Sunday, March 18, 2018

Halleck murals, hypothetical 13 & 14 panels

(This is the final post in a series that began here.)

There was a lot of history in the 37 years between the completion of the Halleck murals in 1980 and the closing of the Saint Joseph's College in 2107. If we could add two more panels to include the highlights of those years, what would we paint?

After 1980 there were three major buildings completed, the Recreational Center in 1986, the Banet Core Building in 1995, and the apartments along Sparling in 2000. Minor new buildings included the new post office and a building that was first a laundromat  and later the radio station. Drexel Hall was re-roofed and the first story remodeled for use.



Gaspar Hall was demolished and for a while Dwenger Hall served as faculty offices. Sodexo took over dining services. SJC reached an agreement with St. Elizabeth's nursing program. Computers became a important part of the campus and SJC was the first small, non-research college to be connected to the Internet. Unfortunately, its early pioneering here was followed by stagnation and the College fell behind many others in the use of technology in education.

Sports played a huge role at SJC because they were the they were the reason many students decided to attend the College. There was an addition to the Field House and a new track and field complex. Some sports achieved great success, none more than the baseball team which was runner-up in the Division II national championships in 1996.
In 2010 the College received by far the largest gift in its history, the Waugh properties in White County with a number of windmills. The fact that this huge windfall did not save the College suggests that its financial problems were enormous.

These 37 years saw four more presidents: Shannon, Mills, Riegelnegg, and Pastoor.

A final scene in the mural could be the selling of  much of the equipment of the College in the fall of 2017.

What did I miss? What other happenings deserve to be in the final part of the SJC mural?

(If the whole series of murals were redone, I think the first fifty years would be more condensed because some of the early panels do not have much on them. Some things on the panels 11 & 12 would probably be omitted because they were of more interest at the time than they are in retrospect.)

(Much of SJC history is now preserved on-line in the Saint Joseph's College Archives.)

2 comments:

  1. Doubt it is possible to portray in a mural the incompetence of many in the administration.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe there will be a chance to add those mural panels. We can only hope!

    ReplyDelete

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