The 1890 inaugural issue of the U. of M. Daily, later the Michigan Daily (public domain image from Wikipedia).

The University of Michigan was once disgraced with a nickname so disreputable, so slangy and vulgar, that an essay was published protesting its use. Even a newspaper in another city ran a disapproving editorial.

That nickname was “U. of M.”

In the April 1903 issue of The Michigan Alumnus, a former grad fumed against “the continued and persistent use of the compromising appellation, ‘U. of M.’” He found it coarse – unworthy of a great university.

“In the first place it is not distinctive enough, as there are several other ‘U. of M.’s,’ Maine, Minnesota, and Missouri being the most conspicuous,” he began, going on to excoriate the sloppy abbreviation.

He was not alone.

If that contributor wished to banish the term, he was several decades too late. Students had created it in the 19th century, and weren’t about to abandon it.

The oldest citations for “U. of M.” appear in student-published campus newspapers, of which there have been over a dozen through the years. In one, the April 1879 edition of The Chronicle (a student publication from that era, not The Ann Arbor Chronicle), appears an article rebutting Depauw University’s student newspaper’s critique of the Ann Arbor school.

The Asbury Monthly seems to think that the University is to be outstripped by Wisconsin, because the latter institution has secured Prof. Watson. The fact is that, while we regret much the departure of our great astronomer, the U. of M. is too great a fact, her foundations are laid too strong and deep, and there are too many great men left here in charge to allow it to be suddenly ‘outstripped’ by a young institution.

The editorial used “U. of M.” twice.

Contemporaneous local city papers avoided the term, preferring more dignified phraseology. The April 2, 1879 Ann Arbor Register reported, “To the friends of the University, irrespective of party, the vote on Regents is gratifying …” In the same issue it stated, “A proposed game of foot ball to be played in Detroit by a senior fifteen and a University fifteen, is now being talked of.”

Charles Chapman in his 1881 “History of Washtenaw County” did not deign to use the term. Years later, Samuel Beakes in his “Past and Present of Washtenaw County” mentioned it exactly twice, but only to list a student publication whose name included the undignified moniker.

Students paid no heed. In the June 1883 student paper the Argonaut, the term appears again. “It is with the utmost confidence that we assert that the Senior invitations are the most elegant ever seen at the U. of M.,” adding, “Hay-making on the campus is not a success in this weather.” [For many decades, hay was grown and harvested on what is now the Diag area]. The Argonaut survived until 1890, and numerous instances of the hated appellation pepper its pages.

An out-of-town paper noticed the term, and found it a handy space-saver for headlines. “The U. of M.—Its Approaching Semi-Centennial to be a Great Event,” reported the Detroit Free Press on June 18, 1887. “U. of M. Beaten in the Great Foot Ball Game Yesterday at Chicago,” read a November 30, 1888 Free Press headline. The Free Press still used the more formal terms in the text of its stories.

That changed around the early 1890s. A March 3, 1892 story mentioned the one-year anniversary of “the U. of M. Oratorical Association.” Meanwhile, a new campus paper took things further. Emblazoned across the inaugural September 29, 1890 issue was the masthead “U. of M. Daily” in a big, craggy font. The paper would survive to become today’s Michigan Daily.

City newspapers were holding the fort against the offending abbreviation. As an example, the January 3, 1890 Ann Arbor Argus story reported, “The Yale catalogue just published shows 1,477 students in attendance there. Yale is only about 700 students behind Michigan University …” However, later that year, cracks began to show in the foundation as the slang term crept into use. One November 6, 1890 Argus blurb said, “The [student paper] Chronicle-Argonaut is desirous of stirring up the poetic muse in the U. of M.”

A neighboring newspaper, the Ypsilantian, took a dim view of these developments. “The use of the mutilation ‘U. of M.,’ for ‘University,’ has nothing under the sun to recommend it,” reads an October 13, 1892 editorial. “It is an abbreviation that does not abbreviate, a contraction that does not contract, and can be classed only as a mutilation. In print it is scarcely shorter, and in speech it is decidedly more clumsy to utter and wanting in euphony to the ear.”

The article continued, “‘The University’ expresses to everybody here fully and exactly what is meant; and in other parts of the country where it would be necessary to say ‘University of Michigan,’ the mutilation ‘U. of M.’ would not be understood. We are surprised that it should find place in the columns of any newspaper.”

The term that offended local editors and alumni was by then so commonplace to students that it wasn’t even considered slang anymore – or so it’s suggested by a survey of UM student slang.

