Whenever someone tells me of their college years, and the semester they spent abroad, I will admit to having a tinge of envy as I picture them riding an Italian scooter over cobblestone streets, toting a flapping baguette behind them, immersed in a foreign culture, surrounded by strangeness in a land I have only ever read about.
It turns out I have no reason to be jealous, for I am already living in a place so different, from even the university just 45 minutes down I-94, it is worthy of a semesters' sojourn. That's right, none other than the University of Michigan, also known as the "Harvard of Washtenaw County," is once again offering a "Semester in Detroit" beginning next month.[correction: beginning in January]
Personally, I've spent enough semesters in Detroit to have my walls lined with doctorates. That's great news for me, but what's even better news for the children enrolled in Detroit Public Schools is that now, when they learn the reality that a child living in the same state and country as they are, but just a few miles up Woodward Avenue, is receiving a superior education under superior conditions, they can take solace in knowing they are actually living a life worthy of college credits. Not only that, but they could probably even teach a class or two. With all this knowledge they may one day even find themselves in the peculiar and staidly town of Ann Arbor, commingling with the locals. Detroit's Wayne State University already offers, what they claim to be, a "world class education in the real world." Apparently the U of M was having trouble offering such a thing so they got in cahoots with Wayne State on this project. Students participating in the program will use some of Wayne State's facilities and are informed they will be living at the university's Towers Residential Suites (it seems the intellectuals at Wayne State have come up with a better naming system for apartment buildings than used to be employed in the neighborhood, making names like The Beethoven and The Knickerbocker seem so stupid now that we know you can call something the Towers Residential Suites) in "Midtown". A few days into their semester they will undoubtedly know they are actually living in the Cass Corridor and should be proud of this fact. Maybe they will even be lucky enough to live here when the whole city of Detroit is renamed to something with no bad connotations whatsoever, something like Super Number One Place or Blissfulburg.
One of the courses offered in the curriculum is called "Writing in Detroit: Journey to the Interior." Wow, how about that? I've always enjoyed a good double entendre and, this being a writing class, it seems to imply that Detroit is akin to the uncharted jungles of the Amazon; a place only the intrepid few have ever seen, along with being a reference to that Amboy Dukes song of course.
Studying Detroit is nothing new for the U of M. Often times it seems as though many of their departments would be lost without the great laboratory of Detroit just down the road. The city is a never-ending source of information for the inquisitive professors and students who come here and perform all sorts of scholarly research before heading back to Ann Arbor to disseminate their findings to the world. It would take an even greater university to perform a study on all the U of M studies to determine if they've ever done Detroit an ounce of good.
Sometimes it seems the U of M is like the Russians during the cold war, even the Russians last month come to think of it, and are constantly spying on Detroit. Oh well, it's not like they have a whole building set up for this purpose. Wait a minute...what the...?
One of the prerequisites for the semester in Detroit is a one-day bus tour of the city. This will likely be conducted on a private bus and not on the Route 14 Crosstown. So if you see a bus full of college kids in your neighborhood be sure to act normal, we would not want to skew the results of any future studies or surveys being done in and on our city. And to all the students who will live here for a semester, welcome, you are definitely going to learn something, it just might not be what your university intended.
wearenowhere
ReplyDelete-- LtD
I love your blog, but I'd like to speak up in defense of Semester in Detroit. It may be an easy target for satire, but having done the program, I really don't think the criticism is merited.
ReplyDeleteTo begin with, Semester in Detroit is not a study abroad program, and it doesn't style itself after one. A better parallel would be Michigan's "Program in Washington," which lets students live in D.C. for a semester, take coursework in public policy, and work part-time for the government, media, or a non-profit. The program lets students take advantage of opportunities that don't exist in Ann Arbor and learn in a way you can't do by just being in a classroom.
Semester in Detroit operates on a similar principle. If you want to study labor history, or the history of industrial change, or race relations in the United States, or the transformation of American cities in the 20th century, or learn about the prospects and challenges of urban revitalization, Detroit is where you should come.
It's also worth noting that the students spend more than half their time working at non-profits in the city. Last year, different students helped organize a major cleanup of Southwest Detroit, raised several thousand dollars for Catherine Ferguson Academy, and created new brochures to market Historic Fort Wayne. If you think that's a problem, well, I don't know what to tell you.
P.S. The program starts in January, not the fall.
I thought the act of observing something automatically changes it.
ReplyDeleteMajor clean-ups, raising funds for CFA and a new brochure is not a problem. Many long time Detroiters, some even born and raised here, still here and even fortunate enough to have called UofM home/alma mater know those things are not a problem. Thinking it's really a solution is though.
