By Dallas Hyland
A friend and colleague recently posted on
Facebook the following: “Dixie State University. She’s all grown up.”
I could not help but think he was right and
commented to the point in a Hans Christian Andersen sort of way. (Some may miss
the pun here, but Andersen wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Get it?)
You see, while the college revels in its newly
self-assigned name, something may have been missed.
It takes more than assuming a name to assume the
credibility associated with it.
But I digress here if I ponder any further the
name debate, for it has been decided, and to that end let me go on record to
say that I am in full support of the name Dixie and whatever meaning they say
it stands for.
What gives me pause, however, is the other name
in the title: university.
By definition, the word constitutes an
institution of higher or advanced learning, but by association it is in itself
stating that DSU is now on the level of any other state university.
Is it?
What do you suppose would happen at another
established university – say, in nearby California – if a group of students
were holding a peaceful, constitutionally protected candlelight vigil and the
campus police shut it down?
What do you suppose would happen at another
established university – say, on the East Coast – if a student on the school
newspaper was ridiculed for writing an article because it had the topic of sex
in it?
What do you think would happen at an established
university in the Midwest if a college professor told a military member he/she could
not make up work missed while on duty because, in the professor’s opinion, missing class for
military service was the same as vacation?
What would happen at any university if tenured
professors were perpetually allowed to exact with impunity personal agendas
upon students with no consequence from their department heads?
What would happen at any university that pushed a
particular religious worldview in its public curriculum?
Do these sound like the practices of a reputable
and respectable institution of higher learning? Or do they sound like something
out of a John Hughes high school parody?
The fact is, these and things like these happen
with heightened regularity on that campus and, I would assert, insult the very
notion that it is anything at all resembling a higher learning institution.
And let me be clear here.
It is not necessarily the faculty – the educators
themselves, that is – who perpetuate DSU’s plaguing behaviors. That campus has
some of the finest professors and department heads academia has to offer in
every field. I know this for a fact because I attended there and have the
distinct privilege of calling many of them friends and colleagues.
But something almost ironically telling took
place late last year in the debate for the new name.
The college asked for the community’s input. One
would assume that by community they meant anyone and everyone who may attend
there from anywhere in the country – or the world, for that matter. Then they
systematically berated anyone who disagreed with what was clearly a
predisposition with regard to the name, begging the question: Why did they ask
at all?
And in doing so, they demonstrated the very
behavior that dismissed carte blanche any notion whatsoever that they possessed
the maturity to bear the title of university.
But – and more to the point here because, like I
said, it has been decided and no amount of critical or rational thought applied
will matter – has anyone considered the idea that perhaps the big name debate
served as a ruse to distract attention from the myriad of conflicts taking
place at that school – academic, financial or otherwise – that would surely
preclude its progress towards its predisposed end?
It appears that the semblance of accomplishment
here is more important than the accomplishment itself – a problem, mind you,
that is pandemic not only in local culture but across the land.
But here locally, one would do well to ponder the
question: Is it really a university because the sign says so?
See you out there.
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