Why stop with the COM radio tower?

There’s plenty more on campus long overdue for some aggressive structural realignment. Let’s get creative.’

Apparently, the radio tower’s removal does not interfere with President Robert Brown’s construction freeze, because workers will not actually be building anything: If garishness and obsolescence alone are sufficient grounds for removal, let’s tear down half of South Campus, demolish Cummington Street and topple the Law School skyscraper. I’m sure we can squeeze a few more Starbucks locations in there anyway.

Professor Ann Donohue, academic director for WTBU, comments that the radio tower is ‘an artifact of a bygone era’ no longer used for its intended purpose. If this is sufficient justification for removal, the continued presence of the Citgo sign, an electricity-draining advertisement, baffles me.’

The radio tower being vestigial hints at a depressing superficiality not confined to the College of Communication building. Brown’s comments that the tower ‘represents absolutely nothing’ and is ‘a huge, useless tower of metal’ imply that the appearance of BU’s built environment ought to send a message. Let’s take a campus tour and see what other messages are out there. Remember, no pointing out parts of campus other than Bay State Road and the School of Management to prospective students.

The fake plastic trees in the fake plastic earth in the SMG building send similar messages of superficiality. It wears me out, it wears me out (yes, it’s Radiohead). SMG Dean Lou Lataif designed SMG’s atrium to symbolize transparency; the openness allows everyone to see everyone: from undergrads to grad students to professors on up to the dean. Too bad the President’s offices are obscured in ‘heaven’ above the artificial skylight. Be sure not to use the Blandfo . . . I mean, ‘Silber Way’ entrance; we can’t have trustees seeing any ragamuffin students, now, can we?

Let’s not forget that the Howard Johnson Hotel, affectionately dubbed the ‘HoJo,’ (officially ‘575 Commonwealth Avenue’) was once a prime destination for your average Boston Joe to pick up some women. Indeed, the HoJo has the dubious honor of hosting largest drug bust in New England in earlier times. Notice that the Howard Johnson logo is still visible beneath a thin veneer of paint, suggesting that in hard times Physical Plant (B&G) staff could return the dorm to its sleazy flophouse roots for an extra buck or two.

Faux nostalgia aside, while definitely interesting, the ‘old BU’ I’m hearkening back to was undoubtedly grittier, grungier and of arguably of lower academic worth than today’s campus. The ‘BU Wrecking Ball’ reshaping a part of campus with extreme prejudice speaks to change ‘-‘- change that may not be fast enough, may not be in the right places first ‘-‘- change significant for a university in transition and striving to transcend old ways. We’re getting there and, forgive me if I’m waxing melodramatic here, it’s not all bad. You and I won’t see the all the benefits while we’re here, but, at the rate construction around here goes, in the year 2735, our descendants will.

And speaking of the future, COM’s Dean Tom Fiedler thinks that the radio tower ‘sends the wrong message of where we want to go as a college. In 2008, radio is old, the technology of our grandfathers . . . I want to take COM into the future.’ While Dean Fiedler’s pioneer ambitions are admirable, the radio medium is certainly not outdated: radio frequencies drive wireless communication, from cellular telephones to modems. Seeing as wireless Internet access is non-existent in significant campus locations (e.g. COM), perhaps we shouldn’t forget this ‘old technology’ just yet.

The Daily Free Press’s article (‘Sign of the times,’ Nov. 24, p. 1) ends with Dean Fiedler stating, ‘We always want to be leaning forward,’ and, I’m imagining, the theme song from the ‘BU Experience’ fading in. At least COM’s curriculum is leaning forward, not its radio tower.