I'm all for every drop in the bucket adds up, but thinking your drop is going to be the game changer/camel's back breaking straw, well, we've seen dozens, no hundreds, correction thousands like you before. Detroit's a marathon, not a sprint, so dig in and prepare for the long haul. If you know you're only going to be a short-timer, then by all means, go johnny go!
-HATR.
Exactly, HATR, and I think Semester in Detroit is premised on just that sentiment: Detroit is a marathon, not a sprint. You'd be hard pressed to find a single student, professor, or community organization involved with the program that would claim otherwise.
ReplyDeleteSemester in Detroit isn't trying to "fix" or "save" Detroit in four months, nor has it ever claimed to. What it does is let students a) learn about urban history and planning in an environment where the issues truly matter and b) work with organizations and leaders that have been hard at work in Detroit for years and gain some perspective on the city. The outcomes of these classes and internships may amount to drops in the bucket, as you say, but every drop counts.
I'd add a couple details about the program that echo Cooper's comments (I also participated last semester). Semester in Detroit is explicitly not about "saving" Detroit, or about studying the city -- but it does incorporate service and mixes in academic studies of local, national and international contexts.
ReplyDeleteThe backgrounds of the core planners might shed some more light on what we do. The program was originally proposed and planned by students, who campaigned for it to be an official course of study. The director lives in Southwest with his family. I didn't take the (somewhat oddly named) "Writing in Detroit" class, but it's taught by Lolita Hernandez, who worked in GM’s Cadillac Plant for 20 years. Our class on the history of Detroit in the 20th century was taught by Stephen Ward, who is also a board member at the Boggs Center.
In large part because of my experiences with the program I'm hoping to be back in Detroit around this time next year, although vague wishes don't really count for much.
Does every drop count? Believe me, I've added my share and continue to do so. The problem is the bucket has a huge ass hole in the bottom and neither I nor anybody else seems to have a solution to plugging the hole before the drops can amount to anything.
ReplyDelete~HATR.
put enough holes in bucket and you're holding a watering can. the opportunity to grow requires letting go of desire to acquire.
ReplyDelete--LtD
"put enough holes"? And when the entire bottom is gone? The ground also needs to be fertile, or fertile enough, the seeds need to be ready to germinate, many factors need to align for growth to happen. You also need to pull the weeds before they choke out your garden.
ReplyDeleteBut you're right LtD, let's let go of all our middle class, let the brain drain continue, let all the parks close, let all the street lights fail, let the neighborhoods continue to deteriorate, let the schools continue their downward spiral, let crime run rampant.
When do we stand up and say we've lost enough? If we wait much longer, there won't be enough voices of opposition to mean anything.
~HATR.
Indeed, many factors. Faith, hope and common good sound corny these days. Even so, I am reminded of H. S. Pingree who sold his prize horse to buy tools and seeds for planting during the depression of '93. In those garden plots citizens produced much needed food and put up signs that read: "He who gives to others, gives to the Lord." So here we are again with a chance to get things done differently. Are we the leaders we've been looking for (credit to Grace Lee Boggs)? As commodification of every damn thing busts at the seams common will can prevail in DIY Detroit. Witness the re-pinking of the Lawson sculpture. A small event it is, to be sure. None of us who contributed have ownership, yet here we are looking forward to pink paint on our pizza and beer.;) Thanks to OMS for making this happen.
ReplyDelete-- LtD
. . . and I suppose this brands me as an art fag, but check out facethestation.com if you have not already. What they are trying to do, again small but speaks to what may be possible in creative common.
ReplyDelete--LtD
To be a leader, one has to have a constituency that wants to follow, and I'm not talking about few fellow hipster friends.
ReplyDeleteI am the type that thinks globally and acts locally. You can even break that down to thinks about Detroit as a whole and acts in my neighborhood and even my friends' neighborhoods.
I am also the math type. So I look at Detroit as a whole and I come up with a negative. I take the first derivative, becoming more negative. I take the second derivative and I am not sure if Detroit's decline is moving steadily or accelerating more or less. Sadly, I suspect the rate of our decline is accelerating faster.
But then I zoom in on my area and I'm like, things aren't so bad, maybe they are even improving a bit. Ah, but there's the rub, what good is it to have the best building on the block if the rest of the block is crumbling? So, I've let my area go just a little because there are other areas of Detroit that need some triage care, so as to try and slow their decline.
~HATR
"So I look at Detroit as a whole and I come up with a negative."
ReplyDeleteAnd so you would because of the systematic creative destruction that made Brighton, W. Bloomfield and Whitmore Lake ;) the places to be. OK, I'll lead with my chin. Within the inevitable decline -- the real-time slow-motion enactment of Henry Ford's "history is bunk" view there are these opportunites to reimagine a structure that really serves the most of us, not just the savvy capitalists. Selling mobility and monetized fictions got us mostly to where we are. I like Jerry Herron's idea about how we are, here and now, in Detroit a "borderama" passion play about the future of cities.
www.designobserver.com/places/entry.html?entry=13778
American ingenuity and proper chainsaws can make a difference.
