ann arbor is overrated. » Blog Archive

MSA Update

We’re pretty impressed with Rese Fox’s first month or so on the MSA. She’s sponsored a resolution supporting the new dorm on the site of the Frieze Building, tried to find some common ground with landlords and observed the Old Fourth Ward Association’s Christine Crockett expressing concern that State Street will become “tawdry” under student influence. Now if she could only do something about those LSAT classes…

48 Responses to “MSA Update”

How does a street become tawdry? Any ideas?
posted by Nick on January 19th, 2005 at 4:56 pm
U of M students have been in Ann Arbor for all but the first 10 years of its history. It’s fair to say that Ms. Crockett does not remember a South University Avenue before students arrived in town, and thus, how can she claim that students (who are a constant) has caused the putative tawdriness (variable, apparently) of South University? Also, I lived in Ann Arbor for many years and never found South University “charming”. Prior to the mid-nineties it was closer to “largely vacant”. Finally, State Street used to be a lot more charming than it is now that it has turned into an open-air mall. Seems to me that Ms. Crockett might be happier living inside a mall with around a 40% vacancy rate.
posted by Anonymous on January 19th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
What the heck does Tawdry mean anyway? South U has looked pretty much the same as it did when I came to this area 18 years ago. In that time it has had two record stores open and close. Dawn Treader moved its books to Liberty and then move the gaming stuff upstairs. Pinball Petes moved across the street. The Brown Jug has been there all along, along with Middle Earth. There used to be a McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell, now there is a Starbucks and some trendy food places. In my eyes, it’s not much different than State STreet now.
posted by Kozzie on January 19th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Bah, more random thoughts. If it weren’t for the University (and consequently the students), Ann Arbor would be nothing right now. It wouldn’t have the job base it has now, nor would it have the annemeties it does provide.
posted by Kozzie on January 19th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
South U. is very far from `Tawdry’. Perhaps a comparison with other cities is in order…

You think her city complaints are bad. Just be thankful you don’t have to get work done in her library.

===
Bah, more random thoughts. If it weren’t for the University (and consequently the students), Ann Arbor would be nothing right now. It wouldn’t have the job base it has now, nor would it have the annemeties it does provide.
===

Most all residents know this. It’s the vocal minority who pumps out the critisim.
Posted by Anon at January 19, 2005 08:36 PM
posted by Anon on January 19th, 2005 at 8:37 pm
Who cares whether the street is tawdry? Or under student influence? Ann Arbor looks so terrible that it could only get better. So long as there is a place for me to get coffee I couldn’t care less about how University Ave looks. I love how this town has such an inflated view of itself. The city coucil has these historic preservation meetings they broadcast on cable where pompous long term residents try to protect the historical nature of the city by limiting the kind of construction you can do on your buildings. I think this is horseshit. Ann Arbor is not a picturesque town worth saving. It needs a little razing, if you ask me. Why prevent businesses from putting up signs, or installing more heat efficient windows? To save what? Main street, to me, looks like a dump anyway. Why not cover it with billboards? But crusty old men and women with sticks up their asses don’t think so, and they sit there spouting their edicts from their high horses in city hall. It makes me want to vomit.
posted by Dr.Mandrake on January 20th, 2005 at 8:37 am
But the histerical woman always wears such “Nice” hats. I’d love to see her ass perform any amount of real construction or carpentry. What a freakin blowhard she is.
posted by Jimbo on January 20th, 2005 at 9:17 am
back off on your canonization - what’s actually changed? The U was planning the dorm BEFORE the “resolution supporting it”…so what does that do for students? It’s an empty resolution regardless of how nice it sounds.

Attending meetings with landlords and engaging the issue (which she seems to be trying to do) is laudable, but many a rep has tried to do this sort of thing on issues as this or others, but until results are on the table I wouldn’t be too laudatory. If you follow your logic through (talking about things and sponsoring resolutions that back up policy rather than proposing change), DAAP would be the best reps hands down perennially.
posted by remember2002 on January 20th, 2005 at 9:57 am
I guess I was mainly excited that they passed a resolution that wasn’t about some national political issue that they have no chance to affect. Also, I think the blog is a great way of communicating with students.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 20th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
Yes, they were planning on doing it before our resolution was passed, but there was a lot of opposition to it from various groups, so the resolution will hopefully help the University stand up to the opposition better, knowing it has the students’ full support.
posted by Mcfo on January 20th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
I’m guessing Dr.Mandrake split his time between New York and Tokyo as a child, or something. Ann Arbor is many things (including provincial and somewhat snobbish), but ugly is not one of them. Go drive through the Detroit suburbs; it’ll clear your head.
posted by Ben on January 20th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
(That said, Crockett is obviously wrong.)
posted by Ben on January 20th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
I have in fact lived in Tokyo and Chicago. Not New York. And I think Ann Arbor is ugly. Let me give some examples:

