It seems that 2008 was a good year for everything west-related.
The direction “west” maintained its spot among the four cardinal directions, as Kanye West was nominated for eight Grammy Awards — winning four of them — and the Mountain West Conference advanced two men’s basketball teams to the NCAA Tournament.
More notably, ASU’s West campus saw enrollment rise by 9.5 percent to nearly 9,572 students, getting it closer to its intended peak enrollment number of 15,000. In November, the campus was also one of 33 sites citywide to be named a Phoenix Point of Pride in November.
According to the home page of the West campus Web site, ASU West is the “centerpiece of a burgeoning region of commerce, recreation, arts and lifelong learning opportunities.”
However, the new designation as a point of pride looks more like a sarcastic joke at this point. As was announced last week, ASU’s West campus is not only set to lose the majority of its programs to other campuses in a series of cost-cutting news — it is set to lose its name, identity and livelihood.
So much for 2008’s momentum. So much for being a point of pride. So much for being the centerpiece of a burgeoning region.
Much like the actions taken at ASU’s Polytechnic campus, ASU’s West campus is being scaled down to one college. However, unlike Polytechnic, which will keep the College of Technology and Innovation and still serve as an educational site for other colleges, the West campus has encountered full-scale destruction.
Starting in the fall semester, the school, always envisioned by us as the second-place prizewinner behind Tempe in the top-campuses race, will no longer have graduate programs or anything — period — except the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.
Even the campus’s name is set to change to the New College, setting off another dozen questions, like how much new stationery and signage will cost the University.
While it is still better than having the entire campus close, we are incredibly disappointed that the outlying campus that is sustaining the largest cuts is the one that has been around the longest (besides the Tempe campus) and is the most established in its community.
We can hardly imagine what this will do exactly to the surrounding businesses, organizations, homes, people. Not only was the ASU West campus a source of employment, it was also a source of research, findings and output for the West Valley. It was, as we said before, a Phoenix Point of Pride, and surely a point of pride for all those who live and work around the area.
Now, it’s up to the students still studying there and the staff and faculty still working there, to maintain the level of pride — because it’s true that a name is just a name, but if ever the ASU or surrounding community were to abandon the mission of West’s remaining school, that’s where the real farewells may have to begin.
