LETTERS: RIVER CAMPUS PLANS ARE FLAWED

To the editor:

In his recent letter, "Students' top priority: Good faculty," Steve Correll is absolutely right in his suggestion that the River Campus will not enhance the educational experience of Southeast Missouri State University students and will not increase enrollment. If they told the public that few -- if any -- students will be attracted to Southeast because of this nearly $36 million project and that they don't plan to do anything but shift the same old faculty and programs down to the river, it would undermine the pitch.

The pitch is essentially what these build-it-and-they-will-come administrators are all about. They want to expand because they see expansion as progress. They will say anything and make any promise necessary to sell this project even if, in the long run, it hurts the university. By then, they will be long gone, having gotten a better jobs somewhere else on the basis of resumes they build here with your $36 million.

I am amused at the elements of their sales pitch. They tell us, for example, that we will be the only institution in the state that has all the visual and performing arts together -- the so-called School of Visual and Performing Arts. Do they honestly think students taking music classes in the same area as art students will get some sort of cosmic artistic transfusion? What they hope is that you don't look very closely at what they say. It's all part of the fiction. It's all part of the pitch.

To deal with the fact that the move will leave the Art Building and Brandt Music Building empty and the 500-seat Rose Theatre unused, they brush it aside by saying "the enrollment of 2,000 additional students ... will require additional space." They say this as if Southeast's outreach programs will actually increase on-campus enrollment by 25 percent. In the face of all the national and regional trends, they cannot believe Southeast will ever have an on-campus enrollment of 10,000 students. Some of the initiatives they developed will help ensure that it never happens. The building of the Sikeston and Perryville centers, 100 Web courses and distance education will all decrease on-campus enrollment. What these administrators should be planning for is a campus of 7,000, not 10,000. Of course, if you admit that, you don't get the money. It's all part of the pitch.

The River Campus is going to be massively inconvenient for students. Had they asked students, they would have found that few would be willing to trade the river view for a 40-minute shuttle ride. In effect, any student wishing to take a class on the River Campus will have to schedule a minimum of two hours instead of one. Rather than making the new school an integral part of Southeast's campus life, the remove location will isolate the visual and performing arts. When asked about transportation difficulties, they tell you they have a committee looking into it. Of course, they can't build this project contiguous to the campus, because they you would have to sell it on educational merit.

I am also deeply concerned about the continuing costs of the River Campus, another item they don't choose to talk about. They casually talk about building a citywide bus system, for example. Can you imagine the annual budget for such an undertaking? Though they don't plan to hire nationally renowned faculty, I'm sure this will give them the opportunity to add several expensive administrators to the annual operating costs. And there will be increased costs for security and maintenance. Maybe they have a committee studying this too.

I can understand why the Southeast Missourians and downtown merchants have bought into the project. They see it as a way to enhance redevelopment and bring a few dollars to downtown stores at the expense of Missouri taxpayers and Southeast students. The tragedy is that we will all pay the bill year after year for the wrong project in the wrong place for the wrong reasons.

LARRY EASLEY

Cape Girardeau