Just because you put up lights along Main does not detract from the fact that the buildings they detract from are ugly. Let me give an example. That horrible Greek restaurant. That ugly stone building on Washington and Main. That beautiful liquor store on Ann. Drive around in the student ghetto. Beautiful town! The campus is about as boring as a David Foster Wallace novel - there is no charm in the buildings on the diag except for when scantily clad students emerge in Spring - and even that sometimes makes me want to throw up, especially after a winter of too much discontent and too little excercise. The fashion sense of the undergrad population here is atrocious. Those silly pleated pink skirts every girl was wearing this past autumn? They have to go.

So YES I think Ann Arbor is UGLY.
posted by Dr.Mandrake on January 20th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
Bah, Ann Arbor has some ugly buildings, but it also has a lot of great ones (especially in the Central area). Many of those old Student Ghetto homes are actually quite attractive (albeit in varying states of repair and bad renovations/additions/vinyl siding), and Main has some great historical buildings, as does State. OFW and OWS also are chock-full of attractive historic streets. Central Campus, moreover, has plenty of worthy architectural landmarks of its own… Burton Tower? Angell Hall? Clements? Law Quad? The old part of Hatcher? It’s a city full of a lot of attractive urban spaces (and yes, a lot of ugly ones.. for every Nickels Arcade there’s a bad 1970s-era downtown bank, a gas station, and the Real Seafood Company building)
posted by Brandon on January 20th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
I bet Real Seafood is a great building behind a hideous mask.
posted by Dale on January 20th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
I don’t think Ann Arbor is ugly, so much as it is non-descript. Really, businesses aren’t allowed to install more efficient windows?!?! That’s absurd.
posted by Alex(andra) on January 21st, 2005 at 8:41 am
It’s funny; I sort of thought Ann Arbor was cute when I lived there, but when I moved away and returned for a visit a couple years later, I couldn’t get over how dumpy the overall appearance was. There are some nice sections and buildings, but in general, it is pretty non-descript and ugly. The OFW isn’t really even anything to write home about, it’s just more attractive than most of the rest of SE Michigan.
posted by Anna on January 21st, 2005 at 11:18 am
Even as a resident of the OFW, I have to agree with you there. SE Mich is a hellhole for the most part, but it does have its charms.
posted by OFW insurgent on January 21st, 2005 at 3:44 pm
As a refugee from a town of absolutely nothing but H.P. Pickleshitterses, I will take what I can get. Ann Arbor still has some character and looks like A PLACE. That’s more than you can say for the encroaching generica of most everywhere else. Then again, I am a SE Michigan native, so my perspective could be skewed.
posted by Dave on January 22nd, 2005 at 12:56 am
Why spend so much time complaining about the way the buildings look when the real problem is the overpriced food and drink, the yuppie atmosphere indoors, the early closing hours and the lack of alternatives. We’re not living in Detroit here.

And the MSA resolution is significant in the sense that students are not only paying attention to development issues in the City but also speaking up about them. She hasn’t even been in office for 1 month yet so relax with your idealistic criticism. What kind of a proposal-type of resolution would you like to see? Who knows the answer to that?
posted by carolyn on January 23rd, 2005 at 2:01 pm
I think I have to agree with Dr. Mandrake on the aesthetics, but I really don’t care until someone starts talking about how we have to save our beautiful and European city from these 5-story skyscrapers.

And did H.P. Pickleshitters originate with a comment here? I can’t remember.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 23rd, 2005 at 2:59 pm
Here.
posted by Dale on January 23rd, 2005 at 4:40 pm
I hear Dave on that. There are a few cool buildings, and frankly, after growing up in the suburbs I’ll take what I can get.

That said, I remember the record store on South U, and the bagel shop. Else it’s… pretty much the exact same thing. Oh, there’s sushi now too.

