College of everything imaginable

When I heard about the proposed merger among the Department of Telecommunications, the Department of Communication and Culture and the School of Journalism, I was completely onboard.

I know every journalism student reading this is now busy studying my mug shot in order to beat me in an alley later, but hear me out.

I was attracted to the proposed merger because the combined school was consistently referred to as the School of Communication, Media and Journalism within the official
proposal.

“Our proposal calls for reorganizing and expanding the three existing units into a School of Communication, Media and Journalism that comprises five departments, reinvents undergraduate education, and co-locates the units in an innovative space specially designed to facilitate true collaboration in communication and media by students as well as faculty.”

The proposal consistently uses language about the “new school” and creates the idea that an actual new school within the University would be created.

It’s no surprise they emphasized this considering the school’s freestanding nature for years.

The plan was to give them a dean and an official-sounding school acronym (SCMJ).
But this is not the merger outlined in the proposal.

Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel said the communication school would lie in Franklin Hall and belong to the College of Arts and Sciences.

This is where they lost me.

Adding another dish to the already overflowing smorgasbord that is the College is irresponsible and clearly demonstrates this University’s willingness to throw anything and everything into one school.

The College boasts 70 degree-granting departments and programs and 9,000 undergraduate majors, but maybe this isn’t something to flaunt about.

The College’s website claims that “from day one, the liberal arts were always the University’s central focus” in a history lesson about IU — but by making the school so large and far-reaching, the liberal arts are the most out-of-focus aspect of this campus.

What is in focus on campus? Based on the newest and greatest buildings going up around IU, it seems like all eyes are on Jacobs School of Music and Kelley School of Business.

Kelley’s newly renamed Hodge Hall is getting a facelift because it’s 50 years old.

Ballantine Hall, the lynchpin of the College and the biggest academic structure on IU’s campus, was built in 1959.

Granted, all of these state-of-the-art facilities can be built because of private donors.
But hasn’t the University realized it’s hard to give the College a proper donation when it’s so incredibly far-reaching?

You can easily give to each department via its website, but this isn’t as effective as donating to the School, as evidenced by Ballantine’s sad peasanthood next to Queen
Kelley.

And maybe IU’s telecommunications department hasn’t had a rich enough graduate to start funding a whole new school, but that certainly doesn’t mean Robel needs to continue adding departments to the pile that makes up the College.

Although there are many departments in the College that effectively manage their fields, it’s distressing to see so many departments lumped into one school when the Jacobs School and Kelley School are allowed to prance about campus focusing on one
field.

The fact of the matter is we could all be more state-of-the-art if we let go of the behemoth that is the College and organized it in a smarter way.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu