Beauty as capital

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Your first response when you hear that someone goes to University of Virginia or Notre Dame is likely — “Oh, I hear the campus is beautiful.” You might also know that Virginia has a great law program, and Notre Dame is a top medieval studies institute, but that won’t color your perception of the entire university the same way aesthetics will. A number on the Princeton Review rankings is just a number, but green lawns and airy colonial architecture provide an image that stays in the minds of prospective students, donors, and teachers. Which is why Hillsdale College should focus its current capital campaign on beautifying the campus.

If Hillsdale wants to be an elite institution, it needs to look like one. The college’s current capital campaign  has two goals — extending campus, and making the existing structures better to look at. The challenge is uniting those goals. Hillsdale needs more spaces that are purely aesthetic. The last building campaign made some strides in that direction. Lane and Kendall Halls are elegant, and the front half of Central Hall looks great  But the other half of campus, built mostly in the ’70s, is all function over style. Compare the high ceilings and decorative empty spaces of the Howard Music Building with the cramped, dingy feel of Mossey Library. Simpson, MacIntyre, and Olds  Residence Halls have the decor and feel of a bunker, or a prison. Hillsdale should change that.

The college does have practical needs as well — so far in the current campaign, it seems to be winning. The latest project, the huge Biermann Athletic Center, is functional. It also looks like a massive pole barn. Many of the new projects are necessary. The college does have a housing shortage, so the new dorms are a good idea. It’s also hard to begrudge the planned addition to the Dow Leadership Center to give the graduate students a home. But does the Roche Sports Complex really need a climbing wall? Doesn’t it make more sense to give the ugly visual arts building a facelift?

The need for aesthetics, however, is not just superficial. Hillsdale College is devoted to the pursuit of the “good, true, and beautiful.” Goodness and truth are easier to grasp — professors teach the precepts of them in philosophy, ethics, history, and the like. Beauty is more elusive, something understandable but not quite definable and needing concrete examples to mean something. Being surrounded by beauty is necessary to truly understand what beauty is. So yes, the new building campaign, if done right, should help the college fulfill its mission by adding a little more beauty to the lives of the professors and students already here.

Fixing the teeth on the Reagan statue wouldn’t be a bad start either.