Dear Editor

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I wish to say something about the recent controversy over the closeting of student murals. How we use space can tell us a great deal about what we value. For instance, the Interstate Highway System, certainly a marvel of human engineering, nevertheless, cut through family farms and urban neighborhoods. The nation chose mobility but at a cost to many Americans. The rupture to the lives of farmers and the urban poor was deemed a price worth paying for that increased mobility. Whether it was indeed worth the price is a question of values.

Similarly, we should ask what price the college pays in gaining closet space with its decision to wall up the student murals, for a college is not merely a collection of buildings, or even of people, it is also a repository of values. In fact, not so long ago, a great deal of time and effort went into the task of defining the college mission and its "valued practices." One important purpose of a college is to aid the culture in determining what we should care about and why, and the time and effort spent in attempting to define the college mission and its valued practices was certainly well spent. But practices entail deeds and not mere words.

The act of closeting the student murals speaks volumes about what the college considers valuable. After all, these were small spaces. The college could easily have rented space for the duration of the repairs in Building C, even if it could not have found alternative space on campus for storage. But my business here is not to tell the college administration where to find space (though in my walks around the campus, I certainly could suggest alternatives), but to speak for the lost works of art and their makers. These lines by the poet Robert Frost come to mind:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

What was walled in are student works of art, works that their makers certainly had every reason to expect would be displayed for more than a year. What was walled out is any beauty seeker who might have derived refreshment of spirit or even enlightenment from those murals. Yes, these works were "student works," but all the more reason to preserve and display them. Colleges exist, in large measure, to give students an opportunity to refine and develop their talents. Art students need opportunities to display their work. And these works were commissioned as part of the college beautification efforts, and were some the best efforts of those art students who contributed to this beautification project.

The loss goes beyond the walling up of student work, away from the hungry eyes of potential appreciators; it goes to the loss of trust on the part of future students. What potential baseball or softball player would come to IVCC if he or she knew the games would be cut off in the seventh inning? Similarly, why would any future student of art wish to contribute to the beautification effort if he or she knew those productions would be dealt with such a fashion?

So, I return to the question of values. Why is art important to this college or any college? It helps us define who we are a people. It nourishes the soul, by giving vent to the free expression of the inner self. It speaks to our hunger for beauty and our longing for permanence. It gives shape and form to our perceptions of the world around us. In short, it is something we desperately need, not something merely decorative. Art is about breaking down walls, not erecting them. Frost has it right: before we erect walls, we should ask what we are walling in or walling out. There must be space for student artists to find themselves in what they create. That, I submit, is more important as a college practice than finding storage space.

C. Stephen Rhoades

English instructor (retired)