The TSU Student Government Blog

“Townies” and “Gownies”: A Winning Combination

Raise your hand if you’ve ever used the word “townie.”  Now raise your hand if you’ve ever wished that “there was more to do in Kirksville.”  This, in a nutshell, sums up what was yesterday called the “Town-Gown” (as in academic/graduation gown, I presume?) relationship that exists between the community and the university: many students wish there was more to do in the ‘Ville, but like, ohmigod, WHY would you ever want to do anything that this town would call “entertainment”?  Ah, the beloved Catch-22 strikes again.

When I was a freshman, I think a typical “what to do in Kirksville” train of thought ran along the lines of, “WalMart, Train Bridge, Thousand Hills……..WalMart at night?…”  For me, Kirksville consisted of Truman State University, Bellacino’s, Highway 63, and WalMart.  That’s it.  And I imagine that, for some Freshman (and probably some upperclassmen too, unfortunately) Kirksville still looks like this.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that there’s a sprightly group of community-oriented individuals looking to change this, and that YOU, should you be so inclined, should get in on the action.  Yesterday, we discussed what some of the “root causes” of this highly dysfunctional relationship were, an enlightening and often somewhat disheartening exercise that saw these and other suggestions proffered from students, faculty, administration and residents:

• You have virtually everything you need on campus, so why go off?
• During Freshman Orientation week, the emphasis is on acclimatizing the guppies to their new home in the University pond, and the town just kind of sits there looking like this polluted murky water that might kill you should you venture out into it.  While some professors make it a point to incorporate a tour of the community into their class schedule, not all do, and so after the first week’s on-campus activities the guppies are more than happy to frolic within the familiar confines of the Bulldagua.
• There is serious lack of communication between businesses and the student body about daily/weekly specials that we, as the designated cheapness-lovers of the universe, would fully take advantage of if we were made aware of their existence.
• Some students have no personal investment in the community; they don’t get involved, either because they simply aren’t interested or would like to, but don’t know where to begin looking.
• Two words: economic development.  Someone actually referred to Kirksville as a “dying town” yesterday…not a good sign.

The fact that all the students, faculty, administration and residents were just as willing to offer solutions as they were to identify problems yesterday says a lot about the future of this committee, and the caliber of projects you can expect to see coming out of it.  A few of the ideas:

• Emphasize “service-learning” courses at Truman: serving in the community while earning credit, and, most importantly, learning about life and your community from hands-on experience.
• Have an essential part of “Truman Week” be community immersion, tying in that week’s class to it’s real-world applications in Kirksville.
• Encourage the extension of the bike paths throughout the entire city; Kirksville is small enough to be an easily-travelled town, so why should the bike paths only exist around campus?
• Create an online “kirksville.truman.edu” website that contains information about weekly specials, activities, bands, and events that restaurants, businesses and organizations have going on, to encourage student-participation in the Kirksville economy.
• Speaking of the economy, why not draw upon the huge resource that is the University to help foster and entrench both student and local entrepreneurial ventures?

If you have any comments or ideas, or just a general desire to help out, feel free to post a comment; or, better yet, email Michael McMannis and ask to get involved with his committee!  Gandhi said that we need to “be the change we wish to see in the world;” I say, if it worked for Gandhi, it works for me.  (Except that whole victory-through-hunger-strike thing, but that’s another blogpost.)  Cheers!

EA