THIS WEEK provided some wonderful reading material -- an academic soap opera of sorts.
That which seems antithetical to emotion has created a fantastic outpouring of rage, love, bewilderment and hope. That's right, a pile of metaphorical stone has ripped apart the opinion pages of The Cavalier Daily this week, sending many hands to work with pencils, scratching out philosophical and pragmatic ideas and ideals.
The controversy started with an open letter written to the University community, published on Sept. 7 in the Cavalier Daily as a paid advertisement, signed by two dozen individuals, most of whom were professors from the Architecture School. The letter accused the University administration of failing to meet its own academic standards by commissioning "so much mediocre architecture." They said the University built stylistically familiar structures while eschewing building design with, for lack of better words, heart and soul.
That heart and soul, the professors said, is what they teach, what makes buildings great: They fit in with their environment, respond to the function of the structure and "engage[s] tradition but is not ashamed of having been built in the twenty-first century."
Ah, the poetry, the passion: "Is U.Va. to become a theme park of nostalgia at the service of the University's branding?"
For more than a week now, letters to the editor have been sent in support and otherwise of this letter.
Some say, "Get over it. We just don't want ugly, modern-looking buildings traipsing across these beautiful Grounds." Many said, "No, look here, you're missing the point -- we just want there to be thought put into the architecture so that the University doesn't just tack together buildings that look right but actually aren't for the sake of a postcard picture."
It's every opinion editor's dream, as well as fulfilling the wishes of many community journalists who want theirs to be pages of dialogue and intrigue.
And then, great things happened. Letters spilled over into full columns. Opinion columnist Allan Cruickshanks pointed out that Jefferson himself borrowed extensively, not only in architecture but also in his writings, from the masters that came before him -- so why need we be any different ("Building links to heritage," Sept. 16)? Former Cavalier Daily Editor-in-Chief John Clark chimed in with an op-ed saying that experimental architecture is fine and grand -- just as long as it's far away from the University's Jeffersonian Central ("Preserving heritage, promoting vision," Sept. 16).
There's no reason, though, that the other sections can't get in on the fun, namely Focus and Life. Act like a newsweekly magazine and give us a few articles educating us about the history and change of architecture, Jeffersonian and beyond. Publish interviews with or profiles on some of these signatory architecture professors. How about a look at the buildings around campus, and a bit about the history?
I bet this isn't nearly the first time a debate like this has come up. Why not bring back to life some of those debates and tell about the characters involved, their arguments and who ultimately won out?
Have a little fun, and give us a look at what is in the minds of the non-invested people on campus, outside of the architecture department. Poll the students. Poll the parents. Poll the administration. Was it that architecture that the academics so deride that attracted these people to study and work here in the first place?
Even the Arts & Entertainment and Science sections could explore the topic. Architecture, after all, is defined by dictionary.com as such: "The art and science of designing and erecting buildings."
The News section must keep everyone up to date with details of the University's new plans for this year, including what got these Architecture professors so riled up in the first place.
There are several great uses for a newspaper in a community like a university. One has been detailed above: a forum for views and a dialogue about change. Another -- one I'd personally love to see more often from all media these days -- is an educational one. I want to pick up a newspaper and learn something -- not just about what happened today, but why it happened today and what happened in all those yesterdays to make it so.
Lisa Fleischer can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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