Executive Director of Athlete Tutoring Steven Stolp needs a little tutoring himself. Quoted at length in Tuesday’s front-page story (“Athletes Learning in Grandeur,” ODE, Jan. 5), Stolp proudly rhapsodized about the new Jaqua Academic Center, comparing it to the Taj Mahal. What Stolp doesn’t realize is that the comparison, aside from referencing a standard of sublime beauty that the UO’s architects have hardly shadowed, also reveals some of the insidious aspects of the new building in the context of existing campus tensions.
The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, built in the mid-17th century by the Mughal ruler Shah Jahan was a “vanity building.” It was not built for the public good, but rather at the whim of an emperor, as a grandiose and costly mausoleum for his favorite wife. As is now the case on East 13th Avenue, where access to the Jaqua Center will be restricted to a privileged caste of student-athletes, only a rarified elite got to fully enjoy Shah Jahan’s original complex.
Stolp’s comparison goes farther, though. As anyone who has visited the Taj Mahal in India can attest, the beauty of the mausoleum complex stands in stark contrast to the squalor and shocking poverty that cluster outside of its gates. There is a parallel at the UO, where academic programs suffer chronic underfunding and inhabit substandard quarters even while athletics-related construction sets national records and this new Taj Mahal rises in our faces.
In a splendid malapropism quoted in Tuesday’s article, Stolp claims that in the new building’s design, “there’s a lot of umbrage to the past.” I suspect Stolp may have meant “homage,” since “umbrage” actually means offense, annoyance or displeasure. But his clumsy handling of the language may carry unintended truth: the founders of the University of Oregon (and anyone else who believes that the university’s academic mission should not be overshadowed or belittled by its athletic mission) would surely take umbrage at this ostentatious new Taj Mahal and the misappropriation of resources it represents.
(It is worth emphasizing that though the tutoring of athletes has some collateral academic benefits at the individual level, its actual purpose is to help athletes maintain eligibility, so that the coaches have fewer impediments to winning. Labeling the building an “Academic Center” barely camouflages the fact that those who staff it report to Athletic Director Mike Bellotti.)
The historical Shah Jehan was deposed in 1658 and spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest, declared incompetent to rule. And the Shah Jehan of our story is already deposed, though more gently: Dave Frohnmayer, under whose rule the Jaqua Center was conceived, has now retired. We can only hope that, with his replacement, the demoralizing inequities and unwise appropriation of resources that characterized his reign might come to a stop.
41 comments
when someone approaches you and promises to spend 20 million on a project that costs, what did you say . . . 35 total . . . you don't spit in their face. Building a better campus and university experience isn't free and it wouldn't be nearly at the scale is right now (especially in this economy) if it wasn't for help from private groups/alumni.