STATEMENT

Behind the University’s signs of the times: the art in navigation

OSCAR NOLLETTE-PATULSKI Statement Correspondent

Mason Hall had a wayfinding problem.

“At best, it was confusing,” the University of Michigan’s Lynne Friman, LSA’s Capital Project Manager and Designer, admits. Her recent credits at the University include redesigns at the Science Learning Center and the Modern Languages Building. She also has been involved in creating the interior of the Museum of Natural History.

Now, Friman is one of the people tasked with the ongoing wayfinding project within the corridors Angell, Haven, Mason and Tisch halls. Though she is often the point-person within LSA for all aspects of a space’s interior — advising on furniture, art, paint and other cosmetic treatments at the SLC — she was recruited for this particular project due to her graphic communications expertise, having solved similar problems at nearby cultural institutions, such as the Henry Ford Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

“Ginny was putting papers up around (Mason Hall), trying to get people to find their way (around the building), and then she came to me,” Friman said.

‘Ginny’ is Virginia Schlaff, the University’s Facilities Manager for the Mason-Angell-Tisch-Haven (MATH) complex, as well as nearby Tappan Hall. The papers, posted to the sides of the hallways using blue painters tape, were an ad-hoc solution designed to temporarily take the guesswork out of the complex’s enigmatic hallways. The common misconception of the building being composed of only one hall is falsely supported by the blurred boundaries and shared roofs between each.

“When the students didn’t come for two years in a row into the classrooms, you had two years worth of students out of four that were unfamiliar (with the building’s layout),” Schlaff said of the onlineonly period at the University. The complex’s small, maroon interior navigation signs blended in with everything else on the walls of Mason Hall, positioned in hard-tosee places and overshadowed by the saturation of flyers for student organizations and.

“A lot more students needed help finding their way,” Schlaff affirmed.

Like many aspects of college life, the pandemic altered and invited change to many different systems on campus, signage included. When students finally returned to campus, the if-you-know-you-know mentality of navigating the MATH complex was no longer adequate in supporting the needs of the student community.

Schlaff and Friman are among those in the University’s Facilities offices — plus those in Architecture, Engineering and Construction — working on Phase 2 of this particular wayfinding project, which includes directional and landmark signs for the rest of the ground and first floors, with an anticipated completion date of Fall 2023. Future phases of the project will assist in navigation on the complex’s upper floors, where finding the right building and corridor for a particular room is about as easy as solving a “Where’s Waldo.”

The ongoing wayfinding work at the MATH complex is only a small window into the bureaucratic world of signage at the University of Michigan, where branding, accessibility and graphic design coalesce into a service we take for granted every day. From “you are here” maps to window lettering, these textual and visual indicators can change whether or not someone gets lost on their way to class, to being able to find the emergency room at the University Hospital. Of course, signage is not always life or death, but it does quietly influence our everyday lives, making it easy or difficult to get where we want to go. Multiply individual decisions by over 50,000 students, plus employees, it’s important that each person knows where to go.

Through the power of suggestion and direction, this overlooked medium can communicate — or fail to communicate — what is deemed important about a place. But who decides on these signs of the times? ***

Even before entering any U-M building, you are guided by a series of signs noting that you’re on campus. Perhaps you followed one of the City of Ann Arbor’s charming visuals after exiting the highway, pointing you toward Downtown. Upon reaching State and East Huron Streets, you’re greeted by a large, blue sign embedded in a landscaped wall, indicating that you’re on Central Campus. While looking for parking, you might avoid University signs that indicate different permit colors and hours of enforcement, instead opting for metered spaces open to the public. To find the location of your intended building, a freestanding identification sign on a concrete base will help confirm you’re almost there. Finally, at its front doors, lettering on the windows and doors inform you that you’ve finally made it.

Were the above scenario to not go as planned, however, you might arrive in a distant part of campus, wander around before choosing to enter the wrong building, where you might bang on locked doors, frustrated by how historic and convoluted the University is. Once you’ve exhausted many entrances, you’ll ask a random passerby to show you the way, and embarrassingly, you find out you’re a far walk from where you intended to go. Signs could have saved you the confusion, anger and embarrassment of just walking to your desired room.

Layers of communication are essential to navigate a sprawling institution like the University of Michigan, where many jurisdictions govern piecemeal areas of campus. This multifaceted approach to wayfinding is no accident, however, and it’s all codified in the Campus Signage and Wayfinding Guidelines, published by the University Planner’s Office. The 29-page document dictates best practices for everything from indicating accessible entrances, using the Block M appropriately on Athletic Facilities, the maximum duration banners can be displayed on University light poles before being taken down (one academic year) and the suggested depth of topsoil surrounding a sign’s concrete base (four to six inches).

