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Opinion
At 103, A&M learns
new (good) tricks
After 103 years, it seems a university should be able to
figure out all the angles to serve its students better.
But Texas A&M — which turned 103 last Thursday —
missed some of the finer points.
Now, however, the administration is catching up.
A couple of examples are the service units new this semes
ter — Academic Services and the International Center.
Both should have been created long ago. But when
enrollment doubles in less than a decade, it’s understand
able some refinements are left behind in the rush.
The idea behind each unit makes sense: Establish one
central location where students and faculty can go for related
needs.
In the past, for example, a student interested in competi
tive scholarships — the Rhodes, Rockefeller or Danforth
awards — had to go to three different places on his own.
Now Academic Services can give that type of information to
students or direct them to it.
The same was true with international programs — find the
opportunities, spread across the University, on your own.
Those were wasteful, discouraging “non-systems.”
The new consolidations should help students and faculty.
Students can go to Academic Services, 100 Harrington,
for questions about General Studies, careers, preprofes
sional advice and academic testing.
New and old faculty can get help there on how to advise
students and teaching.
And on the first and second floors of Bizzell Hall, both
students and faculty can find out about international pro
grams.
After 103 years, it’s about time.
the small society
by Brickman
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The Battalion
U S P S 045 360
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Editor Liz Newlin
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Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
What about the architecture at Texas A&I
Present growth is misguided
“Can A
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at bothe
By MARK DENISON
In my two years at A&M, I have watched with much consternation as campus
planners have torn down, painted over, covered up and replaced many of the older
and richer elements of the physical campus.
Incoming students will soon never know the original wooden doors that once
graced the older buildings.
Inexpensive aluminum windows that do not open have replaced wooden
double-hung windows with panes. Simple plaster trim covers up ornamental cor
nices on some buildings like Leggett and Bolton halls. Paint covers the once red
brick and white-trimmed Analytical Services Building with a monotonous beige.
The list goes on. One can look anywhere on campus for more examples and more
is planned. The Agriculture Building, the Animal Industries Building and Scoates
Mall are eventually to be torn down.
I think that A&M’s zeal to erect the new and cover-up the old is born out of a pride
in itself and its present growth. I also think it is misguided. The construction of a
stadium costing $113 million is alone an act few univerities can afford today. That is
almost the entire annual operating budget of the northeastern university of 16,000
students I attended. And, their actions are a rebellion against, a rejection of those
symbols of established academia: Harvard Yard with its stately and exquisitively
preserved buildings; Cornell’s Arts Quad where students shun the single library
building built this century; Jefferson’s recently restored Rotunda at the University
of Virginia; till symbols of academic excellence.
When Texas A&M was built, it was natural fora rural agricultural school to look to
extablished schools as a model. Not long ago, the campus looked not unlike a
northeastern university with Beaux-Arts, Victorian and Revival style buildings
arranged in quadrangles with grass. It is delightful that this university once aspired
to he as great. It now should be but it is not.
A&M’s recent prosperity has created an administrative bureaucracy mo^e in
terested in continued influence, self-preservation and growth than in the quality of
the institution. In turn, they build and rebuild the campus in order to justify their
jobs and more money to build and rebuild. They have dressed the campus in blue
jeans and t-shirts, thrown away the silk ties it once wore and cannot see that it is
ill-dressed among the dark pinstriped suits that this country’s universities wear.
They suffer a critical myopia; they see the University’s virtues, and there are many,
but cannot see its glaring faults. Its campus once would have impressed any visitor
as a university that at least aspired to be a first-rate institution if not actually one.
Today, it looks like middle-class high school USA, anything but a place of estab
lished knowledge and scholarly research.
It is an obvious truism that the campus reflects the quality of the institution and
not vice versa. If A&M’s changing campus relects the trend from the rigors of
traditional academics to an academic program geared mainly to self-preservation
and growth, then perhaps little can be done to preserve the campus’s past. But it is
tragic for a univeristy with A&M’s resources to neglect one of its most valuable
assets. As a university that reveres in tradition, we have almost lost the most visible,
material and perhaps sacred one.
