The Observer, December 7, 2007
Volume XL, Issue 13
A Retrospect of: The Observer
We are part of a community poised at the threshold between the mundane and the incredible. How can our University leap into the future? A few gems from December and January of 1971-1972 offer some clues.
A development firm had been chosen and plans were moving forward. "Once again, students are hearing some highly impressive plans for the University Circle area; plans supposedly designed with the student in mind. Now, however, is the time to question the concerns of all these interests." University Circle Inc. had plans for something called "University City." Under the headline "Euclid-Mayfield Triangle to be revamped in the near future" is promised "restaurants, discotheques, banking, arts, retail, and religious establishments." One wonders if the "near future" meant before the turn of the millennium or after, as plans are once again forming for MOCA to relocate, and rumblings of an arts and retail district are in the air. Does the Euclid Corridor Project signify a Cleveland renaissance? Take a drive down Euclid to Terminal Tower before passing judgment. Hope that this time the plans pan out and the lamenting student that said, "the Village Circle project was supposed to be a Harvard Square on CWRU campus," has their wishes granted 40 years later.
The number of animals kept on campus for testing rose above 10,000 – including Rhesus monkeys, cats, dogs, mountain beavers, white rabbits, puppies, and baboons – all placed in "sleek stainless steel cages equipped with an innovative water valve called a self-drinking apparatus." Hopefully, there are self-drinking apparatuses still available on eBay if you wish to get one for your residence hall common area. Also, the description of the stainless steel cages as "sleek" is unsettling, but it's a plus that they were not rusty, bent, or broken.
A headline reads, "Admissions Office in State of Dilemma. Policy? None." The article was written by Soheyla Gharib, now the first female chief of medicine at Harvard University Health Services and the co-founder/co-director of the Women's Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Soheyla wrote, "An admissions policy should reflect what a university is and what it plans to become. Obviously, this university is trying to change its image. CWRU is suffering from an identity crisis. It has changed so rapidly, perhaps too rapidly." A fact about 1972 admissions, though: 60 percent of the students attending Case at that time were from out of state. Compare that with only 52 percent of students entering in the fall of 2007 being from out of state. Is it better to have more students from Ohio or out of state? If the answer is out of state, then Undergraduate Admissions has hardly budged in 35 years.
Lessons from the early 1970s: The Triangle redevelopment project really will happen in the near future this time, and self-drinking apparatuses are the wave of the future – if you don't get one for your lab animals, get one for yourself.
