The Statement: Ann Arbor Unlocked

statement THE MICHIGAN DAILY SE P TEM B E R 3 , 2014

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Wednesday, September 3, 2014 // The Statement RUBY WALLAU/Daily

RUBY WALLAU/Daily

‘ TR EA SUR E HUNT’

BY CA ROLY N GE A R IG, DA ILY STA FF R EPORTER

THE

statement

Magazine Editor: Carlina Duan Deputy Editors: Max Radwin

Photo Editor: Ruby Wallau Illustrator: Megan Mulholland

Amrutha Sivakumar Editor in Chief: Design Editor:

Managing Editor: Katie Burke Copy Editors: Mark Ossolinski Meaghan Thompson

Peter Shahin

Amy Mackens

COVER BY AMY MACKENS & RUBY WALLAU

hile most students are asleep at 9 a.m. on Saturdays, LSA sophomore Sara Cusack can often be found trekking across downtown Ann Arbor to the weekly Kiwanis Thrift Sale.

“I don’t typically buy my clothes new, but I put a lot of effort into finding them,” she said. “I like not knowing what I’m going to get.”

Cusack, who buys a majority of her clothing secondhand, is part of a wider culture of students and residents in Ann Arbor who eschew stores like Urban Outfitters and Pitaya in favor of one-ofa-kind, often inexpensive, clothing from thrift and vintage stores.

Open only on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon, Kiwanis, located on the corner of South 1st Street and Washington Street, is Cusack’s favorite Ann Arbor thrift store.

Downtown Ann Arbor has two locally owned vintage shops: Dear Golden and The Getup. In addition, it is home to several nearby thrift stores: Salvation Army, The Ann Arbor PTO Thrift Shop, Kiwanis Thrift Sale, St. Vincent De Paul Thrift Store and more. Thrift shopping extends beyond clothing at Treasure Mart, a home goods consignment shop in Kerrytown, and The Ann Arbor Reuse Center, which carries donated household items and building materials.

At the Ann Arbor Salvation Army, located on State Street across from the University golf course, store supervisor Jillian Morey-Greer said the store has a distinctly different feel than the five other Southeastern Michigan stores she oversees.

“We have a lot of very trendy individuals that come to this store in particular,” she said. “People who are very individual, very into clothes and very trendy.”

Morey-Greer said she has noticed a distinct culture of secondhand shopping that is unique to Ann Arbor, a result of the University’s influence on the town as well as the influx of students from other areas of the country.

“Our shoppers and product is dependent on the area,” she said.

“A lot of people are very into thrifting — and the people who donate items to the store are the people who shop here.”

LSA junior Sola Muno is an Ann Arbor native and a regular Salvation Army shopper, although her favorite Ann Arbor thrift store is the Ann Arbor PTO Thrift Shop, which donates all proceeds to Ann Arbor Public Schools. Muno is also fashion editor for SHEI Magazine, the University’s student-run fashion magazine.

“I’ve been thrift shopping at the same places since as long as I can remember,” she said. “My mom used to take me to the same stores when I was little. I would say my favorites have changed, though, as Value World was my favorite in high school. My style has gotten a lot more polished since beginning college.

“I love it because it’s like treasure hunting — you never know what you will find,” Muno explained. “It allows me to take risks — I don’t feel bad spending three dollars on something that I love but am not 100 percent sure I can pull off.”

“I like to be green,” LSA junior

Amelia Runco said. “It’s good to buy clothes that have already been used. And it’s cool to be wearing something that not everyone else has.”

Along with Cusack, Runco is a frequent customer at The Getup, which is located close to campus on State Street. Kelly McLeod, shop owner and lifelong vintage lover, opened the store in February 2005, and said the culture of Ann Arbor is a big part of why the store has been open for almost 10 years.

“In any college town, you’re going to have people thinking outside the box and people who want to shop green,” McLeod said.

“You’re going to have people who are funky, artsy, who want something different. This town really loves secondhand, reusing, the green aspect of it, which is really exciting.”

