FSU removing arts shuts out community
Many letters have been published in the past weeks about Fairmont State University’s Board of Governors’ decision to discontinue the theater and music education programs in 2021.
I can not understand this ill-conceived decision. I could tell you about all the extraordinary people in the Fine Arts department, from secretaries, to maintenance workers, to the department chairs and the professors. To say that they all educated each and every student to their full potential and beyond would be an understatement. Of course, all departments on a university campus aspire to this ideal. However, the end product of a university education is no more evident than theater and music, where students put their education on full display for public consumption. This argument may be made for other majors, but none more so than for a play or a concert.
A pall has descended on the campus of Fairmont State University. I noticed the not-so-subtle changes a few years ago when the football field was no longer a place of community engagement. Community members used to walk around the track, as much for socialization as exercise. Children would play in the field while Mom and Dad walked or ran or they would shoot baskets with the college students in the parking lot. The track is no longer there, the basketball hoops are gone, the gates are locked.
Rumors swirl as to what is behind this decision. Is WVU going to absorb our university in a few years?
Is FSU going to become a technical job-churning factory instead of a liberal arts college?
Forgive me, Fairmont State University Board of Governors, for your idea to destroy programs that bring culture and enlightenment to the community by saying you intend to reimagine the arts for our community.
You don’t care about our community! How do I know this to be true? Just look at your signs erected at the entrances to your university: “Campus closed to the community.” Truer words were never spoken.
Cathy DeBellis
Fairmont
International students are still Mountaineers
It is dangerous, unnecessary and most of all cruel to force certain Mountaineers to travel to their countries of origin should online learning become a public safety necessity this fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet this is exactly what would happen under new U.S. State Department rules.
International students, who chose to become Mountaineers and make Morgantown their home, would effectively be banned from the U.S. and restricted from participating in their WVU learning communities.
I’ve been privileged to teach many international students who came to Morgantown to study earth science. Typically, our educational connection is made in the classroom. However, the pandemic taught us that this connection is not wholly dependent upon gathering on campus. It also revealed that our connection, be it face-to-face or through a computer, is essential to high-quality learning experiences for all students, because it allows us to share our varied life experiences, participate in richer learning activities and spur unique intellectual inspiration.
These interactions would be barred under this new State Department policy. The policy also obstructs international students from teaching or research assistantship positions, which are vital roles in WVU’s educational and research missions.
In addition, of the nearly 1 million international students in the U.S., those who are Mountaineers are also members of the Morgantown community that flourishes outside of WVU campuses. Attempts by our government to force international students out of the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic will only damage international students and their U.S. citizen peers, their academic home institutions and the communities where they reside.
Now, more than ever, we should be working to keep our communities connected. As Mountaineers, international students in West Virginia are in the place they belong. They should be able to stay.
Amy Weislogel
Morgantown
Is influx of students best for community?
So, the plan, as I understand it, is to bring over 20,000 WVU students from all over the country and all over the world into Morgantown in August. Put them in shared dormitories and shared apartments and shared classrooms and hope that community spread of COVID-19 will not explode exponentially.
I must have missed the input from community leaders on this plan. I haven’t seen it on the City Council agenda or the County Commission agenda, but I may have missed it. I haven’t heard from our county health department or from the large medical community that calls Morgantown home but, again, maybe I missed it. Maybe they all think this is a good plan that does not endanger the citizens of Morgantown or Mon County or north-central West Virginia who have all been locked down for months trying to avoid the virus. Maybe nobody asked them.
I understand the university has a plan that includes giving the students masks, washing down often-touched surfaces and closing salad bars. What I do not understand is how any of these steps address the overarching issue of placing students from all over the country and all over the world into shared living arrangements and shared classrooms. How is that even remotely safe for them and for the community?
The university is important to our community. It provides us with resources that cities without a large university don’t have. It provides a financial underpinning to our entire area. We have a responsibility to help it succeed — but the university has a responsibility to us also.
I am not certain this plan meets that responsibility or that our community leaders have even seriously questioned it. Without a vaccine in hand, I simply do not know how you reopen a university in a manner that is safe for both the students and the community that hosts them.
Robert R. Cockrell
Morgantown
WVU English Department condemns ICE decision
On behalf of the faculty of the WVU Department of English, I wish to condemn the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) decision, announced Monday, July 6, which stipulates that International Students with F-1 and M-1 visas “attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States.” It also states that students with F-1 visas may not take a fully online course load, even if their university is adopting a hybrid model, such as WVU has planned for the Fall 2020 semester.
International students enrich WVU and Morgantown financially and intellectually through their presence in our programs and in our community. Uprooting these students during a global pandemic is cruel. The ICE decision would force international students to abandon the lives they’ve built here, to leave programs, on-campus teaching and research assignments, housing and friends during a time of increasing travel restrictions due to COVID-19.
Individual students have little to no control over the mode of instruction chosen by their universities this fall. Even universities that are planning for a hybrid model of instruction may be forced to move entirely online to safeguard their communities. No student should be held accountable for the mode of instruction their university deems to be safest during a global pandemic.
We reject the distinction ICE is making between international and domestic students and call on ICE to rescind this arbitrary, discriminatory decision. We also call on WVU’s leadership to advocate on behalf of our international students and to safeguard them from the hazards of being uprooted from their community during a global crisis.