The exceptional precision that exterior signage must conform to seeks to bridge the identity gap between the University’s 19 schools and colleges, plus many other non-academic departments like University Unions or Michigan Housing. When simply walking through the Diag, there is little from the outside world to suggest the presence of these different governing bodies. Rather, it seems like there is only one: the University of Michigan.

Once inside a building, though, the uniformity stops. On page 12 of the document, pertaining to building directories, individual University units are “encouraged to place directories at all entrances of a building.” And so emerges the complex, somewhat-disheveled patchwork of wayfinding that seeks to get U-M affiliates from front door to classroom door — a task that is easier said than done.

Robert Ramsburgh knows this better than most. Before his current role at the Biological Sciences Building, he was Facilities Manager for the MLB, North Quad Residence Hall, Lane Hall and the Undergraduate Science Building. He has spent the past few years of his tenure trying to bring life to the MLB, which is often nominated as one of the ugliest buildings on the University’s campus.

“At one point, there was a video circulating that a couple of students did about the ‘Majorly Lame Building,’” Ramsburgh said, who has been with U-M Facilities for five years. “I sort of took (the MLB) on as one of my pet projects because it had been neglected … If I were a parent of a student, and I came into a building like this, and it was as drab and dreary as it was, I’d be wondering exactly what I was paying for.”

Unkempt spaces, small signs and doors painted in seemingly random colors added confusion and chaos to a building already made difficult by its infinite oval shape and lack of corridor windows on most floors.

A student strolls by in Angell Hall Monday, November 28. SAM ADLER/Daily Read more at MichiganDaily.com

More than a fraud? The guilt of being a fake activist

CHINWE ONWERE Statement Columnist

All my life, I’ve wanted to be the one who stands on the pulpit and delivers the victory message. I’ve dreamed of marching up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial like Martin Luther King Jr., telling America that I belong, that I am meant to be here and that I am a human being that deserves fundamental rights. I’ve longed to protest in the streets, screaming until the hoarseness in my throat overtakes my vocal cords and I gasp for breath.

Yet, I’ve accomplished none of those things. Perhaps because I am scared, perhaps because I feel insignificant but most likely because I feel that I am a fraud, that I’ll never correct the dissonance between my dreams and reality.

I always thought that college would be better. That the perils of high school life and the apprehension that I had once felt would seemingly vanish away with the Ann Arbor wind. Approaching my first days as a Wolverine, I planned to truly be myself, to involve myself in activism by joining the Black Student Unionwand try to find a Black community that I had previously lacked at other academic institutions.

But during the fall of my first year at the University of Michigan, when the news first came out about BSU’s “More Than Four: The 4 Point Platform” and the trashing of their posters on the sidewalk, I felt a pang of immediate guilt — like I had somehow contributed to the problem. Despite the many times that I had written down, “Attend BSU meeting,” in the colorfully lined pages of my planner, despite the many mental notes that I had ingrained in the depths of my amygdala, I had not attended a single one.

I’m a fake.

Fake activist. Yes, that is what I would classify myself as. In high school, I assumed the position of being the “poster child,” a Black girl who would say just the right number of harsh truths to get away with still being liked by the school administration. I dealt the cards by selecting my words with the utmost caution, always making sure to counteract phrases with an idealized version, painting them into a silhouette, devoid of any real meaning, saying at the end of every sentence, “We need to love everyone.” It was a kind of selfcensorship born out of a fear of being rejected by peers, and by my PWI school.

On the night the news of the torn BSU posters hit, I was scrolling on my phone, perusing the Michigan Daily Instagram debrief. Mindlessly clicking through the stories, I began to see repost after repost of the same photo: posters shredded to bits, scattered across the cold sidewalk, and dirtied by the footsteps of students. Clicking on the photo brought me to the original one posted by @umich. bsu — a numbing scene of posters with the phrase “Care about Black Students” torn and littered on the edge of the sidewalk. This was just 24 hours after the BSU had a public address in which they addressed their Four Point Platform, arguing for the advocacy of Black voices at the University and for their concerns not only to be heard but acted upon by the administration.

There are four main issues that the BSU wants the University to address.

First: Increase Black student enrollment, specifically to reflect the percentage of the state of Michigan’s Black population of 14%.

Second: The University should explicitly plan out ways to combat anti-Blackness within the school community and in the school system.

Third: Rectify the weaknesses of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan that is often not effective for Black students.

Fourth: Increase University responsibility and priority to fund kindergarten through 12th grade education in the state of Michigan and to address systemic racism and inequities present in the system.

