Sure, road trips sound romantic — the lure of the open highway, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes sitting in a cramped car and listening to FM radio for hours on end doesn’t inspire. It breeds contempt. Lewis and Clark went at it like Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn. At the end of “On the Road,” Dean Moriarty totally violated the man code by leaving Sal Paradise as he hallucinated from dysentery in Mexico City.
And so it goes for five community college classmates from Normandale Community College whose star shone bright last week by driving from Minnesota to Detroit to present a plan that may or may not have involved saving the city.
Last weekend, it was free hotdogs and Red Wings tickets and police-guided tours of the city. This week, it’s back to the books and backbiting in general.
At least one class member is hopping mad that Normandale student Marcus Page wrote an open letter to Detroit on Wednesday thanking residents for their hospitality and promising to return in June to monitor whether the city is heeding the class’ revival plans.
“He’s not the spokesman for our group,” said Jacob Mars, a fellow student and traveler. “He’s been going a little rouge and it’s causing problems.”
Mars insists that he alone speaks for the class, and Page got it all wrong. The students — who toured Wayne State showing off their five-page turnaround plans — never wanted to “save Detroit,” Mars said. “Our intent was strictly research and asking questions.”
The students also set off a hubbub by staying in Farmington Hills. No matter what Page said, nobody was scared to stay in the city, according to Mars: “It was inexpensive and close to the city. We are college students after all.”
Whoa. The Insider hasn’t seen this much intramural feuding since Monica Conyers was on the City Council went all “You’re not my daddy” on Ken Cockrel Jr. And like Conyers, Page has been exiled, Mars said.
“He’s no longer part of our study group,” Mars said.
Mars is promising to write his own open letter to the citizens of Detroit to set the record straight. The Insider reached out Friday to Page to get his side, but has yet to hear from him.
In the meantime, the Insider feels so bad for the role it played in the fuss that we’re driving nonstop to Minnesota to present our plan to save this study group.
Oops. We mean “research and ask questions.”
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