Last Thursday’s Town and Tower luncheon drew by far the largest turnout I have seen for the event. The future of MSMS appears to be an issue of wide concern. Unfortunately, the future of MSMS was not part of the presentation. The issue did dominate the fairly chaotic post-presentation discussions. We were told that “talking points” were being developed. There is only one talking point that matters—the interests of the students.

Does anyone imagine that even intellectually gifted 16-year-olds would thrive on a campus so large that a student often must drive to the next class, surrounded by tens of thousands of party-hearty undergrads?  MSU, the most supported alternate campus for MSMS, isn’t part of a town. MSU has its own city name and zip code.  The intimacy of The W’s campus seems ideal to me as a first experience away from home for high schoolers: security, access to faculty of The W,  resources immediately at hand (instead of maybe a driving distance away), a healthcare clinic just two blocks from the dorms and classrooms, and a state-of-the-art supervised gym even closer.

Picture this: your 16-year-old (or maybe 17-year-old) is on her own while the madness of an MSU home football game is erupting around her. How will she handle that? As a parent, I would feel obligated to drive to campus to pick up my child every home football weekend.

If one imagines that there are more research opportunities for high school children on a larger campus, check the number of graduate students who must work in the research labs to earn their degrees. Ask the Starkville high schoolers how involved they are in MSU research. They are also close to campus. At  The W, MSMS student involvement in scientific research is not uncommon, as The W faculty encourage it.

Ginger Tedder, the Executive Director of MSMS, made an unfortunate choice of words for an MSU alumna in a quote published by the Commerical Dispatch. Her remarks concluded, “. . . that it is more important for us to talk about WHERE  we want to GO.” (My emphasis). Hopefully, she did not mean physically moving the school, but how the MSMS faculty would like to expand opportunities for their students on The W campus and in Columbus. It is hard to accept that Tales from the Crypt might have seen its final performance.

Bill Gillmore

Columbus