By DR. CHARLES McCANDLESS
Mr. Denison’s chief concern seems to be that the Texas A&M campus doesm
resemble the campuses and structures of the East and Northeast. The fact thattk
Texas A&M campus does not resemble those of Harvard, Cornell and the Univet
sity of Virginia is entirely natural — Texas is not Massachusetts, New York,#
Virginia.
It seems fundamental that the architecture of a building ora complex of building
should reflect the character and indeed the spirit of its environment, physicalaml
social. To attempt to transplant the Harvard-Yard atmosphere (which is entire!)
appropriate for its environment) to College Station would be as inappropriateasto
transplant the Alamo to Boston or to expect Faneuil Hall to be replaced by tie
Astrodome. In short, functional architecture is, we l^elieve, that which grows from
its surroundings, not that which is grafted onto those surroundings from another
locale quite different in style, culture, and tradition.
In addition, Mr. Denison seems to equate age with richness, a process which in
some instances may be true but not in all. Anyone who walks across the Texas A&M
campus need only pause Irefbre Sully’s statue and look to see that the park-lik
quadrangel formed by Nagle and Bolton, the “Y” and the Academic Buildingstaiiu
continuation of the rich history of this university.
Certainly new buildings have been built and old buildings have been recon
ditioned, brought from a near-decrepit state into a usable, livable status. These
buildings were built, and continue to be built, reconditioned or preserved not as
the playthings ofbored administrators but to meet the needs, lx>th quantitative and
qualitative, of the growing institution of which we are all a part.
Some buildings have, necesarily, been demolished. Even the best of buildings
have an age limit and, like all of us, become nonfunctional when that limit is
exceeded. As a matter of fact, in the past nine years only two major buildings, Guion
Hall and Mitchess, have been demolished; one (Guion) became totally inadequate
for its function and the other gave way to the need for an expanded, modernized,
centrally located health services building.
As far as we know there are no plans in the foreseeable future to demolish the
Agriculture Building, the Animal Industries Building, or Scoates Hall. Wedonot
know where the $113 million figure quoted by Mr. Denison as the cost of the
stadium came from. The actual cost of the expansion is far less than this amount and
includes a major expansion of G. Rollie White Coliseum •
Individuals who have been here for many years do not recall that this campus
ever looked like a northeastern university. The aging pictures in the Texas A&M
archives show a few buildings on a barren prairie that gradually developed into a
institution which has its own unique character, style and presence. It is entire!)
possible, may we suggest, that blue jeans and t-shirts more accurately reflect the
character and tradition of Texas and the Southwest than do silk ties and pinstripe
suits. Established knowledge and scholarly research do not reside only in a Brooks
Brothers suit. Moreover, educational institutions are more accurately judged by
the quality of their students, faculty, and programs than by their architecture.
We are in basic agreement with Mr. Denison that we must strive to keep the hst
of what we have, but we must also provide for growth and change while being
diligent stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars.
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Mark Denison graduated from Texas A&M in 1978 with a degree in architec
ture, and is now working in Houston.
Dr. McCandless is the director of the Office of Planning at Texas A&M Univer
sity.
Letters
Library leaves lots to be desired
in the area of student lounge decor
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Editor:
I love the new library.
Two of my favorite features are the who-
really-cares-what-time-it-is-anyway clocks
and the quasimodo-closing-time chimes.
But the big one in my book is the beautiful
student lounge and refreshment center, no
doubt sight of the recent Idi Amin summit
for the librarian-boat-people refugees; the
area has been sufficiently raped and pil
laged.
You haven’t heard about it? Well no
wonder. You probably haven’t even heard
of the student lounge. Lord knows how Idi
found it. The directory says second floor
west. Second floor west? I can’t even tell
which way is up in the library. I suppose I
should have followed the sun past the gov
ernment files, through the brown doors
and up the stairs into that giant vacant
room.
