This is in response to Miycol Moore’s letter in Wednesday’s Lantern on High Street redevelopment.To Moore I can only say that it is irresponsible to assume that those of us who wish Ohio State to remain more urban have no respect for the campus. In fact, I believe the opposite. High Street didn’t always “look horrible.” For those of us who are old enough to remember when south campus was filled with five or more college bars, all crowded to full capacity with people spilling out onto the streets and cops everywhere, Campus Partners’ renovations are a grim sight.Ah, the memories of Mustard’s. But I digress. I don’t seem to recall bars shutting down, losing liquor licenses, or burning to the ground to never be rebuilt until the 1995 school year. Thank you again, Campus Partners.It is unfair and unrealistic to compare OSU to Capital and Columbus State. For one, they’re a lot smaller, and secondly (let’s not kid ourselves here) OSU is basically in the middle of the ghetto. Walk two blocks south and you have low-income, low-rent housing as far as the eye can see.Is it the responsibility of Campus Partners to renovate all of downtown Columbus? Where does it stop? Do we push these people out of their homes to make another upper class suburb in the middle of the city? If I wanted to go to a school with a campus that looked like the damn Nationwide Arena, I wouldn’t have chosen OSU. Part of the charm, the character – the magic, if you will – is the varied assortment of bums, run down housing, back allies, slum lords and the like.Let the grand white elephant that is campus redevelopment seek greener, warmer, cuddlier, friendlier pastures. We don’t need it and we don’t want it. In short, take it somewhere else.
Dominic Pica, senior, English