Lisa Weihman
Morgantown
Police officers are our fellow Americans
America needs to get things under control. The way I see it, not only do Black lives matter, but all lives matter. Sure, there are some police officers who are bad apples that need to be weeded out, but there are more good police officers who are here to help no matter what the race. This is what people need to realize and stop all the protesting and destruction of history. If these people keep up this kind of behavior of disorderly conduct, then we are on the road to another civil war.
There has been far too much destruction already and your tax dollars paid for all the police cars that were burned up, statues torn down and not to mention the businesses that were looted and burned down, putting your fellow America’s out of business, probably forever.
These people who have taken over part of Seattle don’t care that they are stepping on other people’s rights to live their lives the way they want to live.
It’s time for all these people to wake up. This is not a socialist government, and they need to be the American people they should be and protect our country, not tear it down.
Police officers are your fellow Americans, so let’s treat them with the respect they deserve. The problem I see with these people they were not raised to respect anything or anybody.
As the Bible says, you reap what you sow. I just hope things return to somewhat normal without having to fight with each other.
Ralph Correll
Morgantown
Charter schools could benefit low-income areas
In an editorial, The Dominion Post discussed systemic racism — the redlining of housing opportunities — in the Charleston’s West Side neighborhood (DP-06-18-20). Another of the systemic factors in denying opportunities in communities of color is the lack of a quality education.
During the debate concerning charter schools in the most recent legislative session, I penned a letter to The Dominion Post concerning the lack of educational performance at Charleston’s West Side Elementary. I pointed out that according to NICHE — an education rating service — Monongalia County had three of the top five and six of the top 14 elementary schools in West Virginia.
But West Side Elementary is among the worst performing schools in West Virginia. West Side is the 10th most diverse school in West Virginia with 50.3% of its students being black and 15.7% being multi-racial. Only 17% of its students are proficient in reading and only 22% proficient in math, and only 1.1% being gifted students.
By comparison, North Elementary is the ninth most diverse school in West Virginia and has 63% of its student proficient in reading and 65% proficient in math, while 14.7% of its students are gifted.
West Side Elementary has been a failing school for decades.
Generations of minority students have been deprived of the quality education that will help lift them out of the poverty cycle that plagues the West Side of Charleston. Adding a counselor or a social worker at the school will not resolve the issue — the academic culture at the school requires change. I realize the influence of the teachers union is important to some, but equal education opportunities should be important to all.
For the minority students from West Side Elementary who walk home along the mean streets of their neighborhood, the reasons why people were against charter schools really don’t matter. They just know that another educational opportunity was lost to them. Maybe the rest of us can do better the next time.
Denny Poluga
Morgantown
Testing needed before school reopenings
The “powers that be” are making decisions on school opening that will affect almost every family, but it is our decision that counts. The president says schools “must open.” We have seen this “must” before when businesses in some states opened before meeting CDC standards, resulting in the current coronavirus resurgence across the southern U.S. The president needs the economy to recover for his reelection and children “must” be in school so parents can go to work. Of course, we all want normalcy and schools to open, but how, when and at what level of risk?
Much is said about the social and psychological effect on our children if we don’t open school, and while that is so, premature opening under unsafe conditions will affect the child and the entire family if he or she brings the virus home and his mom or dad dies. We want to open safely and the key to that is testing.
The vice president promises tests are and will be available at opening. One critical question for testing is what kind? Most children with the virus are asymptomatic. Rapid temperature screening is ineffective for asymptomatic individuals, so the more complex, expensive and slower sample testing is required. This presents a problem because results must be available before an infected student goes home. This turn-around problem might be avoided if schools used a batch test for each class, then test individual students only if a batch test is positive.
Teacher and staff safety is a related question. Are they willing to take the risk and responsibility for their own as well as our children’s safety? I think teachers will be skeptical without a detailed plan and valid test program.
What are our local and state school-opening plans? Which screening test is contemplated? Where are the test kits? How many are available? What is the test turn-around time? How often will they be administered? Until these questions are answered, we should not send our children to school.
Bob Shumaker
Morgantown
White supremacist creeds and relics of oppression
Donald J. Trump, whose white supremacist/nationalist creeds destroy and demean America as the land of equality for all, is the figure needing removed along with the rest of the antiquated statues and relics of unfair oppression. Likewise, his lying and deceptive Republican senators (G.O.P.hers) need removed from our government. They all view America as a society to dominate, rather than represent as the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Trump’s a hypocrite. He defaces our American flag with his image — another confederate attempt at white supremacy.
Worse than removing tangible statues/symbols, Donald Trump and his McConnell-led G.O.P.hers are destroying the ideals and values symbolized by our Lady of Liberty statue at Ellis Island, which is the hope and fabric of American freedom here and throughout our world as well.
Trump embraces the dominance of dictatorship here and worldwide rather than the expansion of a free world. Those who support him are the fools he will dominate next should he maintain the dominance he seeks over people of color and religion as he chooses. Like China’s Beijing Communists and all other world authoritarians, his immorality knows no limits of abuse if empowered. His G.O.P.hers are like-minded, following suit.
Delmar Hagedorn Jr.
Morgantown
