February 11th, 2006 at 9:51 am (Misc)
Quoted from New Channel 11, Lubbock, Tx. in “New name added to possible TTU Chancellor list (link found at left under News/Articles:
“Sources tell us that Dr. David Schmidly, former President of Texas Tech, is now on that list of speculated chancellor candidates. According to our sources, Schmidly has expressed interest in returning to Tech as its third Chancellor.”
December 8th, 2005 at 2:16 am (Misc)
I have a great idea for a fund raiser for OSU. Why not have everyone who complains about the whining property owners try this. Sell your home to the University. If you don’t think it is close enough to campus, do it anyway. Maybe they’ll put a satelite school on your property. Wouldn’t that be great.
OR, sell your house or your business. Give OSU half the sale price. Then relocate. That’s about what the homeowners in the area are doing. THEN, you can say, look, I did the same as you did in selling your house/business, “voluntarily”, and it’s no big deal. And it would REALLY BE voluntarily for you.
Note: There are 35 homes in Stillwater currently on the market for less than $100,000.00. There are more homeowners in the acquisition area than that. People who have looked for housing in OKC said real estate prices were less there than in Stillwater.
AND the amount calculated for the academics includes parking garages and lots.
Who do you think has paid for the streets that OSU will be closing? Stillwater taxpayers! Who will pay for new streets in Stillwater in order to be able to drive across town? Stillwater taxpayers. Who do you think will make up the tax revenue loss to schools, etc? Stillwater taxpayers. Moving Washington 1/2 block (at 6th street) and deleting several businesses and a frat house….so we have a view of the library? Makes sense to you, I am sure.
OSU has 2400+ acres of property to which they hold deeds. They DO have other property on which this lovely athletic could be built. AND I am a tremendous OSU sports fan. Even when they lose.
December 8, 2005 at 10:27 am
I agree. OSU could place this thing on the old golf course site. Open with a huge parking lot for football traffic just north of McElory. Put in a monorail system around the entire campus with a separate car for the football team. They could develop a backdoor controlled access form Knapp and the President could have private access from the Presidents home. My objection is that there appears to have been little or no discussion about any alternative locations and designs and on overall cost benefit analysis to the entire Stillwater community of any of the plans.
December 8, 2005 at 11:24 am
The same thing happened when we were kicked out. We had the real estate agent pull a masterlisting of all the properties that were under $115,000. Of them only 1 had as many square feet as ours and it was built around 1910 and was just outside of Perkins. That was it. Most houses around 2,000 sq ft are around 200,000…. You really think OSU is going to be offering this amount?
We had several people in the paper tell us we were getting such a good deal. I kept wanting to ask people if they will give us their home in exchange. I wounder how many will offer theirs to these people this time around?
December 8, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Leonard, putting “this thing” on the old golf course site (intramural field, right?) would be preferable to razing a 400+ homes… but it would certainly have an impact, probably negative, on the Washington Heights area.
A better question is, why build “this thing” (on this scale, at least) anyway? Will demographic trends in the potential student population justify this kind of investment in athletics?
Not to toot my family’s horn too much, but I’d be interested in some more followup on this issue. The numbers my sister Marion used in her study are all public information, and figuring out the implications requires no special training. If academic experts in these areas can come up with contradictory information, we both would be interested in seeing it.
December 9, 2005 at 11:43 am
A cost benefit analysis needs to be developed before they do any of this. OSU could end up with a white elephant that could cripple the ability to compete in both athletics and academics. The planning process for OSU needs to be restarted and adequately include all elements of the Stillwater community.
December 2nd, 2005 at 3:55 pm (Misc, Mtg Questions/Comments)
Why not have a village for teachers, musicians or performing artists, architects, chemists or professors, or foreign exchange students? I oppose this pandering to athletes. They may not like being forced to go live in one area. Has anyone taken a poll?
Ginger L. Lynd
December 3, 2005 at 12:08 am
The athletes might just be the key to this deal… if they were to go public with a rejection it would carry some weight. After all, they are (purported to be) students first.
December 3, 2005 at 10:55 pm
And many of them truly are student-athletes. I’m sure some of them are leery of putting tons of money into athletics facilities — they might prefer more support for competition travel or support to finish their degrees after their athletic eligibility runs out. Some of them love their sport and enjoy participating at the NCAA level, and they’ll be perfectly happy to graduate or go into the working world when their eligibility is finished.
It’s always difficult to expect people to argue against something that is in their self-interest. In this case, few of the athletes here today would be around to benefit directly from any athletics village — especially since there’s funding only for buying land, not for building anything on it. Yet they could well enjoy the sense of leaving a legacy for future athletes in their sport.
Think of it this way — if President Schmidly can’t say no to $30 million, even when its donor insists it be spent in ways that are counterintuitive and counterproductive, it’s not too surprising that an athlete wouldn’t say no to a great dorm or practice court.
However, if anybody is buddies with an OSU student-athlete, ask — it’s always good to know, even if it just confirms that they’re gung-ho for it.
December 8, 2005 at 8:54 am
I’ve talked to over 50 athletes, in all sports, and they are 100% for it.
December 8, 2005 at 12:21 pm
Greg,
If they were not sending lawyers, police, and National Guard troops to talk with the people would they still be for it? Let these athletes look in the eyes of a woman who is loosing the home her and her husband built. The home where her kids took their first steps. The home that saw countless family gatherings. The home where he life partner drew his last breath. Let them then tell her that you will give her a fraction of the homes finical worth. That she will go from no mortgage to being in debt until the day she dies. Let them do that, then ask them if they are still 100% for it.
December 8, 2005 at 8:52 pm
First, let’s leave the National Guard out of it. These young men and women are out there risking their lives in Iraq and other areas around the world. They will not be used to kick folks out of their homes, that will be the Sheriff’s departments job after a court order from Payne County.
Now, to respond to Greg, were any of the 50 athletes from Stillwater and if so did they grow up in the targeted area. More than likely they were out of state students that could care less about the residents of Stillwater. What college kid (even excluding athletes) wouldn’t want to live like a king? With the canal work, maybe we can even have them living like Saddam did before the war. Nice little palaces for each sport and a canal to keep the old folks out. But really, the last people that we should care about in this concern is the student-athletes. They already have a MUCH better lifestyle and academic support than ANY normal students attending OSU.
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Amy said,
February 23, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Well now, isn’t this just great! When is he leaving?