Some of the student ghetto houses are acutally gorgeous - hard wood, decorative trim, what have you. But the landlords would rather have it fall down before they make any improvements on it. My house this year is pretty damn nondescript, vinyl siding and fake shutters, and except that I can actually walk to campus in less than twenty minutes, I’d almost prefer student ghetto house.]

Heating bills sucked, though.
posted by Jen on January 23rd, 2005 at 9:53 pm
No copyright infringement intended on the H.P. Pickleshitters reference — it’s just so apropos of these lame-ass cookie-cutter places that are everywhere, like Bennigans, Applebees, etc., etc.

In my opinion, the (mostly non-rental) old houses that have been restored look great, and even the more neglected ones look like they have lots of potential. But then, my favorite city is New Orleans, so I admit to enjoying a certain amount of seediness in my aesthetic sensibility. My first choice of living quarters when I moved here was in a seedy house but I was unable to find the right place at the right rent (no surprise) so I am, unfortunately, once again in a boring apartment with white walls.

Anyway, I would still take rundown old crap over rows of McMansions. Just one man’s opinion. (I know, I’m not the one paying the heating bills so I can spout all I want — forgive me.)
posted by Dave on January 24th, 2005 at 9:59 am
Funny, whenever I hear someone reference some other godawful hellhole town as a reason to say nice things about AA, I can never tell if they’re being complimentary or just really sarcastic . . .

And as far as the local sense of aesthetics, I’d have to side with AAIO and Mandrake - having cute Victorian houses is a nice thing, but they do lose some of their charm when the lawns get covered in trash and the porches start collapsing.
posted by Nick on January 24th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Yeah, I know it’s hard to imagine there are places worse than Ann Arbor. But you’ll just have to trust me on that.
posted by Dave on January 24th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
One needs only look as far as Saline to find a hellhole worse than Ann Arbor. It’s Ann Arbor if the lots were bigger, the houses newer, and the University in another town.
posted by Anna on January 25th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
I take it none of you have ever visited Battle Mountain, NV?

Seriously, there are “hell holes”, and then there are northern Nevada mining company towns. And legalized prosititution does not help.

Ann Arbor is certainly not nearly as cool as it likes to think it is, but it’s paradise compared to places like that. I don’t plan on staying here much longer, but I can’t say this is a horrible place to live. I rent in a nice neighborhood with big old trees, and I use the city bus system or I can walk downtown. I like that there’s city-sponsored recycling along with trash pickup.

I despise most of the overpriced restaurants on Main street, but once you get to know the local little grocery stores, you can find just about anything you’d ever want to cook. Even goat.

But (as has been said here again and again) most of the cool little stores like that have been driven to the outskirts of the city, leaving downtown the domain of the pretentious, the overpriced, and the chain stores.
posted by Anonymous on January 25th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
And couches on the porches don’t make ‘em any prettier!
Nearly every city of this size and age, anywhere in middle America, is pretty ugly. Like, say, Toledo. Or Miami, Ohio. Or, say, all of inland Florida. Or Indiana.
The culprit is the car, since even areas of otherwise attractive cities (like Syracuse, NY) have vast swaths of decaying sprawl that were all built after the auto assumed its current role in American society. There are very few cities in which the post-auto area is attractive at all. Not that it totally excuses areas like South U., which just look like shitty sprawl because they were redeveloped in an era of strip-mall architecture.
posted by js on January 25th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
It’s pretty cold out here, but I didn’t realize hell had frozen over — I agree with JS!
posted by Anna on January 25th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
So, what do you think about the “new urbanist” strip mall design? Like the Whole Foods/Barnes and Noble nightmare on Washtenaw.

