Jim Hackett holds student town hall meeting last night

Submitted by UMProud on

"Around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Michigan interim Athletic Director Jim Hackett was sitting in an armchair in the Pond Room at the Michigan Union when his phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the number.

“This is Coach (Jim) Harbaugh,” Hackett said, drawing awe from the crowd. “But I’m going to call him later.”

Hackett had other business to tend to. Tuesday night, he held a town hall meeting with about 30 students to exchange ideas about the student experience in Michigan sports. Topics ranged from the school’s new Nike apparel contract, to the Maize Rage seating policies, to football scheduling.

Hackett’s appearance — and his postponement of business with his famous football coach — came as part of the Athletic Department’s mission to interact more with the students than the previous regime did in an effort to gain their support."

Source: MLive.com, 9/30/2015, Jake Lourim

https://www.michigandaily.com/section/sports/hackett-interacts-students-athletic-experience-other-issues

 

Note:  I really can't get enough of Jim Hackett the guy is inspiring

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East German Judge

September 30th, 2015 at 9:56 AM ^

Before the meeting someone overheard him singing some song lyrics....

"I'm so pumped about some shit from the thrift shop
Ice on the fringe, it's so damn frosty
That people like, "Damn! That's a cold ass honkey."
Rollin' in, hella deep, headin' to the mezzanine,
Dressed in all pink, 'cept my gator shoes, those are green
Draped in a leopard mink, girls standin' next to me
Probably shoulda washed this, smells like R. Kelly's sheets"

Joined: 10/05/2014

MGoPoints: 190489

Evil Empire

September 30th, 2015 at 10:48 AM ^

Back when Maureen Hartford was instituting the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities (aka "The Code") there was a short-lived University publication called Michigan Voices.  Tucked in between a few heartwarming stories there was some happy horseshit about how great The Code was. 

The Gargoyle skewered it like crazy:

Student support of the code: I was being mugged and fought back with my copy of The Code.  It saved me!

Dissent: The Code may not be the best thing the University has ever done, but it is certainly in the top two or three.

Joined: 07/29/2008

MGoPoints: 9077

shoes

September 30th, 2015 at 8:57 AM ^

I emailed him twice last year, once before Harbaugh was hired and once after. I figured he was probably inundated and I would have been fine with a form response. Each time I got a response which did not appear to be form, which was polite and thanked me for my email and support.

By the way I had a similar experience with President Schlissel.

Joined: 07/01/2008

MGoPoints: 9561

Smidgens

September 30th, 2015 at 9:14 AM ^

I was there! It was a really good experience, great to see the athletic department engaging the students and trying to communicate their plans and fix what the previous regime messed up.

 

I love Hackett, he seems like he really cares, such a genuine guy. Great personality too, really funny. He made a joke about how other big schools have meetings like this between the athletic department and students, schools like "OSU and Texas, definitely Texas." Then when talking about Nike he said he wanted Michigan's uniforms to maintain tradition, he said "I'm not going to name names, but there's some Nike schools that have 30 uniforms for one sport."

 

I feel a lot more confident about the Michigan athletic department with Hackett and his people in charge.

 

EDIT: Some other details the article left out:

Hackett mentioned Harbaugh was calling about scheduling, for 2018 and later I guess?

When talking about seating in the stadium some girl off-handedly mentioned they should bring back general seating which led to a lot of boos from the students.

One student mentioned the possibility of the athletic department working with housing to have freshmen sit close to their freshmen hall, which Hackett really liked.

Hackett mentioned he does "Critical Thinking Meetings" to cover every aspect of an issue. It seemed like he was open to hanging up the Fab Five banners but mentioned that during the Critical Thinking Meeting about it someone brought up the issue that the wins are vacated, in the record books we never won those games, so it doesn't make sense to put them up. Someone brought up the possibility of leaving open space between the 1989 and 2013 banner to symbolize the Fab Five banners.

Hackett wanted to have a night game this year but couldn't get it to work out, he said "one of the rival teams was open to having a night game, I'm sure you can guess who" but was worried about safety issues in Ann Arbor, said the bars fill up and could cause lots of problems.

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