When I first learned about these efforts from the BSU, I was amazed to see everything that the Union was doing for the Black community here at the University. Here they were, rallying and calling out the leaders and systems of the University, highlighting how their silence was louder than any opposition. And here I was, almost halfway through my first semester at U-M, and still not one meeting under my belt.

I could blame my lack of attendance on the business of my schedule, or on the hours I needed to spend studying organic chemistry. But none of those excuses seemed to make up for the feeling of fake activism that I had.

The pursuit for Black voices to be heard at the University has been a consistent struggle in recent decades. Before the advent of the BSU at the University, there was BAM, the Black Action Movement. In the 1970s, Black students called out the racism and discrimination within the university system through sit-in protests, demonstrations on the University president’s lawn and rallies in the plaza outside the Fleming Administration Building. Their efforts were primarily concerned with increasing minority enrollment, getting rid of the designation of Black students as “negro” and an aim that the student body would be 10% Black by 1973.

Half a century later, Black students at the University are continuing to fight for this same demand: the demand to be treated as equals by the administration, and have their demands not only listened to — but advocated for. The pivotal moment of BAM’s advocacy happened early in the morning of Friday, March 27, 1970, at around 5 a.m., when the first day of what would be a 13-day strike began.

AMFSCE, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, was a key advocate of BAM’s missions. AMFSCE denied the crossing of picket lines and was a major contributor to the University’s agreement to “compromise” on BAM’s demands. When presenting their list of 12 demands to administration, they denied almost all of them but upheld that they would increase Black enrollment to at least 7%. These protests continued two times after, in 1975 and 1987. Now, here we are — just over 50 years later since BAM first protested for Black students at the University to be prioritized and cared for, and without much progress to show for it.

During all of the BAM movements, many of the priorities listed in all of the agendas included first increasing Black enrollment to 10%, combating the racist climate of the University and reallocating University funding to actively combat racism. The University has since failed to meet these demands, specifically that of Black enrollment, as the population of Black students at the University has substantially decreased from 7% in 2006 to a current 4.2% in 2021.

I want to be like them. I want to be like the BAM activists, the BSU leaders and the generators of change for the future of minority students at this university. I want to stand firm and unapologetic at the hands of authority, and yet, I think back to how I was during middle school and high school, afraid of what others would think of me.

I’m scared about what I will do, what I will say, how I will act. For so many years, I’ve cared too much about what others thought of me, and a part of me truly still does. At my predominantly white high school, I tried to put on the role of activist, hanging posters for Black History Month, Native American History Month and all the heritage months, crafting announcements for all of the cultural holidays, “fun” facts and statistics that I knew would cause relatively little opposition from my classmates or peers because they were not “controversial.”

Yet, what I didn’t talk about was how 49% of Native American homes lack basic clean water, stemming from genocide and colonization from white settlers and a racist system. Because how could people then act as if nothing was wrong?

Appeased, abated, complacent — whatever you want to call it: I am guilty of it. I have tried to wash my hands of the dark red stain that pigments my skin, yet the color never seems to fade.

But, what use is it to feel guilty? What use is it to let it eat away at me when I could be doing so much more?w

The More Than Four Point Platform is not just a mere list of desires or requirements by the BSU. More than anything, it represents the continual struggle of Black and minority voices to be heard and how the hands of the administration have silenced their voices by inaction. Over 50 years since the BAM’s conception, the movement still continues.

I don’t hope to be a part of it. I will be a part of it. And that is a promise to myself, now in ink in every paper dancing across this campus.

Riley Hodder (left) and Abbey Hodder (right) in front of Oxford High School Saturday, November 26. Photo courtesy of Paige Hodder

‘Do something:’ On the one-year anniversary of the Oxford High School shooting

RILEY HODDER Statement Correspondent

Content Warning: Descriptions of gun violence.

It’s hard to be the picture of resiliency when you’ve been knocked down and can’t get back up.

I wish people would realize they’re walking over me, continually pushing me down. But I also don’t. The people that step on me have their own places to be, their own lives to live. I don’t want them to burden themselves with mine. I don’t want anyone to lay down beside me. But it still hurts. I feel the heels of their shoes press into the bruises that have made homes on my skin — everything lingers.

I don’t know. Maybe I want someone to look down. Maybe I want someone to lay beside me.

What I do know is that I’m scared a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever not be afraid again.

I put my jacket over my sister’s shoulders as she cries. I hold my sister so tightly I fear I might crack her ribs. I smile when someone asks where I’m from.

“Oxford,” I say, bracing for impact.