The Getup specializes in clothing from the 1940s to the 1970s, although the store also carries items from the 1980s and 1990s.

Clothing is purchased from estate sales or individuals who bring in items or arrange for an appointment, and ranges in price from 20 dollars to several hundred dollars.

Students make up nearly half of customers.

“What helps with Ann Arbor is that there are so many transplants,” McLeod said. “Students are here from New York, LA, Seattle, places where vintage is really big. They expect these sort of stores.”

“It sounds kind of silly, but I think it’s really cool to try and imagine who used my clothes before I did, and think about how See TREASURE, Page 8B

Wednesday, September 3, 2014 // The Statement

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RUBY WALLAU/Daily

Editor’s note: Some names have been changed in this story due to safety and/or privacy concerns. t was pitch black. Quiet, excluding excited whispers and hurried footsteps. A group of five was circling the Big House, with a simple mission: get in.

The date was August 30, 2013, teetering on the 31st. It was the night before Michigan Football would open its season against Central Michigan University.

Among the trespassers-to-be was Matt, at the time an LSA and Neuroscience senior, he and a friend — one who had snuck into Michigan Stadium before — met up with three other students in the parking lot. From there, it was game time.

One by one, they climbed the fence near Section 27. For those who aren’t familiar with the metal barriers to entry, the fences are made up of cylindrical, vertical poles that make it difficult to ascend with grace.

Matt his friends nearly fell more than once, but thanks to what he described as a team effort, those who stayed became champions.

“We stood up there by the gate for a while,” he said. “Just observing. We were all shocked because we actually did it … but we wanted to go on the field.”

The rush of adrenaline surpassed whatever fear Matt had of being caught. At that point, the “eerie, creepy feeling” that accompanied the empty Leviathan of a stadium would not tarnish the group’s triumph.

The group ran around the field, laid down by the Block ‘M’ at the 50-yard-line and took obligatory break-in pictures — because this is Michigan, for God’s sake. And then, it was ruined.

“My friend starts running toward the stairs,” Matt said. “As he was running off the field, I was running after him, and I see a big flashlight from the bleachers. It blinded us.”

It was a police officer. Matt stopped in his tracks, as did the others, and the light descended from the bleachers. The students lined up in the end zone, and the cop shined his flashlight from the first row of student section seats.

The officer asked if they knew they were trespassing. “No sir, I’m not a lawyer,” one student replied.

Matt winced.

BR E A K ING IN

BY TR A DITION

“You do not say that when you’re being caught,” Matt reminisced.

His first thought: “We’re going to jail.”

The group was taken outside of the stadium, where Matt said he saw around eight additional cops waiting. One asked what he was studying. When he expressed that he was applying to medical school, the officer replied, “Does trespassing look good on a med school resume?”

Ultimately, Matt and his friends were set free. The officers told them to consider the experience a warning, and cautioned the students that were they ever to get caught again, they would face more serious consequences.

“It was definitely worth it,” Matt said. “Totally worth it. At night, when there’s no one there, it looks 10 times bigger … like a scene out of a movie.”

Matt and his friends are not the only students to have snuck into the Big House. Many students see the

B Y M I C H A E L S U G E R M A N , D A I LY S TA F F R E P O R T E R trespassing activity as an item on their pre-graduation bucket lists.

But sneaking into Michigan Stadium isn’t just a longstanding tradition. It’s also a crime punishable by jail time. And that’s assuming an individual hasn’t consumed any kind of drugs or alcohol in the process.

Lieutenant Jason Forsberg, an officer with the University of Michigan Police Department, said students who go into the Big House after hours are breaking and entering — a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail. It could also result in a $1000 fine. Students who are arrested and charged get a mark on their records. Forsberg said it has happened before.

Legal consequences are not the only problem at play. Another is

safety. After all, scaling those fences is no easy feat.

“There are a number of (safety issues),” Forsberg said. “You would need to find a way to get in. There’s a fence you have to climb, obstacles to overcome. You may injure yourself and be stuck inside the stadium with no one coming to help. If we do know you’re in there … you’re taking police away from other areas where they might be better used.”

