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NEGenWeb Project
Resource Center
On-Line Library
T is out of our experience (out of the college of hard knocks), for the most part, that we form opinions governing our own lives and directing our own judgments and activities; and in like manner it is out of the experience of our University (supported by a study of the experience of others of her kind) that we must formulate opinions that will govern our activities in the matter of planning her future.
Now it is a very noteworthy fact that this simple statement of a very self-evident truth never, for a moment, escapes the attention of the co-ordinate governing bodies of the University, when applied to the direction of any of her academic or athletic activities; but it is also quite noteworthy that we have been, for the most part, quite immune to the influence of this simple truth when applied to the planning of an adequate zone or comprehensive landscape that will care for the orderly growth and expansion of the University in a physical way in a manner at all commensurate with the opportunities offered.
The net result of such confusion (to express it in a homely way) is that we are eternally trying to fit an outgrown garment to an overgrown child with the result that neither the child nor the garment can possibly be happy or contented in their contact with each other.
This condition of affairs prevails not alone at Nebraska, but is even more positively notable in almost all the colleges and universities of our land; to the extent that, as a general rule, the greater their wealth and opportunity, the more notable has been their lack of adequate landscape plan. In partial extenuation of this sad condition it has been truthfully said that the student enrollment in all major educational institutions has doubled during the past ten years--a growth that is bringing to our trustees and regents a situation so acute that it staggers our resources and our ingenuity, and we have sought relief by directing our energies hurriedly toward the housing problem, seeking available building spaces without too much regard for the settings and without too large a perspective, and we have appealed in our distress to our most available architect to supply our most imminent housing problems, losing sight of the artistic and cultural possibilities of a setting that will make our building a part and parcel of a plan that will unify our whole campus, looking toward the completion of a comprehensive picture.
A good campus landscape can be likened, for illustration, to a well-executed and well framed painting in which every figure has its place and an adequate reason therefore. We have all noted that every great picture has for its main motif a central figure supported by others that are intended to emphasize the artist's thought. This is exemplified by the famous painting by Moncocci--"Christ before Pilot"--in which the figure of Christ is supported by a Jewish rabble crying aloud "Crucify Him". and which is supported further by a likeness of Pilot himself setting in judgment in the case; every part of the picture being devoted to directing the observer's attention to the figure that has been made the motif of the picture. Further illustrating the same point, I observe that we travel thousands of miles, maybe to Yellowstone Park, to take a seat upon what is called Pulpit Rock in the Canyon of the Yellowstone in order to get a view of the falls which becomes the central feature of an unobstructed view supported on both sides by the varied-colored walls of the canyon. Again we may visualize a home located at the east end of a long avenue that is flanked by lofty trees and that at about the time of the equinox the sunset appears in the west directly in the midst of this setting of trees and the effect of all of this was that Nature had provided a picture with a central feature well supported and well framed.
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