Letter to the Editor: Miami’s proposed Slant Walk site for a new arena

If Miami University is serious about Love and Honor, it would be advisable for it to honor its alumni by giving them the opportunity to vote for or against the proposal to build an arena on the Slant Walk.

The recent coinage of the phrase “Love and Honor” was an appropriate choice to represent Miami University because of the university’s 215 years of providing a home for its generations of students who loved this home and spread word of it far and wide. Through the decades, the reputation of this home inspired students from across the nation to enroll at Miami.

The atmosphere of “home” and community has been one of Miami's primary attractions. Graduates continue to speak of it as being an unforgettable experience. Such personal experiences are, in fact, part of the educational magic of this university. Percy Mackaye, who was Poet-in-Residence at Miami from 1920 to 1924, captured this magic in his poem that is inscribed on a granite tablet in the eastern courtyard of Upham Hall’s north wing. The poem, entitled “The Trees of Miami,” reads in part as follows:

“Trees of Miami, beautiful trees! Truth—remembrances—youth: of these

you brood in your ancient reveries; In the flow of universal tides this is the

knowledge that keeps you vernal: only beauty abides; youth is eternal.”

Let us consider that future generations of Miami students should be loved and honored by allowing them to inherit the two centuries of home and community which has been the hallmark of Miami University. A home is more than man-made buildings. It requires also the magic of nature, without which humanity is impoverished. Miami should not measure its treasured reputation merely by cutting down trees and substituting buildings for the natural environment that it inherited from the first nation of the Miami Tribe.

Dr. Jerome Stanley is a Miami University emeritus professor and scholarship donor with continued interest in the future of Miami University.