I read that the terrible parking lot design and lack of parking is supposed to make people want to walk there. Except…. you’d be killed if you tried to make it in there on foot.
posted by Lehigh Valley Refugee on January 25th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
I went there for the one and only time just before Christmas and was scared out of my mind. Fortunately I made it in and out without running anyone or anything over (or being run over). What crack addict designed that aberration?
posted by Dave on January 25th, 2005 at 8:44 pm
Um. It fails the “new urbanist” test by not being, well, urban. As far as I understand it, the idea of New Urbanism is to use mixed-use high density areas to create, or recreate, the neighborhood feel that created functional cities to begin with.
I mean, the goal as I see it is to make each neighborhood an autonomous identity within the quilt of urban life, with its own restaurants, grocery stores, clubs and galleries. And to do that in places like Ann Arbor, where real urbanity is pretty much non-existant.
But hey, I’m not an urban planner.
posted by js on January 25th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
And Anna, I guess that means I’ll have to try harder… Maybe a comment praising the Harvard president for his candor? Nah…
posted by js on January 25th, 2005 at 9:08 pm
There’s a difference between being “truthful” and being “wrong”.
posted by Anna on January 26th, 2005 at 9:06 am
(From what I’ve read of Summer’s comments, I don’t really have a problem with the most charitible reading of the reasoning behind them: that there are many assumed causes of gender disparity, and that it would be nice if there was more hard data about them. Kind of like how I don’t have a problem with the stickers that say evolution is only a theory, and should be regarded critically. But I also understand how it comes across as incredibly insulting to women who have experienced discrimination first-hand [as I’m sure you have your own anecdotes]. My girlfriend’s sister, if you’ll excuse the third-hand account, was told that she couldn’t be taught lab protocols because she was a girl and wouldn’t be able to understand them. The science teacher she dealt with in high school was an open lech. For women in science, I have to assume that the proximate causes of their relative scarcity are pretty damn apparent, and implying that they need more study is a predictable way to raise ire. But I feel like the American public would probably still be surprised at how pervasive it is, and I feel like more people should be rushing to present studies that quantify the phenomenon.
As a side note, it is one of the nice things about growing up in Ann Arbor: when hearing my girlfriend’s sister talk about what she went through in public school in Lansing, it seemed so far from my experience in which women were actively recruited into the science program that it was nigh unbelievable. When sexual harrassment of students happened here, the reprisals were swift and thorough. Imagining a place where the teacher would retain his job seemed like something out of a time long, long ago, when blacks couldn’t eat at lunch counters.)
posted by js on January 26th, 2005 at 11:51 am
Without wishing to jump into the middle of this whole thing (though admitting I am sympathetic to the idea that men and women are different even in politically incorrect ways), I would just throw out this link that may be of interest to those who are concerned about whatever it was exactly that Summers said (and I haven’t seen a transcript anywhere):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4202199.stm

Of course, I should add that my ring finger is barely longer than my index finger, I am terrible at “spatial” things, and I work in the communications biz. So maybe I am secretly a woman.
posted by Dave on January 26th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
I saw that link on Metafilter. A sample size of 40 and tasks that aren’t actually driving or map-reading? Boy, that data sure sounds like it supports the thesis that women are poor drivers!
(I tend to fall more on the nurture side of things, maybe because a freshman anthro survey course showed me a lot of different social constructions that were very different with regard to gender roles…)
posted by js on January 26th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Summers’ apology makes me view his comments in a different light; it’s really the people who think he’s a victim of out-of-control political correctness that annoy me. The gender difference crowd constantly uses high school and grade school test results to show that women are worse at math and science, but these same tests show that girls do better at language and writing, and there’s no outcry about the fact that men completely dominate humanities faculties, journalism, the short stories in the New Yorker, and so on. Of course, writing can’t be reduced to abilities that can be measured on a standardized test; it also depends on experience, hard work and creativity. So does science.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 26th, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Doesn’t something bad have to happen to you before you become a victim? Trolling at an academic conference and getting called on it does not make you the victim of political correctness…
posted by js on January 26th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
I actually have done some sex-difference research; of course there are differences between the sexes — anyone who would deny that there are differences is downright silly.

The thing that annoyed me about Summers’ comments was that he didn’t have his facts straight. First of all, the things that he’s saying predict mathematical ability don’t necessarily cause mathematical ability. There’s no direct evidence that being able to mentally rotate things (for example) has anything to do with being able to do, say, calculus (or add, subtract and divide) — the evidence is almost all correlational (the logic: men are better at math, they are also better at some spatial tasks, ergo, men are better at math because of their visuo-spatial skills).

Second, women do do better at some visuo-spatial tasks, especially those involving configurations (e.g., faces), and those involving hand-eye coordination — but you don’t see that widely sited as a reason that women should be the majority of fighter pilots and somehow, without really any evidence, people have decided that those visuo-spatial skills have no bearing on mathematical ability.