It is important that police monitor any unauthorized entry to the Big House because the stadium is the biggest in the country, Forsberg said. It is seen as a potential terrorist target, and subsequently, it is not only on UMPD’s radar, but also on that of city police, the FBI and See BREAKING, Page 8B

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Wednesday, September 3, 2014 // The Statement

Wednesday, September 3, 2014 // The Statement

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BY OM A R M A H MOOD, DA I LY A RTS W R I T ER

RUBY WALLAU/Daily

Fairy door located inside of Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea on West Washington.

RUBY WALLAU/Daily

Fairy door located outside of the Blue Tractor on East Washington Street.

here is a fairy door by the box office at Michigan Theatre. I sat in that little corner on a Sunday afternoon, watching the people as the fairies do. A good-looking couple, just a tad too old to be undergraduates, read the listings as they stood holding hands by a poster for Boyhood.He wore a gayly colored shirt and a fedora, and she wore a black-and-white patterned dress with a brown buckled belt.

A car revved by on Liberty, its windows down in the afternoon sun, the radio blasting. The couple didn’t look around at the car. Instead, as if they overlooked the rest of the world, he took her and and twirled her around, and they danced a slow dance not altogether in accord with the music.

The world has a way of coming alive when one watches from a fairy door.

Old German folklore tells us that once upon a time, in the woodlands, there lived fairies. But more than that is only humble guesswork. Still, I wondered what fairies really look like. And I would trust only my own eyes to tell me. So I set out to find a fairy for myself. As it happens, Ann Arbor is the place for such a quest. The world’s only bonafide fairyologist has lived here all his life.

Ann Arbor resident Christopher H. Wright became interested in fairies in 1993, when the first-ever fairy door appeared in his 100-year-old fairytale home on the Old West Side. It had been built into the baseboard of a hallway leading to a stairwell — six inches tall and whitewashed, framed modestly, and topped off with a bronze doorknob. It opened up to a checkered floor and a flight of black-and-white stairs.

Many years later, The Fairy Doors of Ann Arbor is now a book published by Wright that documents his fairyology research. It is largely based on eyewitness drawings and descriptions that he then renders, as an artist, into fuller-fledged illustrations.

In the book, Wright tells us that imagination is the key to these fairies. But I was more skeptical.

My first stop was the storied Michigan Theatre. Underneath the lightbulb-studded canopy, right beside the box office, is a set of varnished double doors. It sits tucked away in the middle of the fanfare. Fairies are notoriously shy of human folk, so I approached the little door with some trepidation. I knelt down and peered inside. The door was hardly ornate, with humble knobs and hinges, but an ode to the Theatre all the same. Panes of glass revealed a picture frame, which I suppose is how the fairies watch their films.

I saw a scattering of ‘fairy droppings’ — pennies, a little pink hairpin, small goldenbrown leaves from past fall, a shiny blue pebble, some M&Ms and a wad of Orbitz.

I also noticed a green glitter that I would later see at every subsequent fairy door I visited.

I leaned my back on the wall of the post office and folded my legs, my Peshawari chappals not so out of place. I gazed up at the ceramic ceiling, painted all sorts of gold

and pink and red and swirled into flowers and ribbons. I hadn’t noticed it before, but fairy dust does put one in a ceiling-gazing mood.

There was a festival going on that Sunday as the fall term came around. Main Street was merry. I came to find myself in the original Sweetwaters on Main and Washington. I looked about in vain for a fairy door, finally coming up with the shamelessness to ask the girl at the bar.

She rolled her eyes at your twenty-yearold fairy hunter and pointed behind me.

There it was: not only a little fairy door, but a dainty little fairy coffee shop next to it as well.

As I looked on, a little girl in a glittery purple dress and colorfully rimmed sunglasses scurried over to the fairy door and knelt down, as her parents looked on. I moved to the side, recognizing that before her I was but a patzer. The fairies were cooking, she told us.

