March 3, 2011 - 4:42pm
Michigan Myths: Does Mary Sue Coleman walk to work through a tunnel?
BY KYLE SWANSON
Many campus tours include a legend that University President Mary Sue Coleman walks to work. While some tour guides stop there, others continue the campus lore, saying that Coleman’s on-foot commute occurs in a secret underground tunnel.
Simply put, only one of the tour guides is actually telling the truth.
Coleman does walk from the President's House on South University Avenue to work, but her commute isn’t some mysterious subterranean journey, instead, it takes place on the same sidewalks that thousands of students use each day on their way to and from classes.
Asked about the myth last month, Coleman laughed at the suggestion that she might walk to work underground.
“I’ve heard this one myth … that there’s a secret tunnel and that I walk to work in it,” Coleman said. “And I’ve thought ‘Where is this mythical tunnel?’”
However, it is true that most students probably don’t see Coleman when she walks to work in the morning. Her walk usually takes place before eight in the morning, when many students are hitting their snooze buttons for the first time or are still fast asleep.
“I walk every day to work, above ground,” Coleman said.
And while the myth about Coleman’s daily walk to work in the depths of the earth can’t be traced back to a single person or an exact moment in time, there is a likely source of the lore.
Coleman said she thinks the fact that there is a complex system of underground utility tunnels on campus lends itself to creating a myth the she uses them to walk to her office in the Fleming Administration Building.
However, these utility tunnels aren’t very user-friendly to walk through — at least not in Coleman’s opinion.
“There’s all these utility tunnels, but I don’t think anyone would want to walk in them,” Coleman said.