They smile. They don’t remember. That is almost worse.

Things haven’t changed that much. For me, they’ll never be the same.

***

A year ago today there was a shooting at Oxford High School. Four students died: Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St. Juliana, Justin Shilling and Tate Myre. Many more were injured, now fully recovered. But even more will never be the same.

I am not a survivor myself, but my little sister, Abbey, was there that day. She crawled out of a window and ran down the street. I was in Mason Hall during those minutes my sister made her escape.

I do not try to represent or describe the totality of the experiences that came after this event. I simply seek to speak on my own.

***

The changes that happened after aren’t big. They aren’t noticeable unless you’re looking for them. They’re clear when Abbey’s eyes get lost in space, and I can tell she’s somewhere far away. They’re clear when I play certain songs, and we cry without speaking. They’re little changes in her face I can’t pick out. She looks older. I think it’s something in her eyes.

I look in the mirror sometimes and try to pick out the differences in my own face. Maybe I look different too. Do I look older? Is there something in my eyes?

But maybe I don’t. Because sometimes I look at Abbey, and she looks just like she used to. When we’re screaming a song in our parent’s truck. When she’s watching TV with my older sister. When I watch her play with our dogs in the yard.

Those moments remind me how little everything changed. Is the look in my sister’s eye all that’s changed because of this tragedy? Is that all that changes after something like this happens to someone? Nothing tangible, nothing monumental, nothing that will protect other children and other parents and other families from this kind of pain. From this kind of change.

Just this. The way my sister cries and shakes. The way I look in the mirror and pick apart my face, hoping for some change, because something, anything ought to change as a result of what happened in my hometown 365 days ago today.

It’s always the pain. That’s all I can see.

***

At the end of the piece I wrote for “The Oxford Edition,” I called upon anyone reading to look at my community, to see it. Actually, I believe I didn’t “call,” I “begged.”

My friends read the article, my hometown did. For a few months afterward when I met someone new, and I said my name, they sometimes knew who I was, they attached my name with the piece. But that was back when people froze when I said where I was from. They looked. They saw. They listened to my story, to my sister’s story, to stories from those on campus and from those back in Oxford. I thanked them. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to do that — to look, to see, to listen so earnestly.

But now, a year later, they don’t remember. And I don’t blame them.

There have been 717 mass shootings in the U.S. this year. I can’t remember 717 towns. I can’t remember that many names. This overwhelming, intense pain that has burdened my family, my town for months now, plagues thousands of other souls in this country.

Because my little sister shakes and cries when she hears fireworks. Because my little sister can’t go to school without the therapy dogs that they provide. Because I can’t listen to certain songs. Because my dad can’t think about it for too long because he’ll just freeze, and the world will keep moving without him. Because my entire life, my family’s life, feels like trying to push a run-down car uphill. Constant effort, just to keep moving, and when we turn around, we realize we haven’t even made it that far.

And I didn’t even lose someone. Think about that. 717 mass shootings. Thousands of families, thousands of people. That’s a lot of names that you, I, we can’t remember.

That’s a lot of names that deserve to be remembered. ***

When it happened, my older sister and I fled Ann Arbor. I sat in the passenger seat as she drove, as she pleaded with me not to talk about it, because she couldn’t drive and dry-heave at the same time. I pleaded with my mind to stop racing, my arms to stop aching for my little sister.

But now it’s nearly a year later, and I’m driving home again. Just like that day, I’m driving to see my younger sister. My hands grip the steering wheel, and I see a Twitter notification. Another headline of a school facing another threat of a mass-shooting. I don’t dig too deeply for the details, I can’t without freaking out. I think my Twitter notifications have listened to my search history. It may not currently be the worst day of my life anymore, but I think, with a growing anger, that somewhere out there, it is somebody’s.

I glance at the passenger seat and think about how, two weeks ago, I was holding back a panic attack like vomit. I remember locking every muscle in my body so I wouldn’t move, so I wouldn’t show anyone that I was on the verge of tears, of breaking down. All because we had tumbled over a particularly nasty bit of roadkill.

I wondered if this will be what the rest of my life is like. Crying over roadkill, fake guns, movies I used to love, Evan Peters in American Horror Story, sirens, book covers, certain names, the way no one understands and yet too many people understand and how none of us should, my little sister’s backpack, my old chemistry teacher, therapy dogs, the image of my little sister bleeding out on the floor of her high school and whispering my name, and I don’t even know what’s happening and someone is stepping over her, the classrooms in Mason Hall, flags at half-mast, calls from unknown numbers, hospitals, Grey’s Anatomy season six episode 24, my little sister’s 16th birthday, the idea of my tears falling down my face and the shade of the frost on the grass and how hard the ground would be if I had to bury my little sister.

