Be True to Your School

No, this post is not intended as a reference to the Beach Boys song of the same name, although it sometimes seems that the band members understood the idea better than a lot of people who are actually in the Education business do. I refer here to the community involvement – and community loyalty – that pervade the relationship between Michigan State University (hereinafter MSU) and the Greater Lansing, Michigan, area. One expects the area immediately adjacent to a major university campus to cater to the students who attend the school, since they represent a major customer group. You would therefore expect to see school colors in evidence, and some school-themed business units, at least within walking distance. But this is not always the case, and the contrast between Greater Lansing and some other major university towns I have visited deserves a closer look…

As you travel around East Lansing itself, you are almost immediately struck by the pervasiveness of MSU colors and symbols. Banners featuring the school’s green and white (most often a white “S” on a green field, or a green “S” on a white field) fly from homes, retail stores, restaurants, gas stations, and other locations all over town, including many with no obvious connection to the University. Even the local McDonald’s franchise nearest the campus is painted green and white, instead of the company’s more common brick and brown tones. The commercial district just north of campus (along Grand River Avenue) contains the usual number of stores featuring green-and-white merchandise and other MSU-related products, but even at distances that students would not normally travel one is likely to find businesses with an MSU theme…

This stands in start contrast to the area around UCLA, to take the obvious example. There are a few places in Westwood Village itself that feature blue and gold colors and products, but even during Homecoming week it is highly unusual to find banners or flags flying, and there certainly aren’t any fast-food operations painted in Bruin colors. The same is true of Westchester, California, where you will find no businesses tying into the presence of Loyola Marymount University, or Malibu, where there are no obvious connections to Pepperdine, or for that matter Downtown Los Angeles, where you will only find references to USC if you look for them very carefully indeed…

Now, in fairness, this is partially because of the very fact that the Greater Los Angeles area is home to at least 20 institutions of higher learning (it depends on how you want to count them – and how you define Greater LA), not one huge university that dominates the landscape. But much more to the point is the way in which people in the Lansing area take pride in “their” school (whether they attended it or not), and the way in which MSU is part of the local landscape – providing jobs directly, consulting with local businesses to increase productivity and with local government to develop and preserve jobs, training medical, veterinary, educational and management personnel, and providing a focus for local interests ranging from agricultural innovation to college sports. If the people in Greater Lansing are good to their school, it is only fair to say that having MSU here has been very good for the people of Greater Lansing…

Which raises the obvious question of why other institutions are not as involved in their communities as this one. Is it simply the nature of the big city; the tendency to mind your own business, not get involved, and look out for “number one?” Is it the arrogance of big city leadership, believing that they are too wealthy, too important, or too powerful to let a bunch of “ivory tower” types tell them what to do? Is it the lack of a sense of community common to the big city sprawl, which makes the people who live there reluctant to become part of anything beyond their own interests? Or is it something lacking in other universities (or their management teams) that places less importance on community involvement than this institution does?

So far, I have no answers for any of these questions. But my initial impression, that I chose well when I decided to make this school My School, is growing stronger…