2008 Woodie Awards
Two professors began campus library debate
Sommer Saadi, Contributing Writer, ssaadi@smu.edu
Issue date: 3/6/07 Section: News
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Grabbing a copy of The Daily Campus, William McElvaney takes a seat in front of the Student Media Company office in Hughes-Trigg. He glances at the opinion section and smiles after noticing another piece on the Bush Library has been published. He says he notices that a new piece is published nearly every day.
Across campus, a Google Alert pops up in Susanne Johnson's inbox. She has set up a request to be e-mailed any article that mentions SMU and the Bush Library. The alerts appear all too frequently.
When Reverend McElvaney and Dr. Johnson co-wrote an opinion editorial published in the Nov. 10 issue of The Daily Campus, they did not anticipate the response that would follow.
"Never in our wildest dreams could we have predicted this kind of aftermath," Johnson said.
The Bush Library controversy has made national and global news on networks like ABC, CNN and MSNBC, as well as in papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times. The library proposal has been discussed in three faculty meetings and three petitions referencing the library have been circulating.
Full-time faculty members signed a petition asking for a referendum on whether the institute should be separate from SMU, several Methodist ministers started a petition against the library at SMU, and the Young Conservatives of Texas at SMU circulated a pro-library petition for students and staff to sign.
The debate can be traced back to the question McElvaney and Johnson originally posed in their editorial "The George W. Bush Library: asset or albatross?"
SMU became the front-runner in the library competition in December when the library site selection committee said it was entering into exclusive talks with the university. The university's initial bid included a library, a museum and a Bush School of Public Service. The Bush Foundation countered the bid with a proposal that includes a library, a museum and a Bush Institute that would report directly to the Foundation.
Across campus, a Google Alert pops up in Susanne Johnson's inbox. She has set up a request to be e-mailed any article that mentions SMU and the Bush Library. The alerts appear all too frequently.
When Reverend McElvaney and Dr. Johnson co-wrote an opinion editorial published in the Nov. 10 issue of The Daily Campus, they did not anticipate the response that would follow.
"Never in our wildest dreams could we have predicted this kind of aftermath," Johnson said.
The Bush Library controversy has made national and global news on networks like ABC, CNN and MSNBC, as well as in papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times. The library proposal has been discussed in three faculty meetings and three petitions referencing the library have been circulating.
Full-time faculty members signed a petition asking for a referendum on whether the institute should be separate from SMU, several Methodist ministers started a petition against the library at SMU, and the Young Conservatives of Texas at SMU circulated a pro-library petition for students and staff to sign.
The debate can be traced back to the question McElvaney and Johnson originally posed in their editorial "The George W. Bush Library: asset or albatross?"
SMU became the front-runner in the library competition in December when the library site selection committee said it was entering into exclusive talks with the university. The university's initial bid included a library, a museum and a Bush School of Public Service. The Bush Foundation countered the bid with a proposal that includes a library, a museum and a Bush Institute that would report directly to the Foundation.
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