By: The Real Ohio State, Inc (tm)

The Real Ohio State, Inc (tm)
Fri, 04 Sep 2015 22:08:19 +0000

In reply to Carl” target=”_blank” title=”/2015/09/5-5m-deal-two-buildings-purchased-by-campus-partners-for-proposed-high-street-transformation-project/comment-page-1/#comment-98020″>Carl”>/2015/09/5-5m-deal-two-buildings-purchased-by-campus-partners-for-proposed-high-street-transformation-project/comment-page-1/#comment-98020″>Carl Spackler.

I have read your posts, Karl, and we are on the same page on most things, but here I think you need to go a step further.

I completely agree with the gentrification idea. To be honest, I think it’s nearly impossible to argue against it, especially in light of incidents like the Papa Joe’s fire.

South Campus was going to change, but changing South Campus was a means to an end. That end was to “raise the profile” of the university. Raising the profile meant being able to justify raising tuition to levels that began to exclude students who had the intellect to excel at OSU, but were priced out.

I went to OSU in the 90s and knew people who could finance a year’s tuition with a summer job waiting tables at popular bars at places like Put-in-Bay. $3500-3600 was all that was needed for a year’s tuition. The idea of doing that is almost absurd now. On the other hand, if you have students who are willing to take on significant student loan debt or whose parents can write checks for $10K a year, that’s a diffferent story.

To attract those students, however, you need to clean things up. A new RPAC. A new (and unnecessary) Ohio Union. The first thing that had to change was the especially gritty portions of campus; namely the South Campus bar district. Replace Papa Joe’s or Maxwell’s or the Pit with some contrived English pub, and now it’s more “presentable”.

The old regime had its warts, I’m not denying that. South Campus was usually risky and sometimes lawless. But that regime also meant that things were cheap enough so that education was accessible to people who didn’t necessarily have a lot of money. That WAS the beauty of Ohio State, you could build yourself up without taking on ridiculous debt.

This next project is just a continuation of that “master plan”.