<< Back 11/20/02 Small mountain school gets on big urban kick By Jonathan Estes Western this year topped its highest enrollment ever with a total of 7,034 students, and it’s going to keep on growing. In fact, it’s planning to expand by another 2,400 in just eight years, according to the school administration. But we’ve heard this already. It’s on the lips of every campus administrator and the basis for every future plan. Alongside other press release excerpts such as “100 Most Wired Campuses” and “focused growth institution,” this whole “9,400 by 2010” is one of those catch phrases you might just catch if you’re not careful. As students, faculty and staff, we continually hear these numbers. Moreover, we are watching their consequences firsthand. Old buildings are being renovated; new buildings are spreading like wildfire. The school is morphing before our eyes. There is hardly any vantage point on campus where you can take in a scene not broken up by construction. All of it comes back to the population of students WCU plans to incorporate by the year 2010. Aside from parking inconveniences, the majority of the student population has no vested interest in the changes on campus. The average college student life span is only four years, give or take (with maybe a little more give). Even the current freshman population won’t be around when many of these changes have been realized, so don’t look to them to care. They have no reason to. The students here now will soon be gone, for the most part, but there are many people here in Cullowhee who won’t be. The people who care about the school’s growth are those whose lives are attached to it — those that work for the school, live in the community, or both. Of those, many have come down on one side or the other regarding various aspects of the Master Plan for Western, from its academic future to the increasing corporatization of the campus. The 9,400 by 2010 is at the heart of all the transformations occurring now, as well as the many more to come. The projects currently under way are just a head start the school got with the bond referendum. What we’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg, compared what the school is going to become. The obvious question is, “why?” Expanding so much and so quickly threatens two of the biggest selling points the school pitches to potential freshmen — its small class sizes and its regional character, snuggled in a cozy Appalachian valley. The school is certainly not leaving the valley, but nonetheless it is in danger of becoming just another unit in the UNC system. Western is recruiting increasingly from the piedmont region of the state. Students from the mountain region are in the minority here, and have been so for at least five years. The mountain region cannot supply enough incoming freshmen to attain the landmark 9,400 number; its high schools simply don’t produce enough students. The administration therefore looks to urban centers like Mecklenburg, Gaston, Guilford and Wake to find more students. But why, still, must we strive towards this lofty goal at the expense of our identity? The answer is because we’re told to. WCU is a member of the UNC system, just like the 15 other state schools. Of those, seven have been declared by the system’s General Administration “focused growth institutions,” meaning, for us, basically the same two numbers you keep hearing—9,400 and 2010. Our institution has been targeted for “focused growth.” Why? Simply because we have the ability to grow. Many other UNC schools have already or are about to reach their limit population-wise, especially those situated in heavily urban areas. We are a rural school. For now. That’s about to change, starting with these next eight years. Rest assured, though, we can blame it on the state. Right? It makes me feel like a 3 year old to keep asking why. Why? What’s the state’s reason for sacrificing this school’s character for a mass quantity of students? Well, because they have to as well. And this time it’s no greater power telling us what to do than the state’s birthrate, which skyrocketed right about 1992, the year 2010’s future incoming freshmen were born. North Carolina is breeding like humans, and in the process creating a school-going population its universities are struggling now to incorporate later. We’ve just begun to see the surge in our high schools, and the wave is cresting at the elementary level. In this current school year, Western pulled in just short of 30 more undergrads than last year’s headcount. The state total for high school grads was about 400 more than last year. Divide that by the almost 60 four-year institutions in the state, and you see that Western got a little more than its fair share of the cut. Next year, the surplus is projected to be about 2,000 high school graduates. Beyond that, the number of potential freshmen is going to rise exponentially. The UNC system is preparing to fatten out its campuses wherever it has room, and Western is just another love handle. The cost in all this, of course, is our identity, unless by some means there is a way to reconcile the two. But that’s unlikely —the school has to rely more and more on the urban centers of the middle part of the state to fill its coffers. Western has to decide, then, whether it identifies more with the mountains or the state school system. If the latter wins out, quit selling the former. The quiet mountain school will quickly become a thing of the past; advertising it that way to prospective students is misleading and borders on a lie. This school must commit now, if it hasn’t already, to staying Western Carolina University, or becoming UNC-Western. Do we have to change? Is there any concern on the state level for getting rid of those qualities Western is known for? Is it enough to allow us special consideration? Perhaps. If it is, though, who is going to fight for it? I came to this school as a transfer student in the spring of 2000. I came for its personality and for its connection to the mountain region. I came just in time to watch it all start disappearing. Western is changing. Change can be good, if managed properly. Maybe I’m just a little too old for it, and crotchety, and set in my ways. But if I were some teenager now, I wouldn’t come to this school. It’s not what I’d be looking for. (Jonathan Estes is a student at Western Carolina University and an intern at The Smoky Mountain News.)