I found that her parents had recently moved to Ann Arbor and were excited about fairy doors. They were even thinking about getting one at their new house, though that of course is best left to the fairies. Their daughter, Adia, agreed very kindly to be interviewed. Five years old, her blue eyes twinkled with delight as she giggled into her mother’s ear. With some humility, she gave earth-shattering testimony of the time she saw a fairy. It was a girl fairy.

“She had pink and blue wings and a pink and blue dress,” Adia told me.

As we talked, I learned that the fairy had wings. Adia had given her a penny.

“We found it in the book library,” she continued, this time without prompting from her mother. “They didn’t tell people because the fairies get mad. But they told me anyway.”

Emboldened by the promise of Adia’s testimony, I made my way down to Peaceable Kingdom to visit another fairy door.

Here the offerings seemed to have been all collected, but that familiar green glitter was present all the same. The fairy door’s resemblance to the door of the business is immediate, though the fairies have embellished it with some seemly railings, and built upon the step. These urban-fairies have not forgotten the charm of their woodland forefathers, though I would have to ask Adia to be sure.

There aren’t too many better ways of discovering Ann Arbor than by hunting for fairies. But be careful of what you might find. As I roamed about in search of more doors, I stopped by the Black Pearl. A helpful waiter there told me he had seen a door close by, and walked me down a couple stores to a little crevice beside Life is Good.

This door was taller by a bit than the other doors I had seen, and also a bit ominous.

I paced back and forth on Main Street, examining the neighboring storefronts, but the door seemed to have a design of its own this time. And it was a little too hidden.

This, Wright believes, could be Ann Arbor’s first goblin door.

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B Y S H O H A M G E VA , DA I LY S T A F F R E P O R T E R

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n the corner of Washtenaw Avenue and Hill Street, in the middle of George Washington Park, stands a gaudy paint-covered rock.

First brought to Ann Arbor in 1932 from a landfill in Pontiac Trail — unpainted, with a plaque commemorating George Washington’s 200th birthday added shortly thereafter — over the past 92 years it has become something else entirely. The Rock, now capital R, is a monument to hundreds, if not thousands, of different student organizations, causes, messages, and last year, a marriage proposal.

It’s not clear who started painting it or when, though most sources place the start of the tradition at about the 1950s when, according to a 1987 letter to the editor in the Ann Arbor News, several Michigan State University fans painted MSU on it, necessitating a fresh coat of paint over the letters by University fans.

By the summer of 1993, the practice of painting the rock had attracted enough attention that the city of Ann Arbor held a public hearing on it to address resident concerns, resulting in a management plan created by then-Superintendent of Parks and Recreation Ronald A. Olson. The plan called for the placement of a trash container, clean up of the Rock’s base, and other regulations that are mostly still in place today, allowing the

RUBY WALLAU/Daily

painting tradition to continue.

While the multitude of writing it has accumulated over the years hasn’t lent it a lot of physical depth — in reality, the paint covering the Rock is only a few inches thick, as found by a Daily reporter who drilled through the paint in 2010 — its significance as a campus tradition both for students and alumni, as well as local residents, is uncontested.

Jessica Black, facility supervisor for Ann Arbor’s parks and recreation department, said to the best of her knowledge, the Rock is the only object of its kind across the city’s parks.

She said while the city neither condones nor condemns painting the Rock, its existence brings something unique to the park and that uniqueness comes with positive aspects, such as the fact that both the Rock and the park don’t get tagged with graffiti very often.

“There’s a sense of ownership in painting it, for the college students and high school students,” Black said.

The city’s policy is to remove paint that ends up on the greenway around it. Otherwise, all the paint that makes it onto the Rock is left alone until painted over, usually within the day. Black said she couldn’t remember a time, over her tenure with the Parks Department, that anything that would be considered offensive enough to warrant removal had been

painted on the Rock itself.