Students in an 1895 fall semester rhetoric course were asked to collect examples of slang they used. Over 600 terms were submitted. In the following spring semester, students voted on which terms were genuine slang and which could be crossed off the list as just ordinary words.

The resulting list of 446 slang terms and their definitions was published in three parts in the November and December, 1895 and the January, 1896 issues of the Inlander, a campus literary magazine.

“Hen-medic” was a female medical student. “Freshlet” meant a young freshman, and “moke” a fool. “Flops” denoted a saucer of ice cream and strawberries. “Squatchetery” meant “admirable, pleasing: ‘Your new gown is decidedly squatchetery.’” “Varsity” was defined as “from [the word] University.” A laggard might be called an “ice-wagon.”: “A student calls to a companion for whom he is waiting, ‘Come, don’t be an ice-wagon.’” “Lunch hooks” were teeth, and to “feed one chunks” meant to fib, as in “Do you think I believe you? You are feeding me chunks.”

The term “U. of M.” appears nowhere in the long list.

An 1897 ad for the U. of M. Toilet Parlors.

Meanwhile, townspeople were adopting the term. A Mrs. Trojanowski opened her “U. of M. Toilet Parlors” at 32 South State Street. Paul Meyer ran the “U. of M. News Depot” at 46 East Williams. It was a year after “Levy’s U. of M. Shoe Shop” opened that the alumnus magazine burst forth with its aforementioned scathing 1903 editorial.

That writer seethed against the use of the term. “But fostered as it is by the U. of M. Daily and all the ‘esteemed’ metropolitan papers of Detroit, there is small hope of betterment until an adverse sentiment is created and the students shall boycott all ‘U. of M.’ concerns and insist on the use of the name, University of Michigan, or the permissible abbreviation, Michigan, in the papers to which they subscribe.”

He wrote, “[W]ith the ‘U. of M. Barber Shop,’ the ‘U. of M. News Stand,’ the ‘U. of M. Lunch Room,’ the ‘U. of M. This,’ and ‘U. of M. That,’ the student is disgusted and chagrined to have this cheapened and unworthy title applied to his Alma Mater.”

Many businesses adopted the offending moniker.

Nonetheless, a few years later the U. of M. Restaurant joined the throng. The U. of M. Toilet Parlor, now the U. of M. Barber Shop, advertised its services as “Strictly Sanitary Shaving Parlors and 
Bath Rooms, Olive Oil, Crude Oil, and Mange Shampooing our Specialty.”

One wonders what that alum would think to see the modern ubiquity of the nickname he so despised.

Thanks to Ann Arbor historian Wystan Stevens for information about the U. of M. Daily.

Mystery Artifact

In the previous column, cmadler, Dave, TJ, and Irene all correctly guessed that the object in question was a mustache cup, which “kept the man’s mustache from getting hot liquids onto it, which would melt his mustache wax,” as Dave remarked.

Mystery Object

This week, in keeping with the University theme, our Mystery Artifact is one related to a onetime campus ritual.

In this photo from an issue of the Michiganensian, you can see a student grasping this large item, but why? It’s not a tree, and ignore the letter B in the background.

What’s going on here?

Take your best guess!

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives.” Her second book, “Hidden History of Ypsilanti,” will be published this fall. Reach her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our columnists like Laura Bien and other contributors. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

Reaction to the news from Ward 5 councilmember Carsten Hohnke was unambiguous: “The impact of removing $1.5 million from our tax rolls can not be overstated. I’m extremely disappointed that the University could not find a way to be a more creative and equitable partner with the city in this.”

Yellow: new law school building to be constructed in place of surface parking. Blue: student commons to be renovated. Monroe Street is the road just north of the new law school building. (Click image for larger view.)

Glimpsing through the door of room 116 of Hutchins Hall at UM Law School on Tuesday evening, The Chronicle could see what seemed like a late-evening class in session. Not sure of the room number we wanted, it was with some caution that we nosed further into the room. Ah. The familiar faces of Tony Derezinski, newly elected Ann Arbor city council representative of Ward 2, and Dave DeVarti, until recently a DDA board member, confirmed we were in the right place. It was a meeting hosted by UM to discuss with interested neighbors UM’s interest in a permanent closure of a section of Monroe Street. Representatives from the UM were Sue Gott, university planner, and Jim Kosteva, director of community relations. The section in question is between Oakland on the east and State Street on the west.

The idea is that the area would become a pedestrian zone, but still accessible to emergency vehicles. It would serve to connect “physically and psychologically” the new law school building to be constructed on the south side of Monroe between State and Oakland and the buildings to the north of Monroe.