Third, as AAIO says, the evidence that women have better verbal skills is much stronger than the evidence that men have better (innate) mathematical skills, yet, there is still a dearth of award winning female novelists, pulitzer prize winning journalists, tenured English Dept. faculty members, etc. etc. etc. In fact, verbal skills are so important in academia (due to the extremely high pressure to publish), that if women truly dominate in verbal skills — to the extent that it appears that they do –they should dominate virtually every academic discipline (not to mention politics and religion, due, in addition to their verbal skills, to their putative greater emotional intelligence).

Finally, as I gathered from reading about that study (link above) they didn’t actually even test driving ability — they did another test of mental rotation (which, we already knew was easier for men) and then measured finger length — more evidence that men have more testosterone and are also better at mental rotation (i.e., correlational). Furthermore, women are better at knowing where their bodies are relative to spatial coordinates, which would seem to me to be pretty important when it comes to driving. Finally, my memory is that even though women are supposedly “poorer” drivers, we enjoy lower insurance rates because we get in fewer accidents.

-Anna
posted by Anna on January 27th, 2005 at 9:35 am
One thing I thought was pretty funny was an econ professor who said in the NYT article, “and he said again and again, ‘I’m here to provoke you,’” as a way of saying that the female MIT prof overreacted.

By that logic, if someone breaks into your house, you shouldn’t be angry, as long as he says again and again, “I’m here to rob you”.
posted by Anna on January 27th, 2005 at 9:57 am
I’d argue your analogy works better with assault, but the difference is what Summer’s saying is “I’m hoping to make you overreact to my poorly-supported sexist argument.” Why give him what he wants? He was trolling, and a lot of people bit by doing things like walking out instead of saying “It’s really a shame that the man at the head of Harvard has to justify his insecurity over his power with a spurious argument that mistakes correlation with causality.”
The goal shouldn’t be outrage over his actions, it should be humiliating him for putting forth a spurious argument.
And Anna, shouldn’t you be thanking him? Because of remarks like these, you should be seeing more women scientists coming to Yale.
(The driving-to-finger length thing is bunk. What really causes women to be worse drivers is the slope of their head. Or maybe the bumps on it.)
posted by js on January 27th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
I agree (astoundingly — am I regressing or something?) with you, JS, in some ways — and he has really gotten himself into a mess of trouble.

I think that if the president of another university said, “look, the situation for women in academia, esp. math and science departments isn’t very good — so let’s see if there are empirical ways of finding out why — here are some possibilities,” no one would have objected because these things have all been said before. Part of the reason people are so outraged is that his remarks come in the context of a real crisis — some would say a crisis of leadership — at Harvard. The situation for women has gotten worse during Summers’ leadership — in the last four years the number of tenure offers to women has dropped steadily, whereas it has continued to improve almost everywhere else (since later generations are now coming up through the ranks and there are more female Ph.D.s than there used to be). In the last two in particular, the situation has gotten very bleak. Of 32 tenured offers in last year’s tenure cycle, only 4 of those were to women — I believe that is in all fields, not just math and science. Not to mention that almost their entire African Studies department absconded to Princeton.

Also, what he left out (or underemphasized — I don’t think that a transcript was ever released) was inadvertent (and not-so-inadvertent) discrimination in departments like Physics. There are lots of more subtle ways that women are made to feel unwelcome in science departments, and in science in general.
posted by Anna on January 27th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
The African Studies flap was a bunch of crap.

Summers’ Harvard Financial Aid Initiative is as important as anything in diversifying the school (at the student level).

He’s a mixed bag, like any president.
posted by Dale on January 27th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Thanks for the interesting comments, everyone - Anna, it’s really neat to hear someone who does gender difference research explain how to interpret this stuff. It’s really discouraging that so many people seem to think this debate is solely about Summers speculating that women might possibly be worse at math on average, as if his remarks had no context whatsoever.

Yeah, Nancy Hopkins could have done something better than walking out, but she had a limited amount of time to decide what to do, and at least she did something that opened up this whole debate.

Summers lived in my college dorm, oddly enough.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 27th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
Of course Summers has done good and bad things, like any president, but the bad has outweighed the good at Harvard. I base that not on diversity, but on the general intellectual climate these days, as well as their apparent inability to retain some very excellent people (and I’m not talking about African Studies).
posted by Anna on January 28th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Update on the Summers sitch.
posted by Dale on February 6th, 2005 at 6:45 pm