While walking to class the other day, I heard a very interesting conversation going on between two students in front of me. One turned to the other and said, “One day before I graduate, I am going to tear down the ugly statue on Pedestrian Walkway.” At first I laughed, but it got me thinking. Why exactly is it there? Whose idea was it to place something that horrendously ugly in the middle of one of the most walked-through areas of campus? And thus I started my research.
After discussing the origins of the sculpture with a few of my friends, I was astounded with how little is known about it. Some thought it was a project by the art department, while others thought it was part of UT’s campus beautification plan. Only one knew the year it was constructed, and none of them knew its name. After sorting through some old newspaper articles, I unearthed some answers. The name of the sculpture is “The Startling Whirlwind of Opportunity,” and it was constructed in the summer of 2009 by Alice Aycock. Aycock is a New York-based artist who, from what I could gather, has no connection with UT. The sculpture was commissioned as a gift from alumnus Wilton D. “Chick” Hill.
What is even more interesting to me than the fact that so little is known about the statue is that, over the course of the three years I have been here, I have never heard anyone say anything good about it. No one has ever looked at me and said, “Hunter, that is truly a mighty fine statue,” or “Wow, I wish we had more whirlwinds stationed around campus.” In fact, the response has unanimously been the opposite. Students hate it. I’ve heard it’s ugly, it’s an eyesore and it’s obstructive of one of the most iconic views on campus. I cannot even begin to enumerate the countless criticisms I have heard.
This is very troubling to me. As students, we should have some say over the aesthetic changes to the campus. However, this does not occur because we are viewed as little people compared to the masterminds of the operation. At some point, some campus administrator sat down with a few drawings of the whirlwind and thought to himself, “This seems like a totally solid option, and there’s no way that anyone else could ever disagree with that statement.” Seriously, I do not believe that idea got approval from more than two people. If those ideas had been put forth to the general public, it would have been voted down faster than Walter Mondale in 1984.
Did UT feel pressured to accept a donor’s gift to save face and avoid insult? Or did they want to ensure that he would continue to donate money? Whatever the reasoning, there are certainly better ways the situation could have been handled. This situation mirrors the “Big Orange, Big Ideas” campaign, in which the university paid a Chicago-based consulting firm $85,000 to come up with four words (two of which have been around UT for decades) using what resembles the Big Lots font. In both situations, thousands of dollars were sent to a non-UT entity to come up with a below-average product, when it could have been handled internally at little cost. This is not simply an outlying case but a worrying trend that has gone on since I’ve been at UT, and quite possibly even longer before.
When you are put in charge of maintaining a taxpayer and student funded campus, you need to make sure their interests come first. In this case, our administration didn’t do that. Someone up top lacked the vision or confidence to propose alternative (or should I say “Big”) ideas, leaving us with stale, flat leadership and a lasting blemish on campus. It took me roughly three seconds to come up with a better use for the money that was used to build the statue. A real ‘whirlwind of opportunity’ could have been achieved by funding a significant College of Architecture project that both improved the university’s image in a manner that actual students approved of while also enriching the education of those students. I challenge my readers to demand more accountability from UT. Trying new things is a healthy part of life. Refusing to recall or reassess them when they don’t work out is a sign of academic bankruptcy. Please, take the statue down.
Shameless Plug of the Week: This is not at all related to the article, but I highly encourage you to try out Dynasty Express located on the Strip across from the Baker Center. I recommend the Beef with Broccoli dish.
— Hunter Tipton is a senior in ecology and evolutionary biology he can be reached at [email protected].