Second-year medical student Max Shlykov is the vice president of the medical school chapter of Wolverines for Life, which regularly paints the Rock. The organization works with the campus community and several organ and blood donation groups, including the Michigan Eye Bank and the Red Cross, to promote donating. They typically paint the Rock before their Be a Hero at the Big House event, which usually occurs right before the Michigan vs. Ohio State University football game. During the event, Wolverines for Life and a similar organization at OSU compete to see who can register the most blood and organ donors, as well as bone marrow donors as of last year.

“I was like ‘Hmm. Interesting,’” Shlykov said about his initial reaction to coordinating the painting of the Rock. “But I knew that it was something traditional, something special, something that kind of gets people’s attention.”

He said for the group, the main point of painting the Rock was to raise awareness and bring people to the event to sign up to be donors.

“It’s very visible whenever you drive by, it’s a part of the campus that gets a lot of foot traffic, it’s very noticeable,” Shlykov said. “It’s a very iconic piece of Michigan. I’m new here,

this is only my first year, but I’m kind of finding out the little iconic pieces of Michigan here.”

LSA junior Tucker Schumacher, who is currently working on starting an undergraduate chapter of Wolverines for Life, agreed. Schumacher, who is a transplant recipient himself, has been painting the Rock with Wolverines for Life since he was in high school.

“They had me come down and do that with them a couple years ago, and that was pretty cool,” he said. “I already knew it was for Wolverines for Life, so I was pretty much game to do anything to help them out, but it was cool to be involved.”

“Because it’s so big on U of M’s campus, painting the Rock’s a big deal,” he added.

LSA senior Saif Jilani, whose organization, the Pakistani Students’ Organization, also paints the Rock, said in an e-mail interview that along with raising awareness for the group, painting the Rock was also a great experience for him because of the strong tradition associated with it on campus. Last year, the organization painted Pakistan’s flag.

“Before attending Michigan I was told to make sure I visit the Rock,” Jilani wrote. “I feel like painting the Rock is an intrinsic part of the Michigan experience and my time here would be incomplete without doing it.”

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Wednesday, September 3, 2014 // The Statement

ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND

hat do former-President Gerald Ford and Denard Robinson have in common? To start, they both attended the University. While here, they also both played on the football team. Finally, their senior year extracurricular overlapped — they were both members of The Order of Angell.

The Order of Angell is a senior leadership honors society that was created in 1902 by a group of seniors who were in correspondence with James Burrill Angell, the University’s president at the time. One might wonder what type of club would seek out both a public policy major and a football quarterback for its membership. Yet the Order’s members are compromised of a diverse group of campus leaders from a variety of backgrounds.

LSA senior Natasha Dabrowski, a current Order of Angell member, said the group was created to join leaders from across campus, and to provide a community for them to create connections that strengthen and improve organizations and the University.

“Order of Angell strives to advance exceptional leadership through a lifetime loyalty to and engagement with the University of Michigan,” she said.

Yet the history of this organization is surrounded by historical allegations of racist rituals, sexist policies and an elitist selection process. Recently The Order of Angell has done much to rid itself of this controversial legacy. According to a 2012 article published in The Michigan Daily, the organization,

originally named Michigamua, changed its name in 2006 to Order of Angell, a symbolic separation from its former controversies.

It has also released the list of each year’s members every April. Today, Order of Angell members see themselves as creators of open dialogue rather than an exclusive society, according to Dabrowski.

“Order of Angell seeks to reflect upon the campus climate and engage with students and administrators at the University,” Dabrowski said. “As individual leaders and as an organization, Order of Angell and its members continually strive to positively impact the campus community.”

Each year a new group of incoming seniors are selected by current members to make up the next year’s members.

LSA senior, WOLV-TV Producer and current Order of Angell member Shelby Roberts said there is 100 percent turnover each year, so the group gets brand new members coming into the organization.

Members described their invitation to become a member as very casual. In fact, Dabrowski explained that she was just having coffee with a few of her friends who happened to be members when they asked if she would consider joining.

When juniors are asked to join, they are encouraged to talk to current members in order to receive as much information to make an informed decision.

“Every organization has a past and a future, and of course you have to consider the past,” Dabrowski said, “but you have to focus on the present and the future that you will actually be apart of.