Having arrived after Gott’s presentation of the project details, The Chronicle pieced together those bits from the 7 or 8 citizens’ comments and questions, which were already well under way. DeVarti was recalling a demonstration some two years ago in connection with some event at the Ford School involving Alan Haber and some other left-thinking folks. DeVarti said that UM police had told the demonstrators they could not stand with their signs on the sidewalk on the UM side of State Street. The demonstrators had complied with the UM police request to leave, DeVarti said, adding that he himself would have been inclined to allow himself to be arrested on the basis that it was a public sidewalk.

Just when The Chronicle was beginning to question if we were actually in the right room, DeVarti connected the dots to the proposed street closure: What guarantees the continued right to freely express dissent in Monroe Street if control of the public right of way is turned over to UM? In the ensuing discussion, it became apparent that this was a key component of the UM proposal: the city of Ann Arbor would cede the public right of way to control by UM. Philosophically, DeVarti said he had a problem with substituting UM police – who have an “insulated process of accountability” via the UM Regents, who are elected in statewide elections for 8-year terms – for city of Ann Arbor police officers, who are overseen more directly via democratically-elected city council members.

Local attorney Jonathan Rose pressed the point of DeVarti’s demonstrators who were asked to leave. He asked both Kosteva and Gott: “Do you believe there’s a risk that this [ceding of the public ROW] will have a negative effect on the freedom to express dissent?” Gott wanted nothing to do with the topic. “I can’t speak to that,” she said. Kosteva, for his part, handled the question by suggesting that he and Rose disagreed about their perceptions of UM. Kosteva said that he saw the UM campus as a place that is open and conducive to dissent. He allowed that there were thresholds that couldn’t be crossed – for example, setting up booths, stands or tabletops without a permit. He also outlined a step-by-step protocol for managing disruption of speakers on campus.

But Kosteva eventually granted part of Rose’s point: that the overall ambiance resulting from a street closure so that the area became more clearly a part of campus could have an effect of making that area less conducive to the expression of dissent.

Rose then asked what other reason there might be for UM to want control of the public ROW other than to be able to curb expression of dissent, perhaps even against itself: “I haven’t heard a reason why it matters for traffic, safety, ambiance, whether UM controls it or the city of Ann Arbor controls it. Is there any reason?” Gott offered that if UM controlled it, then access for snow removal and care of plantings would be easier. DeVarti countered that there’s a requirement for property owners to keep sidewalks clear.

In addition to the philosophical, the meeting covered numerous nuts and bolts issues: transportation strategies, bump-ins, lane additions, parking management strategies. And Rose wrapped up the meeting by saying that he was “impressed in a positive way with the astuteness that parking has been analyzed: it should be optimal and not maximal.” But hammering home the philosophical point, he concluded: “This astuteness does not equate to turning over public right of way to the university. Come up with something else. Turning over the rights of who comes and goes to the administration of the University of Michigan is wrong.”

One of the nuts and bolts issues raised by one property owner in the area was possible compensation to the city of Ann Arbor for the land acquisition that the UM was proposing. Kosteva said that UM was not currently contemplating any quid pro quo and portrayed any such arrangement in a historical context where there had not been such arrangements. Kosteva stressed that there were extensive financial arrangements with the city – including compensation – for a variety of projects: the Forest parking structure, park and ride lots on Green Road and South State, re-surfacing of streets adjacent to campus. He mentioned the high-capacity transit connector, for which a study is currently being undertaken, as an example of a project where the city, the DDA, and AATA were partnering with equal financial contributions. Kosteva also pointed out that there are UM roads on north campus that it allows people to use as a public thoroughfare, but there is no accounting for that. Said Kosteva, “Some may and some may not keep a tally.”

To this the resident said that he loved the university and that no one could argue the massive benefit the institution brought to the community. But as a property owner, he said, he was increasingly concerned that as property taxes rose the financial burden on individual property owners grew, while the university, which does not pay property taxes, was free of the financial burden of taxation as well as the need to comply with any of the city codes.

Another nuts and bolts issue had to do with the impact on traffic from closing Monroe. Gott presented maps indicating various levels of traffic flow for intersections in the area, which were mostly in the A and B range. The measures of traffic flow are “service levels” in traffic engineering jargon, and are graded based on a scale roughly like grades in school. The three maps that Gott displayed  showed current and projected levels of service. It is the fact that Monroe is very lightly traveled by motor traffic that has convinced university planners it’s feasible to close it completely to traffic. DeVarti noted that one intersection (from The Chronicle’s seat, it appeared to be Oakland & Hill) showed improvement from D to C, instead of the slight worsening of service shown by other intersections “How do you explain that?” asked DeVarti. Other than to confirm that a change from D to C represented an improvement, Gott was not able to offer an explanation. DeVarti joked that maybe we should just put a letter B there, because that would be an even greater improvement.