--LtD
Yeah, I've been following facethestation.com for awhile now. I even drive by quite regularly. I follow many projects. Some give me hope, others don't. It seems like fts has some steam, which is good. They seem to actually be doing what they talk about doing. Some groups seem to do nothing more than wax poetic about what to do instead of getting out there and doing something.
ReplyDeleteWith that though, I've some concerns about the fts project. Great job with the art mural/happening on the house planned for deconstruction. Great job on prepping the other structure for redevelopment. Great job on boarding the Roosevelt, but then I notice EJH boarded up the deconstruction house. So, did they not contact the B&SE department about their intentions to deconstruct it?
From the photos I saw of the boarding of the Roosevelt, it looked like they had Young Detroit Builders out there to help. Are they teaming up with YDB whom has been fostering a relationship with B&SE to move toward deconstruction? If not, they might want to consider it.
Ugh. FTS is like many of the other projects out there that I don't get involved with, they seem to have plenty of indians and more than enough chiefs. I'm more a special forces kind of volunteer than a regular army guy.
I recognize the need to engage many people in volunteer efforts, but I like getting more done in less time with fewer people. I'm about efficiency. Sometimes 4 people can prune and clean up more trees or round up more tires than a dozen or even 50, especially when you factor in the preparation time to organize the event and coordinate it. But that's just me.
~HATR.
""So I look at Detroit as a whole and I come up with a negative."
ReplyDeleteAnd so you would because of the systematic creative destruction that made Brighton, W. Bloomfield and Whitmore Lake ;) the places to be."
Huh, that's why? Brighton, W. Bloomfield and Whitmore Lake? Good God man, you're killing me.
And here I thought it was because I look at the neighborhood I grew up in during the 1980's and 1990's, Warrendale, and I see more empty houses now than during the CAY days.
I thought it was because I look at the rest of the city and I am seeing more cumulative devastation than all the developments downtown could offset.
I thought it was because I see more and more unemployment, more good people turning to hustling (taking aluminum siding and gutters off of an empty house isn't a crime, stealing power from DTE isn't a crime, those are just forms of hustling. Hustling isn't a crime.)
I thought it was because...oh hell. I have got to stop. Time to go add some more drops in the bucket here near my building. Good discussion though.
~HATR.
Yeah, I put in Whitmore Lake to make you laff. It's no secret that certain interests (Big 3, land speculators, J.L. Hudson) saw $ in selling us the suburbs and malls. I used to sit on the Marshall Fredericks sculpture when my Daddy put me up there when we drove (freedom of mobility) from nw Detroit to Northland in our '49 Ford coupe. I liked sitting behind the little bronze guy with the bowl haircut. Yes, the neighborhoods have never been so bad. My house in NW Detroit has a burned out beauty next door. The exodus was planned and well executed to fill certain pockets with capital. And then there's the rest of us. Shall we try to undo old Henry's "history is bunk." Toqueville looked around here in 1831 and decided capitalism and democracy are ultimately not good bunkmates. Maybe he was right.
ReplyDeleteOK, I'll STFU now.
--LtD
We can't undo history, what's done is done. All we can do is learn from it. I don't have Hudson memories nor memories of shopping on Washington Blvd. My memories of the city are not grand by any means. I do not want to try and restore Detroit to its supposed former glory. I have no clue what that Detroit is like.
ReplyDeleteI want our kids to actually graduate high school. I would like to see our murder rate actually drop to double digits for once in my lifetime, perhaps for multiple years in a row. Wouldn't that be a hoot? How said to think double digit murders is an improvement?
Are these things too much to ask?
~HATR.
sad, not said.
ReplyDelete~HATR.
It's Tocqueville, dumbass! Had to fix it cuz when people spell my name wrong, makes me think they are dumb. Even so, I prob am because of continued hope for this place I came back to out of love. Home. I left NY in '95 to live again and die in Detroit.
ReplyDelete-- LtD
Hopefully not to die anytime too soon.
ReplyDeleteSome friends when they ask/hear about my endeavors and projects in the city, they ask, "do you know the definition of insanity?" They are vying for the old adage, "doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result."
I cut them off at the pass, I'm not foolish enough to think that my picking up a bit of litter, cutting grass in an empty park or rounding up some discarded tires is going to stop it from happening in the future. So they ask, "why do it?" And that's a good question. Some days, I have an answer, some days I don't. Today I think my answer is boredom.
~HATR.
It is my understanding that there is exciting and sometimes hazardous commando work for God-fearing special forces kinds of volunteers. (no kink or poo). ;)
ReplyDelete--LtD