Before I begin, a confession: In high school, I was one of those kids who cut school to skip pep rallies. I freely admit to a shade of bias in what follows.
On Aug. 28, University Relations sent all University of Northern Iowa students an email from Student Body President Kevin Gartman in which he proposed we participate in an “initiative” he and Vice-President Paul Andersen devised to encourage visiting high school students to enroll at UNI – “Panther Fridays.”
The plan is for students collectively wear purple clothing, preferably Panther gear, but even purple socks will do, apparently. This solidarity of hue is meant to cause our visiting prospective collegiate to “be blown away by a sea of purple as they visit campus.”
Let’s part this purple sea a moment to see what’s going on under it.
Is this really what students look for when they research colleges to attend? Does this pep and pride really foster retention of first-year students? I have my doubts.
What students want
A U.S. News and World Report article in 2010 cites a UCLA freshman survey of 219,864 freshmen at 297 colleges designed to show the strongest trends influencing students’ choice of university. The top three? A good academic reputation placed first (63.6 percent). A history of students obtaining good jobs after graduation (56.5 percent) and availability of financial aid (41.6 percent) followed as second and third, respectively.
There is no mention of school spirit in the list of fifteen reasons given. The closest any of these came to lending themselves to an interpretation favoring school spirit was reason four: a visit to campus (which followed number three, cost of attendance) and number seven: a good reputation for social activities.
Certainly, Gartman is correct to note that making a strong impression during campus visits is important, but that impression is not necessarily made by students proudly wearing their colors and boosting athletic teams. Social activities run the gamut from sports to theater to anime club.
So, what college-bound students are looking for in schools is academic excellence, the chance at good employment and affordability. All very good criteria. When one considers that, in the recent past, UNI has made decisions which detracted from its reputation from academic excellence in favor of higher administrative pay and spending on more perks and luxuries for students.
Examples: the closing of the nationally respected Price Lab School, a prized institution within our School of Education, one of the disciplines for which UNI has an excellent reputation.
Then there was the elimination of most languages, such as French and German (no German? Tough luck if you plan to be an engineer) and the attempt to gut most of the physics department contrarty to the emphasis on STEM education.
One then may question where the school’s priorities lay in attracting students (and tuition dollars), what kind of students we want and whether we understand their number one concern is a college’s reputation for academic excellence in teaching and research.
Student indoctrination
In a sports editorial in the Sept. 25 issue of the Northern Iowan, Sean Dengler writes UNI is a “shadow university” to University of Iowa and Iowa State. This is because apparently many UNI students wear clothing representing those schools and are thus “secret Hawkeyes” and “secret Cyclones.”
The solution is to weed them out; to do so, we should go further than the Panther Fridays initiative and promote wearing Panther gear at all functions. UNI must make strategic business liaisons with clothing stores in other cities (Iowa City and Ames) to sell UNI merchandise. The School of Education should make teaching its students to promote UNI as part of its curriculum, not because it serves the practice of teaching or furthers the discipline of education, but because it is assumed education majors will be indoctrinated to promote UNI to their pupils in their future careers. In fact, Dengler proposed education majors should wear Panther gear to class when student teaching to promote the UNI brand.
Tabling the question of whether a university is a brand before any other considerations you must work to create a university they can take pride in. Instilling “spirit” through the wearing of Panther gear isn’t going to work on students the way painting faces, smearing bodies with blood and banging on shields did to work the Vikings into a frenzy. Remember the first criterion for student selection of a college? Academic excellence.
Why not actively promote the academic strengths of UNI? Strengthen weakening programs? Promote long neglected majors? Despite the Price Lab gaff, our education department is still strong. Our computer science major has a record of nearly 100 percent career placement after graduation. We have an innovative new digital studies major that has received admiring coverage in the media. Our business and marketing departments are popular and strong.
What is this worth?
As to UNI recruiters wearing Panther gear when they visit high schools, let me be blunt. Recruiters from Iowa and Iowa State don’t wear Hawkeye or Cyclone gear when they go to schools. Why? Because they don’t need to. They promote their university’s strong, nationally and globally respected programs, knowing they attract the best students..
If other schools and potential students look askance at UNI as a worthwhile institution, no amount of purple passion is going to conceal it.
Overstating pride is the symptom of an inferiority complex. If UNI feels inferior, it needs to take measures to make it a superior university. That happens at the level of what is taught, how it is taught and what the school’s academic and social mission is.
At any rate, I submit to the Student Government and to the university’s administrators that I will be skipping the Friday pep rallies. You may assign me detention if you like.