“The Order of Angell is one of the most diverse organizations that I have ever been a part of at the University. We really have members from all over the University from different backgrounds and organizations.”

Like any other organization or group, Order of Angell has to revive certain practices over time in order to improve as a collective and also serve the campus community.

In 2012, The Michigan Daily documented the rumors and hearsay that have spread across campus about a secret room in the attic of the Union where meetings are held.

But, a rumor is exactly what it is. According to Roberts, each of The Order of Angell meetings are held at a different location around campus so members can have an opportunity to see parts of the University that they may not have necessarily had a reason to go to otherwise. LSA junior Melissa Weintraub said she saw the 2013 members meeting in the basement of Hillel.

“In the past it seemed like people tend to move around, just to try and get the feel for campus overall because every student leader tends to get caught up in their own personal bubble, so it is nice to see that there is more to central campus than just one aspect,” Roberts said. “It is cool to go to North Campus, go to South Campus, different parts of central, and see what the buildings you pass by every day but don’t even think to go in and step inside.”

According to Roberts and Dabrowski, when meeting, members sit down for a dialogue about the problems they are facing within their own organizations. In the past, Order of Angell has received criticism for

their elusive activity since they previously did not publish a list of their members.

But current members deny the secretive nature of the organization. “We’re really not exciting — literally we come together and we just talk about what challenges we are facing in our (organization), we sit down have coffee and we talk.” Roberts said.

“Our programming is transparent, so as an organization we should be transparent.”

Dabrowski said.

When members were asked about rituals or traditions, they responded with laughter.

“It seems easier to be public so people can stop asking ridiculous questions ... it is easier to operate and collaborate, and there is less speculation, we’re just sitting down and working together and problem solving together and trying to get different perspectives, rather than just having a bunch of naysayers running around,” said John Borger, current LSA Senior and Order of Angell member.

Dabrowski said that The Order of Angell does not formally give money to or sponsor programs such as Dance Marathon or K-grams, but they started in the past as a result of Order members collaborating with other leaders around campus.

LSA Senior Paola Mendez, executive director of K-grams said she has heard of the Order of Angell but has yet to interact with the organization.

“I really don’t know anything about it to be honest ... All I’ve really heard about it is that it is kind of secretive.” Mendez said.

This year’s members hope that won’t be the case for much longer.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014 // The Statement

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Personal Statement: A prodigal townie

by Brooke Gabriel

RUBY WALLAU/Daily

arents’ Weekend, 2011: a younger me in a sassy black dress and red lipstick does her best to keep from shaking as no less than three grown-ass men take their day out on her.

I remain calm while I tell them that tables are moving more slowly than I anticipated, and we are doing our very best to get them seated as quickly as possible. I get my co-hosts to alert managers of these and other testy guests, and they take measures to make sure that they’ll be taken care of when they sit down (a round of drinks and an appetizer on the house heals all waiting wounds, we’ve found). I review my guest list. I’m already over on three groups, and I have another four whose time is up within the next ten minutes.

It’s time to focus.

I get the first three seated in three, five and seven minutes respectively, and my managers make sure that they’re brought food and another apology the second they sit down. As for the other four groups: our charismatic bar-

tender sells one of them on eating at the bar, I convince another to try out our “Chef’s counter” and the other two are just five minutes past their quoted time, but they’re very understanding — it is Parents’ Weekend, after all.

At this point, I’ve been hosting for a year now, and I am a boss at it. I know a camper — a person who hangs out and “camps” after settling their bill — from a mile away, and I can quote waits like, well, it’s my job. I know exactly which words to use with guests (“absolutely,” “sir,” “you all”) and, perhaps more importantly, which not to use (“yeah,” “you guys,” “I don’t know” and never, ever “no problem” — that suggests that there could have been a problem in the first place, and we don’t want to do that, do we?).

Of course, I’m not immune to the occasional problem — hosting is really more of an art than a science, anyway.

