Injection of vitality for UMM Homecoming

A victory for the "cats" on Saturday

Wiping the sleep out of my eyes now and am realizing it's UMM Homecoming weekend. Someone informed me at a local diner. There are really only two establishments in Morris that fit the "diner" description so let's specify. I was at DeToy's. If I didn't get out to a diner now and then, I'd be like a hermit. 

DeToy's was pretty hopping at around 10 a.m. The place was prepared for the influx of people. A pat on the back to them. I wondered in an email to a friend a short time ago: How busy would the atmosphere be if UMM got back to its 2017 level of enrollment? Wasn't that something like 1700? And 2000 has always been the understood goal for advocates of the place. 

There must be rhyme or reason but how can UMM continue a viable football program when St. Cloud State, despite still having a much larger enrollment, has given up on football? Football was cut there some time ago. Great planning by the state I guess to have a new football stadium built at SCSU in 2005. 

I'm retrieving all the facts here from my memory so bear with me. And when it comes to UMM enrollment, a single number like "500" is so unsatisfying. What the heck does the number mean? Could mean all sorts of things. How do the "PSEO kids" figure in? These are the high schoolers who are allowed to get a head start with college. Not sure I approve of the concept. Oh, but this allows the kids to get some of their college done, to relieve them of some of the financial burden they'd otherwise feel? Which should prompt the question: Why did we allow college to get so expensive? Is the high expense a hovering dark cloud over all of higher education? 

How might the "online students" figure in with the "500" figure that gets tossed around with UMM enrollment? I have a hard time with the term because you can learn anything online without being signed up for an actual course. You can teach yourself trigonometry on YouTube. 

And of course if a relatively high percentage of students are not physically on campus very much, it calls into question the considerable expense of maintaining all our campuses. The cost of maintenance must be going up because the cost of everything is going up. 

At the same time, demand for college classes appears to continue downward. Is that a safe assumption? 

And let's not put aside - heavens - how people inside the institutions will want to "sell" what is going on there. They will want to obscure the negatives as much as possible and blow their own horn. Which is why I'd like to assume that there are watchdogs in high places. But are there really? Is the U of M Board of Regents really exercising oversight in a way consistent with being a watchdog? Or is the opposite true? And is the board just striving to sell the status quo and perhaps pump it up to suggest prestige and importance? Rhetorical question? 

I have come to think the Regents are overrated. Mention of a regent used to bring some sense of awe. I am over that. 

 

Music, or no?

So there I am on this sunny fall Saturday, getting going for my day at the busy diner with UMM-oriented people filing in, and I'm informed that we're in Homecoming weekend. I was oblivious. 

Was there a UMM Homecoming concert yesterday then? I suppose I should have known about that. Through the years the Homecoming concert has gone from being on Sunday to Saturday. I get fixed in my habits. 

I of course had to prioritize the football game in my years with the Morris newspaper. I always had way too much to do. The terrible "goalpost incident" of 2005 probably led to my exit from the paper a few months later. My coverage was made an issue. Obviously I thought the criticism was off the mark and overblown. Maybe there was something to be said for not reporting the incident at all, or sort of "burying" it. Well, the state media, national media and even some international media thought it worthy of acknowledging. 

But a pompous local physician felt the media had to be so inhibited by thoughts of "sensitivity" to the victim's family, the subject could hardly be touched. 

Ol' Dr. Kildare wrote a letter to the editor in the paper. I'm sure he had the "Dr." title affixed to his name which would suggest or imply he was intelligent. I'm not so sure he was. He has since died. Morris legend has it that he and his physician partner started the new clinic in Morris, a place that has gone by several names at the old Willie's building, because of one of those schisms. 

 

Shoulda known better

I will shoehorn in the thought here that Dr. Rossberg should have been nudged into retirement sooner. IMHO he did not keep up his knowledge. I never knew him personally. I could share a story about my own family's experience with him, along with a close friend's family. But just suffice it to say, I won't expand into details. But Dr. Stock eventually saved my father's life and gave him something like an additional 28 years of life just by making the proper heart diagnosis and getting him to Abbott-Northwestern in time for a five-vessel heart bypass. 

Sure beats just having my Dad be told "you're getting older." 

My friend's family health issue did not turn out so well unfortunately. 

 

Football win

Although I now look down at the sport of football I will report that UMM won its 2024 Homecoming football game 17-16 over Macalester. And that reminds me: A well-known and highly respected UMM faculty member told me about how he had shared with then-chancellor Michelle Behr a suggestion for propping up UMM's fortunes at this time. Sounded interesting to me. He said UMM might strive to be "the Macalester of the Minnesota public college system." 

I guess we're talking rarefied-air academics or something like that. The prof said he did not get a positive response from Ms. Behr. Behr said something to the effect "it wouldn't work." 

What would work? I'm thinking maybe nothing. 

 

Taste of Morris

I was at the "welcome UMM picnic" at East Side Park Wednesday night. The mayor himself fixed up my hot sandwich. I've known Kevin and his family a long time. Unfortunately I have had to tell him that I can never vote for him again because "I cannot vote for anyone who was on the city council when the water softener law was passed." 

Sometimes the City of Morris does something right as in saying "no" to a request for a second infusion of $ for the "softball complex." But the city erred in communicating very poorly on the water treatment plant. Kevin himself informed me in an email that the city "was offering soft water to anyone who wants it." False. It is not "soft" water. Last I checked, there were 15 grains of hardness in the "new" water. 

I thought the turnout for the welcome picnic was down from previous years. And once again there was no musical performance from the Killoran stage. If the stage gets used once the whole year, that's maximum. Ridiculous. You disagree? 

The home team won. Hooray. 

Our MACA Tigers won Friday night but fans had to haul ass all the way up to Thief River Falls. Ridiculous. You disagree? We won 42-0. Thief River Falls has a population of nearly 9,000. They must be down on the sport of football. All the more power to them. 

A friend emailed me Saturday:

 

I don’t understand why the Tigers have to drive 200 miles to play football. Aren’t there school districts with a similar population as MAHS closer? That’s a lot of gas money and driver time. Someone made the comment that our “Walz special” electric bus wouldn’t be able to make the round trip on one charge. I would petition the MSHSL to foot the bill for transportation. You coulda rode the team bus and covered the game for your blog in person. Even taken pictures with your cell phone. You would’ve had the scoop, Scoop. 

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com