And just like that I’m back in it. Because what are just nightmares to make me sob are real to some people. To so many people. I pound my fist into the steering wheel as I pull into my driveway, pressing my forehead against the cool glass so I can feel something other than this. And then I realize that this, this is nothing. This is getting off easy.

I put each hand on its opposite shoulder and hold myself close. I don’t want to go inside like this and scare my sister. I’d rather bear this burden alone. But I know I am not. My family is just inside, bearing this burden. 717 new communities in America are out there, bearing this burden, just from this year alone.

A little under a year ago I begged people to look at my community. Now, I’m afraid I’m going to beg people again.

Please do something. Check in on your friends. Have conversations about mental health, about gun control with your families, friends. I said in my previous Oxford Edition piece that the months following the event felt like I was stuck in the moment of that day — Nov. 30. Others may walk on. Others’ worlds may change. But mine has not. Mine won’t. I refuse to let it.

Not until you see. Not until we see. Not until something comes out of this. This pain, this unending, burning pain that is somehow overwhelming and all-consuming and still doesn’t compare to that of those who lost people exactly one year ago, of those who lose people to gun violence every single day.

I will remain frozen. I will remain in that moment of horror, a piece of me will remain in the worst day of my life until I feel like the world has paid for what it has done to me. To my older sister, to my father, to my mother. To my little, baby sister, who I am fortunate to spend yet another day with. To Tate. To Hana. To Madisyn. To Justin. To Oxford.

Please, I’m begging you. Take a piece of yourself, your mouth, your hand, your heart and hold it out. Promise it to me, to people like me, to people in worse positions than me. And then do something with it. Be a part of the reason that the only thing that comes out of this tragedy isn’t pain.

‘On the cutting edge:’ Professor Perry Samson through the lens of Climate 102

CHARLIE PAPPALARDO Statement Columnist

Throughout his long and illustrious career in meteorology, not everything went to plan for Perry Samson.

In fact, he never planned on becoming a meteorologist. He had every intention of becoming a rock star.

“But they expect you to have some talent,” Samson said. “Which I thought was unfair.”

And he certainly didn’t plan on becoming a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Michigan, he only decided to interview because he was trying to be cheap.

“I applied for the job in Ann Arbor literally hoping, not that I would get hired because I didn’t think that that would happen,” Samson said. “... but that they would pay for my room as I drove from Albany to Madison … I’m a cheap guy.”

And he absolutely didn’t plan on starting a weather site — The Weather Underground — that receives tens of millions of visits every month. Rather, it began as a simple attempt to look intelligent in front of his students by being able to tell them what the weather was going to be each day.

“He came in one day and he said, … ‘I want you guys to make me look smart,’” Frank Marsik, associate research scientist and lecturer in the College of Engineering, said. “‘I need to know what the weather’s going to be that day. Nothing’s more embarrassing for a meteorology professor to go into class, have students ask him and you not know.’”

But regardless of what his initial plan was, he did all of these things, from never-was-rockstar to one of meteorology’s most celebrated thinkers and the University’s most esteemed professors.

He wasn’t supposed to. His success was not a product of some greater design. He simply took what was in front of him at every step of his life, looked for the most logical path forward and turned opportunities that he couldn’t have predicted into much more than they should have been.

That’s part of the reason Samson has never fit neatly into a concrete professional description. Because for Samson, there’s very little that he isn’t.

“He’s just Perry. He’s an enigma,” Rackham student Kaleb Clover told The Michigan Daily.

And while any description would be largely inadequate in fully capturing the enigmatic Samson, it’s worth a shot:

Perry Samson is a tornadochasing, major weatherconglomerate co-founding, educational tool building, emmy-winning, meteorologicaltrailblazing, entrepreneurial professor of atmospheric sciences with a specialty in air quality. He’s spent the past four decades teaching at the University; every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, he could be found standing at a lectern, teaching Climate 102: Extreme Weather, to students like me, who had minimal interest in the weather and an even more minimal intent of becoming meteorologists.

“If you ask about the story of Perry Samson, it’s not the story of a great forecaster, it’s not even the story of a tornado chaser … Perry’s is the story of innovation,” Tim Keebler, Ph.D. student, and a former GSI for Samson, said.

With so much that could be mentioned, it’s impossible to define Samson by just one feat that he’s accomplished. Heck, it took me hundreds of minutes of interviews before someone even thought it worth mentioning that a documentary made about a trip he led won an Emmy. Yet, everyone brought up Climate 102 right away.