Talk:Michigan State University/Archive 1

Rivalry

For people in the State of Michigan it is all about the MSU vs UM rivalry. This is the biggest rivalry in the State. Nationally, I agree that OSU and UM is a bigger story. The MSU and Notre Dame football rivalry is a close second with the UM-MSU game. It has been pretty lopsided in recent years with MSU winning 6 in a row. On the basketball front, the MSU/UM game is similar to MSU/Eastern Michigan - just not a lot of competition for the Spartans. Not since the well-funded Fab Five has there been a strong UM team. The prime rivals these days are Illinois and Wisconsin. 12/18/05 NM

Sorry, but that rework gets the POV and the facts just as wrong. UM-Ohio state was voted in ESPN's year 2000 fan poll to be the greatest rivalry in sports.[1] National poll mind you. That automatically means few, if any UM fans consider MSU to be their biggest rival (if there are any, they certainly weren't students). As further support of that look at the google search for michigan greatest rivalry. Those search terms would include both UM and MSU. Only a couple links in the entire list aren't about UM-Ohio State. The only reason MSU fans think the state is divided in two for that game is they don't come watch the UM-Ohio state game. So the overall bit has got to say one-sided if it is going to state the facts, but the hockey bit can stay since that is a more common phrase I think, though for a demonstrably less popular sport. I don't want to sound like a POV pusher, but from the outside view, with the facts, the rivalry is one sided. I left the partly in there just as an effort to tone any POV down. - Taxman 03:53, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

A couple observations. I grew up in Ohio, not exactly a Buckeyes fan, but I followed them with casual interest and the UM-OSU game was always a big game. I've also lived in Michigan for almost two years now, and my perception is that while the UM-OSU game is still the biggest rivalry and gets a national spotlight, it is also very true that the MSU-MU game does indeed divide the state and draws considerable local media attention. However, the MU-Notre Dame game also seems to be on par with the MSU-MU game as far as intensity of the rivalry. older≠wiser 14:30, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that there's little in the way of a MSU-UM football rivalry, these days, since MSU's been so sorry. OSU's UM's main football rivalry; always has been. I think the basketball rivalries are new and mainly stem from Coach Izzo, himself. For example, it's pretty common knowledge there's no personal love lost btw Izzo and Wiscy's Bo Ryan. btw, the MSU vs. Penn State football so-called "rivalry" is totally contrived. We share a common land grant heritage and that's about it. Pulley12 07:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

North/South campuses

We always discussed the geography according to the four main groups of residence halls, I lived in Brody. There were also the Hubbard-area (East) campus, South (Case, Holden, etc..) and North (Gilchirist). 12/18/05 NM

The way the article looks currently is that those are offical designations or very common ones, which isn't good if they aren't. I have never heard those terms nor seen them on a map. If they're not official and common its probably better to not have section headings by those names, but instead just start the paragraph out by saying something like "on the northern part of campus...". Just wondering. - Taxman ^Talk 23:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

They are official at least in terms of parking policy - fac/staff parking permits will allow you to park in North Campus, GA permits only let you park in South Campus (at least it was so until 2001). Guettarda 23:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to the campus article. As to the main MSU article, it would be nice to see some of the classicl older buildings rep'd as well as all the modern ones. Overally, though, excellent job; glad to contribute. Pulley12 07:38, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

History

The history section is growing so long that it's becoming unwieldy. While this is a happy problem (a lot of people have added useful contributions), it is making the page too long to be a Featured Article. (It's up to 40k as of December 17, 2005.) Therefore, I have copied the whole section to a new article on the History of Michigan State University. I am now paring down the History section. Lovelac7 00:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Lovelac7, you're doing a fine job of trimming. I'm glad you moved the history to its own page. A couple suggestions: I wish whoever took the (1870) founding date of the marching band out would put it back in as I think it's important. Also, I wish the clunky campus map (with no buildings on it) somebody added yesterday could be modified, compacted or removed. I don't feel it adds much other than visual clutter. And as I said, I wish some of the older Gothic-style buildings could be mixed in with all the new ones, maybe on the history page too (I've got a few I'm downloading and will send after the holidays). The natural shot out back of Owens, McDonel and Holmes halls, on the other hand, is very nice.

A couple page citation items: I found a few pages of Madison Kuhn's book (you've noted): Michigan State, The First Hundred Years. In it, he states re the new agcl college of the state of Mich: "No undergraduate in a traditional college was required to study as much science and yet few took much more in the liberal arts save foreign language." (p.26) On the next page, he states: "Laboratory science in the new college was emphasized to an extent almost unknown outside a medical school." (p.27).