To the question of whether there were any other properties coveted by the university for acquisition in a similar fashion, Kosteva and Gott said they did not know of any. But DeVarti pointed to Buffalo Street, which is the city-owned parking lot north of gate 9 of the Michigan Stadium. “The university wants that!” said DeVarti. There may be even more recent history, but The Chronicle found a resolution from the year 2000 which Ann Arbor’s city council passed on the matter:

RESOLVED, That the City reject the idea to vacate Buffalo Street, for the third time in six years;

RESOLVED, That the City develop a plan to maximize continuing income from the property through parking permits, special events parking, and/or leasing of the site to a private/public entity;

RESOLVED, That the City evaluate the site for affordable housing, and other uses that would help the City meet its goals and objectives;

RESOLVED, That the City not entertain the idea of vacating Buffalo Street to the University of Michigan until a final use of the property by the University is made public and the University and City provides for public review of the project and impact it may have on the surrounding neighborhoods;

A further nuts and bolts issue that DeVarti said needed to be better explained is the motivation for closing the street, especially in light of the fact that UM acknowledges that it does not require the closure for its space needs – the buildings could still be built in exactly the same way without the pedestrian area between them. “Does the dean not want to cross the street? Have students said in a survey that they don’t like to cross the dangerous Monroe Street?” joked DeVarti. Gott said that there was an interest in the physical and psychological connection and continuity of campus. The Chronicle found this idea expressed in a report from consulting firm Johnson, Johnson & Roylinc.

In addition, the vacation of Monroe Street between Oakland and State and East Madison Street between Packard and Thompson [Chronicle note: cf. discussion above of other streets possibly of interest to UM] would help to re-enforce the pedestrian orientation of the core of the campus without detracting from the ability of vehicles to move about the campus in an effective manner. The University should be prepared to work with the City toward the improvement of certain intersections which are essential to an effective circulation pattern in the Central Campus area. In particular, the State/Hill/Packard area and the Packard/Division area could benefit from simplification and improvements to existing traffic flow patterns. Finally, the sense of arrival and entrance at the campus boundaries needs to be strengthened visually so that visitors arriving on the campus will realize that they have in fact arrived at The University of Michigan Central Campus and then can proceed to their desired destination. Detailed information on campus destinations and circulation systems should be provided at these entry ways and at the point where visitors change mode of transportation from the vehicular to the pedestrian mode. In some cases where the entrance to the campus is primarily by pedestrians, such as the corners of State and North University and East University and South University, specific design approaches incorporating ideas such as low seat walls, special pavement patterns or even sculpture could be used to signify entrance to the campus itself.

The date on the report is 1987. DeVarti said that he thought that a key difference between the UM campus and the MSU campus in Lansing was the degree of integration with the surrounding community at UM. Integration, he said, was something that he’d heard time and again as something that was valued about the UM campus. He said that he thought the two values of coherence of campus and integration with the community were both important and it was a matter of balancing them.

The meeting resulted in a couple of specific suggestions that Gott and Kosteva said they would look into: (i) the suggestion for a bump-in on State Street at the end of Monroe for loading and unloading and student drop off, (ii) the suggestion to pursue at least a temporary arrangement for UM to use the Pfizer parking structure.

Editor’s note: Chronicle readers who see a clear connection between this story and the discussion of the Quickie Burger liquor license transfer get bonus points for reading previous Chronicle articles really closely.

At a cost of about only $10 per book, the entire digitized collection (as it currently stands) could be recreated in physical form by an Espresso Book Machine for $20 million. Put a different way, for the $700 billion price tag of the currently proposed bailout of our core financial institutions, we could instead reprint the digitized collection of the UM library 35,000 times. At 5-7 minutes per book, that project would, on a low estimate, take one Espresso Book Machine [70 billion]*[5 minutes], or 665,905 years.

Here at The Chronicle, we’ve got nothing but time, but we have a less ambitious project in mind: We’d like to find somebody in the next few weeks who wants a specific book printed off on the Espresso Machine, who would let us tag along and document the event. That is to say, we’d like to come as close as we can to spotting a “reprinting in the wild” of a book in the digital collection. Hanging out in the Shapiro Library and setting upon patrons who have a digital gleam in their eye, pestering them to “Let us see, c’mon pretty please, let us see the book, let us touch the book,” seems like a horribly inefficient approach, not to mention one that might cause library staff and patrons undue stress. So we’d like to ask in advance if you’re planning to get a book printed on the Espresso Machine: Can we please watch? We promise not to get in the way.

