What do you use the Diag for in the winter? You likely only use it to walk to class, but why? Why is this park — a respite from your overcrowded residence hall and the noisy cars, trucks and buses on Hill Street — so underutilized?
The obvious answer is that we go to school in Michigan, a pretty cold place. The average low temperature in January is 19 degrees, well below freezing. I often forget during this part of the year just how many people actually go to this school. I’m reminded every time spring rolls around and the Diag is inundated with people playing Spikeball, friends reminiscing on blankets and students doing a smorgasbord of other activities that are impossible or untenable in the winter cold. Considering the University’s multibillion-dollar endowment, they should be doing much more to craft pleasant, usable space at the center of campus. I have three potential solutions to this problem — tangible steps the University can and should take to make our built environment more habitable in the frigid winter months.
This is important for a variety of reasons. Spending time outdoors offers a variety of benefits for both physical and mental health. It’s no coincidence that so-called “frat flu” spikes in the winter, once we all go indoors to avoid the elements. Likewise, seasonal depression is prevalent in the winter and worsened by a lack of sun exposure. Even in the winter, the Diag can serve as a tool to improve campus well-being. However much people might enjoy or benefit from this space, its current amenities make this hard.
Part of the problem is that even if you are bundled up, the stone benches are cold! Stone has a higher thermal conductivity, meaning it steals much more heat from a person than wood does. Wood’s lower density, with layers of “insulation” by virtue of its fibrous makeup, means that you lose less heat and are able to heat up the surface you’re sitting on without too much trouble.
The stone slabs serving as benches in the Diag don’t share these virtues. If you’ve ever spent a night in the woods, you know the cold ground can sap heat faster than even subzero air. I think we are due for a material upgrade.
Regardless of material, there is not enough seating in the Diag, relative to how many people use the space. I looked through some historical photos of the Diag, and this has seemingly always been the case. As anyone who has walked through this area in the warmer months knows, the seating provided is often at capacity. Now, I love a picnic blanket as much as the next person, but adding more benches would make the Diag enjoyable to a greater number of people, especially during the spring and summer.
This isn’t the end of the story. Even if you are bundled up head to toe in the winter, the cold air will still leave you shivering. Transit agencies have been contending with this problem for decades. You might have noticed, if you are a Blue Bus enjoyer like myself, that some U-M bus stops are currently equipped with “push button heaters.” It’s the same concept as a heat lamp that you’d use on a lizard. You push a button, and for a minute you have a little piece of the sun at your back. A 4000-watt heater — the approximate size of lamps that heat both some of the University’s bus stops as well as many stops around the country — costs around $500-$1,000. The underlying infrastructure, cabling and other electrical work that would be needed to accommodate these heaters would be an additional cost, but I’m more than confident that the University’s $5.9 billion in unrestricted endowment funds could accommodate it.
Beyond installation, the heat lamps are not free to use. Electricity costs money, especially in the winter months when the grid may be sporadically strained by the demands of various electric heating systems. A 4000-watt heater will cost the University fewer than 6 cents per hour of use; this could be more or less what we expect in the Diag, depending on how successful this revitalization is.
There are, of course, bad ways to spend the University’s money on improving public spaces. Harvard is relatively notorious for having coughed up nearly $200,000 for 500 lawn chairs, at a price of $381 per chair. Being a public university, the University of Michigan should have a higher commitment to responsibly managing its endowment. In the present moment, the University could be described as spending too little on this important amenity, one which is, if not a selling point, a central cultural point on campus, as well as a space that is routinely flaunted on tours.
These are three tangible solutions to the Diag’s underutilization: more benches, better benches and heated benches. The potential cost to the University could reach into the six figures, but I think that it’s worth it, and I think many of my classmates would agree. Even if only 10% of the student body uses these features on a semiregular basis, the quality of life benefits are obvious. We deserve to breathe fresh air — even in the winter months — and, considering the scourge of mental health problems that indoor isolation poses to our community, the benefits far outweigh both the up front and ongoing costs.
Julian C. Barnard is an Opinion Columnist from Albuquerque, N.M., who writes about politics, culture and the American West. He can be reached at jcbarn@umich.edu.