As for the stuff about famous 19th Century alums, I found this in a book that (in the .LD section in MSU’s library), published in the late 1930s, that documented MSC’s first (I think) application for a Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus. When I dig it out, I’ll post the exact citation, unless one of you finds it first. I’m not located in Michigan. As for the Japanese, 19th Century alums, there’s info about Michitaro Tsuda (at Kuhn, 467-8), and on both Tsuda and Kumagusu Minakata on an MSU International students’ newsletter/website (I’ll track it down, later), and on Minakata, alone (by far the more famous of the 2) on several websites. Pulley12 18:00, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

POV

This article is coming along very nicely and the research and writing is very good. The problem is it now only includes positive facts. All the facts are selectively chosen to emphasize the best features of the University. It's unfortunate because it's built into the whole article, from the sports section to the academics to the lead. Selective presentation of facts is just as POV as unsourced biased statements. If MSU was ranked as the 74th best university in the country, state that instead of saying World renowned, which sounds POV. And maybe another ranking finds it much lower and there may be features of the University that are not considered good. Also certainly the riots were one facet that made national news about the University (even if many/most? involved were not students). That probably had equivalent or unfortunately greater national coverage than the sports wins. And yes, other articles, including UM's suffer a bit from this, but not nearly as much as this one. In other words, I know great work is going into the article so I wanted to point this out as soon as I noticed to save work if possible. - Taxman ^Talk 15:50, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Taxman, I hear you, and am way ahead of you. I, too, don't believe MSU's piece should come off as cheerleading, (although I hardly think it's moreso than U-M's). I do feel, though, that most colleges highlight their strong stuff and limit the negative stuff. We have some negative stuff in MSU’s piece (the “inefficient” campus – that’s a new one on me, but I left it alone). So a week ago I started drafting post-1964 history, focusing on the first black president (Clifton Wharton) up thru, and including the period the riots and the current Lou Anna Simon administration. Just as with the older history stuff, I'm taking my time, though, to tighten the language and condense it (we don’t tortured grammar; just check out the Univ of Alabama’s piece – yikes!) -- I just want to hit the important highlights and not write a book. But with the holidays and all, I'm going to have to shelve this until I return after the New Year. But trust me, the riot stuff is in the works!.Pulley12 17:26, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Riots/Disturbances

Taking Taxman's advice, there really should be something on this topic. While I don't know exactly how to handle that, I can give my thoughts on what it should cover. It should obviously start with the first riot in 1998, and that it is generally held that it was due to the ban on alcohol on Munn field. Then there were minor disturbances during the years between, though I don't know much about them aside from that people were in the streets. There should be a considerable part devoted to the disturbances of last year (2004) after the loss to NC. The whole thing is filled with hearsay and rumors, so it should probably be made clear what is known and what is not known. The State News has lots of articles with eyewitness accounts and summaries of the press releases from the ELPD. So there are my thoughts. I have saved whole bunch of links to newspaper articles from the weeks after the disturbances in '04, so if those would be useful I'll post them here. - EndingPop 17:33, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, EndingPop, here's a very rough draft of what I was working on re this issue. Keep in mind it is very rough, way too long and, I think, the "Party School" attribution is a bit harsh and should be removed. Here it goes:

An ongoing challenge inherited by Simon was student drinking, oftentimes associated with off-campus rioting in the City of East Lansing – most often tied to a major win or defeat of MSU’s highly successful basketball team under Coach Tom Izzo, who himself is outspoken in criticizing poor student behavior. The latest insurrection occurred following MSU’s defeat to North Carolina in the 2005 Final Four which left students and City officials pointing fingers at each other. Permanent town residents believed the rioting was an ongoing outgrowth of MSU’s “Party School” reputation that had turned increasingly violent in recent years, while students, along with some university officials, feel local police precipitated and exacerbated the problem with their overzealous behavior – principally, the premature firing of teargas into peaceful crowd without first attempting less incendiary crowd-control tactics. President Simon has been working overtime to allay tensions between town and gown particularly after an April 2, 2005 report by an East Lansing ad-hoc commission was seen by some students whitewashing police culpability while placing too much blame on the students. The report, coupled with new legal restrictions on football tailgating parties, on campus, and noise, most notably in East Lansing’s student ghettos, signals that town-gown tensions will remain an ongoing challenge for Simon for the foreseeable future.

[this is novel-like and length and should be whacked to a couple sentences imho. But let me know what you think]Pulley12 18:07, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Frankly, I think this issue is important enough to warrant a separate page, but then we still need a short summary for the MSU page. I think the "Party School" reference is inaccurate. We really didn't get that reputation until after the first riot, when they reported on national news about MSU students rioting because they couldn't drink on Munn field. Before that we hadn't made a single "Party Schools" list (that I know of), and MSU was par for the course in terms of drinking when compared to other schools.