Or if you find yourself in the library and spontaneously decide to print off a book, we’re nothing if not agile here at The Chronicle, and could probably be on site in under half an hour.

Contact information is elsewhere on this website.

Here are some items on their agenda:

• A $48.6 million project to 1) build a parking structure on Wall Street to provide 550 new spaces and a small transit center “to encourage the use of buses and shuttles”; and 2) build a 40,000-square-foot office building to house the Michigan Business Engagement Center. The center “is to function as the gateway to the university for business and industry.”
• A $5.9 million project to create a new outpatient observation care unit in the Taubman Health Center adjacent to the University Hospital ER.
• A $4.5 million renovation project to establish a clinic at Domino’s Farms for the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Diabetes.
• A $3.15 million project to renovate an inpatient psychiatry unit at University Hospital.

—–
Addendum: Based a note from Matt late last night (see Comment 1 below) The Chronicle went out and photographed the poster early this morning:

Poster opposing construction of Wall Street parking structure by University of Michigan.

From the text of the poster:

• The UM will present a plan to the Board of Regents for approval to provide 1200 parking spaces in two parking structures with no logistical consideration for the already approved Lower Town development which includes 740 parking spaces, and intentions that conflict with the city of Ann Arbor’s Northeast Area Plan.
• 2000 cars will traverse Maiden Lane and Wall Street daily during morning and evening commutes, with vacant structures at night and on weekends that attract crime and deadened the community.
• Consider what the construction of more than 1 million additional square feet of high-rise space these parking structures, and a transit center, will do for your commute, not to mention the permanent damage to the historical character and function of the Lower Town Area.
• The concentration of over 2000 parked cars on Maiden Lane and Wall Street does not make sense.
• The area is unable to accommodate these types of additions, and unreasonable changes can be expected.
• This contradicts the founding principles of the UMHS to provide health and well-being to patients and Ann Arbor residents.
• Air quality concerns for exhaust emissions of 2000 cars twice daily.
• Water quality concerns from oil and chemical runoff flowing directly into storm sewers and onto Traver Creek and the Huron River.
• Irreparable damage to the ecosystem and biodiversity of the adjacent 100-year floodplain.

Ann Arbor News columnist Geoff Larcom, center, talks with Julia Eisendrath and Jonathan Martin during Tuesday evening's reception for Knight-Wallace Fellows.

Journalists from across the globe gathered Tuesday evening in the terraced backyard of the Wallace House, mingling with guests from UM and the community to kick off this year’s Knight-Wallace Fellows program.

Each year, about 20 mid-career journalists are picked for the eight-month program, coming to Ann Arbor to live and study a topic of their choice. They take a leave of absence from their jobs, receive a stipend and get access to UM resources.

Last year, Ann Arbor News reporter Tracy Davis was selected for the program, studying globalization and world ecology. This year, columnist Geoff Larcom will research the psychology of leadership.

Charles Eisendrath, director of the Knight-Wallace Fellows program, talks with a guest at this year's welcoming reception. He's wearing his trademark bow tie and hat.

On Tuesday, two university administrators, David Lampe and John King (both K-W board members), were on hand to officially welcome the fellows and their guests. Lampe is UM’s vice president of communications and a former journalist; King is UM’s vice provost for academic information.

Lampe urged the fellows to take advantage of the university’s vast resources: “We know who knows what about what.” King called UM “a terrific sandbox.” (As an aside, he also noted UM’s large number of student organizations – over 1,000, including The Squirrel Club, which sells its T-shirts for $12.)

The keynote speaker – Andrew Whitehead, head of core news for BBC World Service Radio – was a K-W fellow in 2004, and researched the origins of the India/Pakistan conflict over Kashmir. The work resulted in his book, “Mission in Kashmir,” published last year.

Championed by veteran journalist Mike Wallace, the Knight-Wallace Fellows is fairly low-key in the Ann Arbor community, but boasts powerful connections in the profession: Board members include Wallace, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, and Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times. High-profile visitors – including, in the past, Bill Cosby, Michael Moore and George Soros – are also known to drop by Wallace House during the year.

Features of the K-W program also worth mentioning: the twice-weekly sherry hours and trips to Istanbul and Buenos Aires. For journalists who’ve earned entree to this rarefied community, it’s a special eight months indeed.

Former U.S. Congressman Joe Schwarz was among those attending Tuesday's reception at the Wallace House on Oxford. He's teaching a course this semester at UM's Ford School of Public Policy.