FARMINGTON, Minn. -- "We had to destroy the village to save it." Herald readers who are old enough to know that line will understand how it applies to the situation at UND's School of Communication.
As a graduate of SComm (before it wore that moniker), I'm not particularly sad to see what the administration has decided to do. SComm began its slide into the morass of a common communications curriculum, infused with political correctness and progressive ideology, after the departure of Vern Keel in the late 1980s. It never emerged.
The heart of the problem at SComm was a faculty that never came to grips with their primary mission as educators of undergraduates. The downfall of SComm was its transition from a school that helped students learn how to think to a school that taught students what to think.
For the students there now who fret that this commotion might somehow hurt their prospects, I say to them, you own your prospects. It is not owed to the name of a school on your university transcript that precious few people will ever read.
And for those who might read that name and know what it means, you would be better off with an English or History degree from UND than an SComm diploma.
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Maybe a better analogy than the village is the gangrenous limb discarded to save the body.
Tim Burke