But for what? Exciting tan vinyl chairs?
1960s-decor broken tile floor? A symphony
of vending machines maybe? Sure. Our
refuge, the library student lounge where
the walls look like a 10th grade geometry
book fly leaf—just what I need when I take
a break from studying: Pythagorus en loun-
gium.
OK, I realize much of the library is still
under construction and I hope that’s the
case with the lounge. But for now, some
pictures would be nice. A little music
would be wonderful; an AM transistor radio
would be better than the prelude to Dr.
Pepper’s last stand.
So, to whoever is responsible for all this,
I appeal, put some color in my lounge.
Because I really do love the new library.
— Robert Earl Keen, ’79
— Lyle Lovett, ’79
coming back. Well, I don’t know how that’s
possible when the Aggies at Pasta’s are the
ones that owned and operated the franchise
since July 1977. The people at Pasta’s are
responsible for building that name in the
area.
I would like to know how Mama’s Pizza, a
Fort Worth TCU graduate-owned com
pany, can advertise that they are coming
back when they were never here in the first
place.
Support the Aggie-owned Pasta’s, not
the TCU-owned Mama’s Pizza that is ad
vertising that they were once in College
station.
— Barbara Jones, ’83
Cut spending, taxes
Editor:
The main cause of inflation in this coun
try is the government’s bulging budget def
icit. As the governmerfte,spends more than
it takes in, it must finance these projects by
printing up more money. As a result, each
dollar you possess becomes worth less be
cause of the flood of surplus money enter
ing the American system.
I propose that we cut the budget in this
country by 40 percent and taxes by 25 per
cent. What would this accomplish? Well,
for one thing, instead of a budget deficit,
there would be a budget surplus. The
surplus money would be reimbursed to the
banks whom the government owes $885
BILLION. Once the government returns
to fiscal sanity by printing less paper money
(no need to print much money when there’s
a budget surplus), inflation would slow
down rapidly.
I also propose that we get rid of most of
the federal regulations that strangle Ameri
can business. Once red tape is lessened,
businesses could afford to hire more
people, thus reducing welfare. With fewer
people out of work and more off welfare, we
could eliminate the welfare, housing pro
grams, federal grants to states and cities,
Medicare, Medicaid, ad nauseum. To me,
non-disabled welfare people are like
leeches who drain the American financial
system.
Only by electing conservatives can we
preserve the American work ethic and
thriftiness that have made this country
great. The present Congress only rewards
laziness, since they continually give more
money each year to welfare-s
assocni
Gunn,
projects.
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Richard Leonardo^ a re ^ a ^ v<
Can 01110
Dissatisfied ...
Editor:
After almost four-and-a-half years*
A&M, the one thing I will notbesony*
leave is the mess GTE calls its phonexf
ice.
During these years, the troublewitb
ling off-campus numbers has noti
creased. Why, with the addition of near
600 people on the north side of camps'
does it still take six to eight calls before
outside line is reached (especiallyafte 1
p.m.)? Why, when calling long distam
does a busy signal start in the middleo(tj
phone number or why do I just get cut
Why did I have a “conversation withtlif
to four people (one of them in Leg
another in Walton) when I called
operator for help tonight since GTEdit
deliver enough phone books to
dorms and I didn’t get one? ,
What a sorry service to put upwitU
these years!!
Goodbye GTE! Hello Ma Bell!
— Lydia A. Muff.
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Stick with Pasta's
Editor:
I have eaten in Pasta’s (formerly Mama’s)
for the past two-and-a-half years and have
always enjoyed a relaxed and friendly at
mosphere. The pizza is the best anywhere.
Recently, I heard that Mama’s Pizza is
NOW, WHY ARE YOU
Doiwe- so PooRty?
IT HOMElwORIc?