Letters to the Editor

Is Bigger Really Better?

The Longwood University administration’s idea of “progress” appears to be bigger is better.  The PR tail is wagging the dog, all too common today in higher education.  Policy and decisions are drawn to the grand gesture, the use of hyperbole, the “bigger is better” syndrome.  This operating principle is over-reach, being seduced by grandiloquence.   The danger is that public image becomes more important than recognizing the value and potential of what one has, an old-fashioned principle of prudence and, dare I say it, modesty.

One example is when the LU administration chose, against the unanimous voice of the entire athletic department, to enter Division I.  Aside from a bloated athletic budget and financial drain on the rest of the university, what has been the advantage?  Similarly, the decision to close the beautiful but modest 9-hole Longwood golf course on July 1 in favor of the larger 18-hole Manor golf course with its country-club cachet is a second recent example.  The result is that the quality of life for hundreds of golfers in the area who enjoy 5,000 rounds annually at Longwood will be greatly diminished, and for what?  Unless they have their heads in the sand, the LU administration must recognize, from the public outcry and resistance to closing the Longwood course, that this decision is ill-advised.  The decision to close is viewed in most quarters as a cynical disregard of the academic and general public.  What happened to the guiding principle of guarding, enhancing, and improving the modest and valuable resources that already exist?  The grand-stand play appears to be the new normal.  Closing the Longwood golf course is tantamount to cultural vandalism, and I can only hope that all responsible for the decision, President Reveley, Rector Margiloff, and the Board of Visitors, feel shame and embarrassment.  I am certain that President Reveley’s legacy, whatever else he may do, will always be “the man who closed the golf course.”

James C. Kidd

Farmville

Democrats Would Ban Guns

As usual, the Democrat side of the aisle is ranting for a ban of AR-15 rifles hoping to gain political points from a firearms ignorant voting population. More people die in America each year (by far) from blunt force trauma, (hammers/ball bats) than Assault Rifles. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports list Assault Rifles as the lowest percentile used in crime among all firearms! Copy-cat mass murderers are using the AR-15 but, as much or more carnage could have been met out with an ordinary shotgun. Those who proclaim AR-15 type rifles have no sporting use. They are not supposed to. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t protect sport shooting; it protects the use of firearms for self defense. If it can be proven the AR-15 does kill people better than any other weapon, then they above all others needs to be protected under the 2nd Amendment!

 Abraham Lincoln said, “Anyone who would deny freedoms to others deserve it not for themselves”! Are you listening Hillary Clinton as you campaign against a Constitutional right? Each year, medical malpractice kills about 200,000 people in America. I hear no calls to ban doctors and hospitals for a casualty rate that dwarfs the number killed by Assault rifles. Democrats have a long history of wanting to ban all guns and they never let a good tragedy go to waste!

Karl Schmidt

Farmville, Va.