Opinion
 

Beauty should start on the inside

By Zach Lee

Thank you for cleaning up "Waterfall Stele and River" in the Cullen Family Plaza and making it a fountain again. Thank you for taking something that has been on campus since 1972 and scrubbing the rust and dust off its metallic corners. Thank you for not wasting another one of UH's sculptures.

But what happened to the Student Life Plaza? Even in the summer, the green water was flowing down the rugged pink granite blocks outside the Student Service Center 1. Now the only water remaining in the fountain are the puddles left by Houston's sporadic rainfall. 

What about the "Tower of the Cheyenne" in front of the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library? It doesn't even look like the fountain it was intended to be. The cigarette butts and white smears left by uncultured birds make it look like something permanently under construction, and perhaps that's what it is. But it could be as inspiring in life as it is in the artist's rendering of the completed library on the library's Web site.

So, the renovation of "Waterfall Stele and River" is a step forward, but the deterioration of the Student Life Plaza is a step backward. With the continuing stasis of the "Tower of the Cheyenne," we're right back where we started.

Instead of staying put and fixing the things already on campus, it seems someone has decided that something else is more beneficial to our campus: fresh marble signs like the one on Elgin and Scott with metallic letters and stark little trees behind them. It's not the ugliest thing in the world, but they aren't anywhere near as charming as the subtle trickle of water students last semester heard in the Student Life Plaza.

Maybe it's the mystical healing power of water. Maybe it's the far less romantic notion of improving what we have before building new things elsewhere. Maybe it's the thought that we could even save a little money -- money that could help alleviate tuition costs -- if we worked with what we had. Whatever it is, it needs to be looked into.

Why are we hauling in a new sculpture when the fountain in the courtyard of the Communications Building is rarely filled? 

It seems to be in the students' best interests and indeed the best interests of the University to work on the things we see every day. 

The "Tower of the Cheyenne" is an eyesore that almost all students come across on a daily basis, yet it has stood unused for several semesters. The Student Life Plaza is in front of the building where placement tests are given and, well, student services are offered, but now the fountain has become little more than a depressing puddle.

It's not that UH doesn't have an incredible campus -- it does. But it also has a depressing lack of direction when it comes to further beautification. There's so much on campus that we already have and that we can still improve. 

Thank you for cleaning up "Waterfall Stele and River." It's the last part of the puzzle in the Cullen Family Plaza, making the entire plaza a testament to how campus could look. It's a step in the right direction. Let's keep going that way.

Lee, an editorial writer for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at aliquidsoldier@hotmail.com