Three faculty meetings, two petitions and numerous editorials later, the drama that is the Bush Library complex continues to gain a wider audience in the United States and worldwide.
The debate has shone a bright, and sometimes harsh, spotlight on the Hilltop.
Media inquiries about the Bush Library have flooded SMU’s News and Communications office. According to its media monitoring service, 329 articles and television segments have been done on SMU’s bid for the complex since the Dec. 21 announcement that the school was entering into exclusive negotiations with the library committee.
Last week, ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” had a story on the debate in addition to other coverage on CNN and MSNBC. The story has received column space in the Washington Post and the New York Times, both of which have sent reporters to cover the faculty meetings along with reporters from The Associated Press and the Dallas Morning News.
The story has gone international in the past week with articles in the United Kingdom’s The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph of London and a German newspaper. The debate was also featured on “Canada A.M.,” that country’s equivalent of “Good Morning America.”
But the unofficial sign that the debate had hit the big time was during last Thursday’s Colbert Report. The show dedicated its “The Word” segment to the campus debate over the complex, and host Colbert commented on the opinion piece that ran in The Daily Campus in November by professors Susanne Johnson and William McElvaney.
Johnson said she had never watched the show before she heard about Thursday’s segment.
“My friends sent me clips on the computer…I had to work to see the gist of the show, but after I understood what they were doing I thought it was funny,” she said.
Johnson said she was surprised the debate over the complex came up on the show.
The debate will hit local airwaves on the debut show of KERA’s “Think.” Hosted by Krys Boyd, the show will air this Friday at 7:30 p.m. and feature SMU Professor James F. Hollifield, director of the Tower Center, and Professor Kathleen A. Wellman, who teaches History.
Editorial boards and columnists chime in
The editorial boards and columnists of Texas’ papers have begun to give their thoughts on SMU’s quest for the Library and the faculty debate it has spawned.
The editorial boards, so far, have been supportive of SMU’s efforts to land the complex.
The Austin American-Statesman wrote in Saturday’s editions that it would be a “mistake for SMU to refuse the Bush library, the museum or the political institute – which no doubt will bend right in its views – that will come with it.”
The Dallas Morning News wrote on Jan. 19 that the “honor and prestige of this partnership [between SMU and the library complex] would only enhance the school’s educational purpose.”
Columnists statewide have a more mixed view.
Cragg Hines of the Houston Chronicle wrote that SMU should make sure it would be able to access all of the presidential records before agreeing to the complex. (An executive order signed by Bush early in his first term makes it easier for presidents to classify documents.)
Rick Casey, also from the Chronicle, said opponents have more credibility when they focus only on the institute – not the entire complex. He also agreed with an editorial written last Friday by The Daily Campus that said SMU is in a stronger position than it believes in negotiations with the library committee.
Lee Cullum of the Morning News wrote last Wednesday that the complex would “engage, after all, not just the fellows of the Bush institute, but scholars from all over the world,” and urged SMU to follow through with its bid.
What’s next?
Final negotiations between SMU and the Library Search Committee are set to begin any day now and the faculty dissent is seemingly headed for a referendum conducted by the faculty senate.
170 of SMU’s 609 full-time faculty have signed the petition in the last week, and it’s now in front of Faculty Senate President Rhonda Blair.
“There is still grave concern about the Institute across the university, and the petition has met with enormous support,” David Freidel, professor of anthropology, said in a release about the petition.
The petition is requesting a referendum in the faculty senate on whether the institute should be separate from the school and whether SMU will retain control over the institute.
Any vote held would be nonbinding.
“That’s going to be the real thermometer on getting a read on where everyone stands,” Johnson said.
History Professor Tom Knock said in a prepared statement “a referendum gives everyone on the faculty a vote.”
The focus on the debate has narrowed, with discussion only about the Bush Institute. The general consensus of those who attended the most recent faculty discussion was that there was no person who spoke out against the library or museum parts of the complex.
