LETTER: Some students appreciate art

 

To the editor:

 

Last November, the Agricultural Sciences building received a gift, a sculpture titled “Whispers and Silence” by Ryoichi Suzuki, named in honor of his teacher and friend Thomas Schroeder who passed away earlier that month.

This sentimental sculpture could have been placed in a variety of locations on campus. Suzuki thought the Agricultural Sciences building was a welcoming place for it. Many faculty and students were honored to receive it.

Complaints from few, namely Joseph Sagers in a letter published last Thursday, would give the impression that students within the College of Agriculture are not appreciative of art or educated enough to understand it. This statement, however, would be stereotyping, and one that does not represent this College of Agriculture student or many others.

Faculty and students within the college come from a diverse range of backgrounds and countries. Moreover, academic programs within the College of Agriculture are just as diverse as the people who complete them. The college offers programs such as dietetics, aviation technology, family and consumer sciences education and landscape architecture, only to name a few.

The College of Agriculture is not a stagnant college made up of closed-minded individuals who need to be spoken to slowly, as Sagers asserts. Faculty and students within the College of Agriculture are currently researching and giving aid in Azerbaijan, Nepal, Honduras, Ecuador and Peru along other countries worldwide, not to mention the research and work being done to benefit the United States, Utah and Cache Valley.

For example, students in the landscape architecture and environmental planning department are participating in community design teams, designing master plans for community members needing landscape design. Additionally, faculty and students are discovering new ways to preserve our limited water resources by conducting studies on the interaction between snowmelt and native vegetation. Those are only two examples of a wide-array of projects conducted within the College of Agriculture by students and faculty.

Ultimately, art is an acquired taste. However, it is not one foreign to all College of Agriculture students. Rather, art just like agriculture drives and shapes all of our lives, and it, along with the people who fill its ranks, should be appreciated and respected as such.  

 

McCarty Hatfield