The Griffon News

There’s a television commercial explaining the need for art and literature in the world that shows a little girl handing her daddy something to read for the goodnight story; it’s some sort of technical manual.

Now we don’t dispute the value of technology. It’s important that our students learn how to specialize in the world, and thanks to an Oct. 10 $5 million pledge from Wes and Patsy Remington of St. Joseph, Western is set to become quite a figure in the regional science and technology education fields.

A dual announcement made last week detailed the plans.

–The keystone project for “Beyond Excellence” and the main focus of the $5 million gift is the expansion and renovation of Evan R. Agenstein Hall, Western’s science and mathematics building at a cost of $35 million, $30.1 million of that is being provided by the state.

–Another major project is the $2.5 million Christopher S. “Kit” Bond Science and Technology Incubator already under construction on university-owned land west of Interstate 29.

–Other possible components of the initiative include funds for scholarships, library acquisitions, the arts and athletics.
So students in departments like English, Theatre and Music are an afterthought? That doesn’t bode well for the future.
Our English department  gets dustier by the year.

Our music department limps along with substandard equipment, and fails to pay our rather famous faculty more than adjunct salary.
  
We seem to be moving from a liberal arts school to something more technology based — maybe we need to change our name from Missouri Western State University to Western Tech?

Come on… Science and technology are wonderful, but it seems as though English, arts, music, theatre and education are now the bastard step-children of the university.

So instead of holding our breath, waiting for money to be spent in the less valuable majors — perhaps we need to go on our own deep pockets hunt and find a writer who wants to contribute to the growth of other writers? Or an artist who’s done well? Or a musician who has a little spare cash lying around?

It seems like there’s more chance of that happening than there is for our administration to balance these particular scales.