated with the University.
C: As I have stated several times, there are many benefits that come from the University. But the fallacious logic that just because the U has some positive effects, all they do must be wonderful is bullshit.
And now, my newest point, D: You’re a moron.
If you’d care to argue any of those, you’re welcome to, but please refrain from arguing against points that I am not putting forth. Unless, y’know, you’d like to keep beating up those straw men.
posted by js on December 2nd, 2003 at 9:26 pm
Mythago, don’t bother arguing with him; you’re just beating a dumb horse.

js, let’s just agree to dislike each other and move on. You can glower on your futon all you like and curse undergrads till the sun comes up, but I’m done talking to you.
posted by Boris on December 2nd, 2003 at 10:15 pm
A lot of misinformation flying around here.

AAIO: I think that you misread the woman’s letter to the News. She didn’t say that all students were on the dole, and she didn’t say that all teachers were loaded.

According to the University’s own reports, though, the tenured professors she refers to make an average of $160K+, assuming a full work year ($115K per year counting summers, etc. off). Now if these professors can’t afford to live in AA after pulling in that kind of money, then I need to take them home shopping, ’cause their realtor is screwing them big time. Just thought I’d point that out.

I think that if you actually take the time to read this womans letter, you will find that she is pleading for affordable housing in AA proper for underpaid professors, poor grad students, as well as the “townies”. I don’t find fault in that, and I wouldn’t think that any here would either. If you ask me, she hit the nail on the head.
posted by todd on December 2nd, 2003 at 10:24 pm
It strikes me as kind of funny that we’re having “student/townie” tension with the two examples of each that least exemplify the category - grad students and young, hip, Ypsi-appreciating locals. Certainly, most student-hating townies aren’t thinking of grad students when they go on their rants, although the policies they pursue have a strange tendency to screw us over. And my anti-townie rants aren’t usually directed at people who do a lot of shopping at Wazoo.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 2nd, 2003 at 10:36 pm
Todd - I basically agree with her points, but why do students and professors have to be the enemy? I guess framing the issue in terms of spoiled students might get some people to take notice who wouldn’t otherwise care about affordable housing, but it gives the wrong impression. And, of course professors can afford to live within the city limits, but I’d be very surprised if they made up a large proportion of the residents of, say, the really impressive houses on Washtenaw. (Now, university administrators, on the other hand…)
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 2nd, 2003 at 10:44 pm
js, I assume your point D comes from a combination of being annoyed that a (former) townie disagrees with you, and your total and perhaps deliberate misreading of my posts.

I agree entirely that the city of Ann Arbor, and the U in particular, need to do more about affordable housing. Has anyone here *dis*agreed with that? It’s quite a different thing than saying rents would be perfectly reasonable if not for those gol-darned undergrads.

I am not, however, buying into your nonsense that because some students are obnoxious, the townie grumbling about how much nicer AA would be without students at all (and please, don’t lie and tell me you’ve never ever heard that one) is acceptable. Nor am I buying the converse of your argument; that because some effects of the U’s presence are bad, that we should ignore or grudgingly, briefly acknowledge the good.

But thanks for being Exhibit A on reasons why I moved. For self-congratulatory whining, AA ‘natives’ are hard to beat.
posted by mythago on December 2nd, 2003 at 10:47 pm
I hope you’ll visit us in Ypsi sometime, Murph (or anyone else for that matter!). Annarbour may be better than New Jersey, but this is Michigan.

An interesting tidbit: Ypsi was an incorporated village in 1832, 1 year before Annarbour. And Ypsi actually has 1/5th the population. That’s why The Revolution has chosen Ypsilanti. We think it’s small enough to take over.
posted by Hillary on December 2nd, 2003 at 11:19 pm
Am I a townie? I guess I’m not a student… but I’m a recent graduate. Still working for the University and having graduated less than a year ago, however, I don’t feel like a pure townie. My sensibilities are probably closest to that of typical grad students, but I’m not one (yet). I guess there’s just no place for misfits like me… maybe I should move to places with more obvious dichotomous animosities, like Berrien County.
posted by Brandon on December 2nd, 2003 at 11:28 pm
The thing about students and professors driving up housing prices is, why aren’t the prices even close to this high in Urbana-Champaign? Excellent large university, Midwestern town - but the housing market isn’t anything like this one. Or even Madison, a very similar town in many ways. Only in A2, as they say…
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 2nd, 2003 at 11:43 pm
To take that point a little further, why aren’t they as high in places like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chapel Hill and Durham, NC, or Baltimore - cities that also have at least one quality university, to say nothing of greater cultural amenities and economic opportunities?
posted by Nick on December 3rd, 2003 at 12:21 am
Todd: A bit of misinformation about faculty salaries. Many senior faculty do not get paid summer salary, and the *vast* majority of them do not take the summer “off”. The whole “summer off” thing is largely a myth, unless you are talking about high school teachers or undergraduates.

Grad students at places like the UM do their research year round, as do their professors. The only way to get paid for the summer is to get a grant or to teach an extra class (but that isn’t often available as an option because of the scaled-back summer schedule and because people *have* to do their research or bad things start to happen).

The “9-month” salary thing is a shell game. You actually get 12 chunks of money, spread over the whole year. But they call it “9-month” to give people an incentive to get grants. When people get grants, they make more than they would if they didn’t — and that really doesn’t have to do with summer or not summer, although the university and funding agencies pretend anyway.

I do think that $115K is a nice salary, but it’s not $160K…..
posted by anna on December 3rd, 2003 at 9:46 am
Mythago: Point D came from your arguing against points that I had not put forth. And supported by the fact that you continued to fight against points that I had not put forth in your reply.
Care to try again?
posted by js on December 3rd, 2003 at 10:49 am
Why? Should I suppose that somebody who thinks “you’re a moron” is intelligent discourse is going to engage in actual debate, much less realize what his own arguments are saying?
posted by mythago on December 3rd, 2003 at 10:53 am
Yeah, AAIO, don’t get me wrong. Many of the things that I hate about Ann Arbor come from townies who want to gentrify the city into another B-ham or Royal Oak. That’s why I tried to get people motivated about the Tech Center closing in my column. But if Ann Arbor is overrated, the U is certainly part of that too.
js
posted by js on December 3rd, 2003 at 10:55 am
Mythago- Try addressing what I’m actually saying, instead of what you think I’m saying. I felt that I made it fairly clear. And, well, “you’re a moron” isn’t intelligent discourse. It’s a dismissal of someone who can’t seem to understand written English, despite it apparently being their native tongue.
posted by js on December 3rd, 2003 at 11:21 am
I, personally, have been enjoying Boris’ sense of the absurd.
posted by anna on December 3rd, 2003 at 12:18 pm
Men are close to one another by nature. They diverge as a result of repeated practice.
posted by Wilson Robert on January 20th, 2004 at 1:27 am