I worked in Ann Arbor restaurants because it’s in my blood; my mother and all of my aunts served at Weber’s to put themselves through school back when they attended the University. Approximately one-third of my cousins

have been employed at The Black Pearl at some point in time and others have worked at the Gandy Dancer, Connor O’Neil’s and NYPD. It seems that working in the Ann Arbor restaurant scene is a liminal state that members of my family must pass through on the road to adulthood while they figure their lives out and earn some saving money.

My time came in the fall of 2010: I had just moved back home to Ann Arbor after a very trying freshman year at DePaul University. DePaul is a good school with a lot of great things going for it, but the two of us were simply not meant to be as a couple. In all fairness, my first year away from home wasn’t great outside of DePaul either; I broke up with my high school sweetheart and a close friend passed away unexpectedly. The trauma from those two experiences alone made schoolwork very difficult, and I knew that in order to do college right, I needed to take some time to recover.

So I came home to Ann Arbor.

It took me a while to realize that coming back here wasn’t failing or quitting. I was one of

those Ann Arbor kids hell-bent on escaping from their hometown, who didn’t want to ever get “stuck” here as so many people do. I thought that I was somehow above a townie. And I even thought that when I took my first job, that this was just a temporary stop before I went off back to school.

I entered my first job at the now-closed Passport Restaurant & Lounge like a newborn deer — wide-eyed, unsteady on my feet and completely overwhelmed by the strange new world around me. I was so afraid of making mistakes, that in an attempt to gather as much information from a guest as possible (and thus avoid making one), I irritated him to the point of complaining about me to a manager. Whoops.

But, slowly but surely, I got my sea legs. I developed scripts for greeting, seating, saying goodbye and learned where to go to get questions answered. I started moving forward, deciding to leave Passport for the more established Quarter Bistro, and then moving to Palio to be closer to my apartment downtown. After Palio, I got my restaurant dream job at

Mani Osteria.

Mani, as far as I’m concerned, is the Mecca of Ann Arbor restaurant gigs. Privately owned, elegant space, killer food… I thrived there. I arrived at Mani with two years experience under my belt, and it wasn’t long after I started that I found myself running the door and kicking ass at it. It was also at Mani that I realized just how un-stuck I was, both in Ann Arbor, and in life in general. I realized that through hard work, I could move up through the rankings, go from host to foodrunner, then server, maybe even manager some day.

Or I could transfer the credits I’d earned at DePaul somewhere else and finish my degree. There was a pretty good school up the street, after all.

I transferred to the University in the fall of 2012, and I left the restaurant scene just a year later.

Now, I walk past the places I once worked at and realize why this town has the townie following it does — it changes as you do, and new doors open when you look for them.

Brooke Gabriel is an LSA senior.

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Wednesday, September 3, 2014 // The Statement

TREASURE From Page 2B they might have a different purpose in my life than they did in someone else’s,” Cusack said, describing her style as retro. “It’s like a second life for clothes.”

In a house on Detroit Street in Kerrytown, a second life exists beyond cloth-

ing. The Treasure Mart has been family-owned for 54 years, and is one of several secondhand stores carrying household items.

“Well, all cities probably have consignment shops, but I don’t think there are too many quite like The

Treasure Mart because we get such a wide variety of things because of the University and the hospital,” Carl Johns, co-owner of The Treasure Mart, said.

“We have a fellow that comes from Cleveland once a month to consign. People

come from all over Southeastern Michigan and Ohio to shop here.”

The two-story consignment shop carries furniture, household items, kitchenware, books and more, with a small vintage clothing and shoe section. People con-

sign their items and receive 65 percent of the item’s sale price once it is sold.

“I would definitely say there is a thrift and vintage shop culture here,” Cusack said. “I’ve met a lot of people who get excited about super great deals with you, and

people who are willing to wake up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning to go thrift shopping with you. The challenge of finding something is fun for me.”

leave.

However, Young’s observation is what seems to drive most break-ins — not malintent, but the desire to see the University’s spectacle of a stadium and experience it without a crowd topping 100,000 people.

