AT THE heart of our University lies the Lawn. It forms the symbolic and concrete core of our Academical Village. We begin and end our scholastic journey on this sacred patch of grass, but growing from the south end, from the fertile field of Jefferson’s liberal arts is a dangerous and greedy species — ambitious and pernicious. Here, on our greenest grass: The Commerce School.
Predictably, the strongest argument in support of McIntire’s expansion has to do with prestige and money. As a premier undergraduate business program, McIntire must continue to develop its facilities and integrate its program with sophisticated technology and global curriculum. To do this, and to maintain its academic dominance, a spacious and impressively equipped facility was constructed to house the new Commerce School. But even with the lavish, state-of-the-art Rouss-Robertson Hall, McIntire’s expansion was not entirely selfish. With over half of its $150 million portion of the University’s Capital Campaign already raised, McIntire’s return to the Lawn seems financially justified. And as one of the University’s top undergraduate programs, being situated directly on the Lawn will attract even more attention, even brighter students, and an even higher praise for the University in general.
My cohorts in the Commerce School argue that this is true, that McIntire adds prestige and wealth to the University, and that more competitive students come here because of McIntire. But my peers have it reversed. It is not so much that the Commerce School gives prestige to the College, but that the College lends legitimacy to the Commerce School.
Because if the Commerce School was its own place, somewhere in the mountains of Central Virginia, not affiliated with Thomas Jefferson, the University or Charlottesville, it would be nothing more than a glorified trade school, occupied not by students but by eager trade-seekers. In such a university of commerce, plumbers, mechanics and carpenters would not receive a Bachelors of Science in Commerce, and they would not, as 2007 graduates of McIntire did, receive an average starting salary of $55,746.
The legitimacy and prestige that McIntire enjoys is in large part a function of the respect and prominence that the College has earned. Because divorced from the College, forced to stand on its own two feet, the Commerce School would not be the number two undergraduate business program that it is today. McIntire does produce its own material wealth, but it can only do this by feeding off the legitimacy and prestige of the College.
Still, the School of Commerce and the College are part of the same University. And it is true that McIntire does attract students to Charlottesville. But what kind of student does McIntire attract? What kind of student — straight out of high school — declares herself pre-Commerce rather than philosophy, or English, or math? For prospective Commerce Schoolers, the first two years of college pre-requisites are like a paying of dues, a bureaucratic documentation of legitimacy, a waste of time. Rather than serving as cornerstones for future academic inquiry, or exploring a curiosity undeveloped, the first two years of college becomes a purging of the “impractical.” Plato and Aristotle are exchanged for modern business ethics; Shakespeare and Dostoevsky are replaced by clear, formatted memo writing; and Newton and Einstein are swapped away for Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel.
But this description does not capture all the students of McIntire. According to Tracey Templeton, Director of Student Information and Records for Commerce, of McIntire’s Class of 2008, 18 percent of students had another major outside of the Commerce School and another 17 percent earned a minor. This shows that for every 3 students of commerce more than one of them took a healthy offering of another subject.
It may be that authentic McIntire students find their passion in commerce the same way students of English find theirs reading Poe. But my Jefferson — the man who loved reading “archaic” Latin and “impractical” Greek — would say to those genuine students of commerce: “You are fine to study what you want, but we do not do that here, on these Grounds, in this village, on my Lawn.” My imaginary schoolmaster wants us to seek wisdom and not just profit. He values impracticality, counter-intuition and creative expression. He measures men and women by their character and courage not by their money and material. He is a liberal artist, a human scientist, a philosopher-poet. “Wealth,” he says, “is not everything.”
With HD projectors, New York Stock Exchange-style digital marquees, and dual-monitored flat screen computers, Rouss-Robertson Hall seems out of place. Because meanwhile, in Cabell, classrooms are too small, air-conditioners too loud, and bolted chairs too stifling. Until both phases of the South Lawn Project are completed, which will not be until 2010, the new McIntire will not be a remarkable asset, but an embarrassing and humiliating symbol: disparity, contradiction, materialism.
Hamza Shaban’s column usually appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at
h.shaban@cavalierdaily.com
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