ANN ARBOR, MI — When a project tops a billion dollars, it’s hard to imagine anything slowing it down two years in. But that’s what a group of University of Michigan faculty, staff and students are trying to accomplish.
A coalition of university members gathered Tuesday night in the Ann Arbor District Library to discuss methods to potentially halt the university’s plans to build a high-performance computing facility with Los Alamos National Laboratory. The “UM against the Data Center” petition had accumulated nearly 900 signatures prior to Tuesday, with organizers estimating it would reach more than 1,000 by the night’s end. Around 100 people attended the meeting, with residents spilling outside the room.
“I really don’t trust anything they’re telling us,” Samantha Colquitt, a university staffer in the Shared Services Center, said…