Take the example of Randy, an LSA senior who has successfully snuck into the Big House twice. The first time was in the spring of his freshman year; the second was the night before 2013’s Ohio State game.

Each time, Randy went with only one other person.

“Neither time was planned, it was just a really spontaneous event,” he said. “It was nice weather out both times, and we were like, ‘Oh, the Big House would be fun to break into.’”

For the second break-in, this rationale was bolstered by a bit of clouded judgment.

Randy was high.

He and his friend replicated what seems to be the normal ritual for Michigan Stadium trespassers: They circled in search of the lowest point in the fence. Discovering that it was adjacent to the players’ entrance to the field, Randy and his friend pulled up a trashcan to assist their fence hopping.

“The fence was a bit of a struggle, because I have big feet and (the fences) have spikes on top of them,” he said. “But, you know, it’s really not that hard, especially if you have a friend there to steady you and stuff.”

Randy said he did not worry much about the consequences at any point over the course of both adventures.

“I had some worries that I might get caught,” he said.

“But I kind of thought to

myself, ‘I can’t imagine that the penalties for this would be that harsh, especially because I’m just trying to experience it and I’m a Michigan student. It was pretty naïve, but I went in with good intentions. It wouldn’t make sense for them to punish a student for this.”

The first time Randy learned that sneaking into the Big House could qualify as a misdemeanor was during his interview with The Michigan Daily. And though he said he wouldn’t trespass into Michigan Stadium again knowing the consequences, he said he still would have done it once.

In addition, he felt that punishment should be situational: “I think if the students that enter have malicious intentions, if they’re trying to bring in drugs or alcohol, or have sex, I don’t think that’s respectful. You

shouldn’t be doing that to your stadium. But if it’s clear that the student is just trying to walk around and explore and take it in, I wouldn’t approve of strong punishment for that.”

Like Forsberg explained, it’s quite possible that officers who discover students in the Big House do assess their intentions before enforcing a punishment — and Matt’s case is tangible proof.

While students are likely to continue to trespass into Michigan Stadium grounds on non-game-days, the University does not give students an open opportunity

to experience the empty stadium. Matt’s suggestion: change that.

“You never get the chance to actually walk on the field, except after games, but that’s only if you feel like staying after the crowd,” he said. “They should just take students on a midnight trip where you could walk into the Big House just to look around.”

Rob Rademacher, associate athletic director, said in a statement that the Big House’s current security policies and procedures are under “constant evaluation” so as to provide the “best

security for Michigan Stadium during an event an nonevent days.”

As far as allowing students in on non-game days, Rademacher said the main avenue for that kind of recreation is H.A.I.L., the department’s free app that gives students points for “attendance, involvement and loyalty” — providing different rewards at a variety of point thresholds.

“A grand prize for certain levels of achievement last year was to have a flag football game in the stadium,” he said. “We will continue to explore ideas like this.”

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BREAKING From Page 3B that of city police, the FBI and Homeland Security.

However, some students still doubt Big House security. Carmen, an LSA sophomore, and a friend strolled into the Big House prior to January’s Winter Classic hockey match — after simply walking up to the student entrance and lifting the latch that holds the main gate shut.

Though she claimed the gate may have been unlocked because people were inside working to prepare the stadium and lay down the ice rink, she noted that her entry was easy and went entirely unnoticed.

“I honestly thought anyone could go in there,” Carmen said. “I didn’t think I was inadvertently breaking in.”

As far as punishing students, Forsberg said it depends on the circumstances, and is ultimately up to the officer’s discretion. It’s really about preventing a repeat offense, he said, and sometimes a warning is sufficient.

The question remains: is the fear of a larger consequence enough to break a withstanding tradition?

Engineering sophomore Cooper Young simply walked into the Big House last year following the first basketball game.

“It was a lot of fun seeing it in the dark, completely empty,” he said. “It may have seemed even bigger without all the people there, without everything kind of blending into the maize.”

Young was with a friend at the time, and they were not alone. Several people strolled in to take a look at the vacant stadium from the top of the bleachers, before security guards told them to