Rocky Hillside

Post details: University of Denver? Get serious.

05/18/11

University of Denver? Get serious.

05/18/11
@ 07:02:00 pm
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A demonstration in favor of University of Denver having a library.

The University of Denver has become a punchline among the young people who chat around our dinner table. ("For every student, there's a different reason to love DU." But all of them love the fact that they will never see the library.)

DU has never been a very good school. But now it has given up any pretense of academic respectability. Imagine a university without a library. Well, no need to imagine. DU is ditching its library.

As I mentioned earlier, the University of Denver plans to get rid of its library in favor of a study hall with a cafe and virtually no books. The old library building will become the "Academic Commons."

I was happy to see a demonstration against this idiotic idea today. The demonstrators I chatted with are not rabble rousers. They were (tragically) sincere. They really thought that their demonstration might make a difference. Hearing a couple of them talk made me want to immediately go take over the provost's office just to vindicate their (misplaced) faith that people who speak truth to power prevail.

I have yet to hear anyone speak in favor of the trustee's plan, but the trustees apparently didn't ask the faculty for its opinion. (I'm happy to be corrected on that point, but I think it was presented as done deal. Why would the faculty care about the university's library?) Or the students. Or the librarians. Or the staff. They may have asked fellow trustee Pat Bowlen.

(Where is John Gilbert's daughter when you need her? Margot Gilbert is a trustee but apparently useless on this issue.)

Perhaps the trustees are gambling that if you have a good hockey team, no one will care about the education or research part.

Are people really that stupid? Maybe.

(Oh, and Nancy Allen is a quisling and possibly a fool. And she knows so much about cutting edge technology that her DU web page is littered with Microsoft Frontpage garbage.)

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Comments:

Comment from: Sam [Visitor] Email
Huff Post characterizes libraries as performing the "traditional function of storing books" and questions whether that function "needs to happen on campus."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/university-of-denver-plan_n_854436.html

Make me wonder whether the people who think that what libraries do is "store books" have ever actually used a library. Not much about our country stands out as admirable and now they are going after the one thing that does. What utter crap.
PermalinkPermalink 05/18/11 @ 19:48
Comment from: Iris [Visitor] Email
Interesting and abominable. I think this demonstration is on the site of DU's anti-war demonstrations.

http://blogs.du.edu/today/magazine/dus-woodstock-of-the-west

I don't think frat-boy state will ever be compared to woodstock again!
PermalinkPermalink 05/18/11 @ 21:19

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