Additionally, I'm not sure where the stuff about President Simon comes from. She made a statement shortly after the initial events, and nothing else until after the commission report was released. This passage makes it sound like she was way more involved that she was. Other than those points, I think the it is neutral and informative. I can't help you too much on reducing its size, because it all seems substantial to me. - EndingPop 20:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Appreciate your comments, EndingPop. A couple things, I'm not a student or a recent (w/in 10 years) alum, though I'm an alum (I'll post my bio later). I sense from you, and other students, a certain unhappiness at the Administration and the City, part of which I understand. (I just feel sad that for some it’s become an “us against them” mentality) You may be right about the timing about Simon's statement, I want to give her some credit while not making her Gandhi, either (this is where the unbiased balance comes in). I'm glad we agree, the “Party School” tag is unfair to MSU, and I'll be sure to drop it. Finally, while I think the riot issue is certainly an important issue that needs to noted, I think we need to be careful not to over-blow it. I'm afraid with so much energy generated (even on this page) over rioting – with the idea of being “balanced” and “fair” -- I fear we're going to write a section so big and so powerful, it will overwhelm and unfairly define MSU, and that won't be right, either. I would rather the riots being mentioned as part of contemporary history in the context of the theme we've started: history generally in the context of the U's sitting presidents and groundbreaking events (like the Reorg Act of 1861 or Coeducation or black student education, etc.). I would RATHER NOT have a special section entitled "Riots" (as is done on this message board) or something similar, or my fears of overplaying these events would be realized. Pulley12 22:24, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Pulley12, I agree that we should not have a "Riot" section. It's my observation that Wikipedia articles that have one overwhelmingly negative section are more likely to have vandalism and edit wars in that section. A better solution is to pepper the "cons" in between the "pros". I was thinking something like below. (Not all of these have to do with rioting, but just making the article more NPOV.):

• Lead - One sentence about student/city relations.
• Campus - Munn Field and drinking policy. Size of the campus is a challenge to freshmen.
• History - 1964-Present - Cover the riots as a historical events.
• Academics - Large class sizes and overuse of TA's. Less of the "cheerleading" about various academic programs.
• Athletics - Need more on MSU being an underdog to U-M in football. Possibly one sentence about the riots.
• Student life - A section on East Lansing detailing the students disrespect for the city (by riots, etc.) and the city's disrespect for the students (police state, redevelopment of student ghettos, etc.) I was planning on writing this section soon.

The article's already getting pretty long, so I will to spin off the Campus section, and eventually the Academics and Atletics section, into daughter articles.

One more thing. Here's my attempt at abridging your paragraph above:

One challenge that Simon inherited was student drinking and rioting. Student riots most often came after the Spartan basketball team had a major win or defeat in the NCAA March Madness. The latest of these insurrections came after MSU’s April 2 defeat to North Carolina in the 2005 Final Four. The incident left students and City officials pointing fingers at each other. Permanent residents thought the rioting was an ongoing outgrowth of MSU’s increasingly unruly reputation, whereas students and some university officials felt local police incited the disturbance with their overzealous behavior, such as prematurely firing teargas into a peaceful crowd without first attempting less incendiary tactics. Though town and gown tensions were high following the incident, relations worsened after an East Lansing ad-hoc commission released its final report about the disturbance. Some students believed that the commision whitewashed police actions and placed too much blame on the students. Thus the commission's report, along with strict noise laws and new restrictions on football tailgating, signals that town-gown tensions will remain a challenge for Simon for the foreseeable future.

That's as short as I can get it right now. I can try again when you finish the whole modern history section. Lovelac7 23:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I like your pro/con proposed approach, Lovelac7. I think there's still a lot of "air" in my version. I think we need to think in terms of what is absolutely essential riot info. Really, such facts that it was a Final Four, or against North Carolina is irrelevant and can be struck (of course we have Munn ’98, non-sports, and the several basketball games). Even Izzo's participation is irrelevant (heck, Tom's got so much positive pub in the sports portion, anyway, he doesn't need more). It’s open for discussion, but I think a simple line about there’s disagreement as to whether ELPD or the students are to blame, for 2005 riots is enough. The problem is, there are others where there wasn’t such a dispute. Also, I’m uneasy about mentioning the tear gas. 1) MSU’s hardly alone with this – an U. of Arizona student lost an eye when getting hit by a police pellet, so why single MSU out, 2) I think it adds a ‘scary’ element that really paints MSU unfairly. We may want to steer clear of mentioning Simon's direct involvement, too -- it's a zero sum game: the pro or anti Simon/MSU people are going to cry foul, so I say, let's take the path of least resistance. There are enough political articles out there, and this isn't the place. I'll revisit this in the New Year (although, you guys may want to have at it before then).Pulley12 02:40, 24 December 2005 (UTC)