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Something is rotten on All American Drive.
According to the only DM article on the subject, which was published over a year ago, FedEx donated $2.5 million to the athletic department to found the FedEx Academic Support Center. The center will be located on All American Drive in a renovated building formerly called the Starnes Center. The money was supposedly donated on behalf of FedEx employees who graduated from the university.
This is not the first donation FedEx has made to the university, but it is the first to the athletic department. Those of you with a sharp eye will also note that it will be the first building on campus with a corporation as part of its name. It seems that quietly donating to the student body just didn't do it for FedEx.
I'm not naive enough to think that the university is a sacrosanct space that shouldn't be ruined by crass commercialism. There are company logos on the back of my student ID. Most basic services are outsourced to private corporations. I can buy things from Barnes and Noble, Edy's or Chick-fil-A without leaving the Union. I'm not objecting to any of these things.
There's an important difference, though. When I go to Chick-fil-A, I know who's buying and who's selling. I give them money; they give me a chicken sandwich. End of transaction.
But what, exactly, is FedEx selling? Or, perhaps the more apt question, what is FedEx buying? What does FedEx have to do with athletics, anyway? For that matter, what does FedEx have to do with academics? Are the athletes going to be delivering packages on their way to class? Is FedEx going to start giving math tests as a prerequisite for shipping?
Let's take the analogy further. If I do really well in Spanish, I don't have to tell people that I couldn't have done it without Chick-fil-A. Shouldn't academics be the purview of educators, not delivery services?
What's even more upsetting is that this branding of our education hasn't even registered with the student body. In my informal poll, I wasn't able to find anyone who had even heard of the Center. This is despite the fact that it was reported in The DM and that a drawing of the building is displayed prominently near the worksite. Is it that no one's been told, or have we gotten to the point that we don't even register when we're being advertised to?
Yes, an academic support center is in the best interest of the students. Even an athletic academic support center, which benefits only a small portion of the student body, has its merits. Yes, it's great that the alumni or corporate entities claiming to represent the alumni continue to support the school. Yes, we have plenty of buildings on campus named after people who have donated money to the university.
However, there's an important distinction that's not being made between other contributors and FedEx. When we name a building after an alumnus, we do it because we are proud of them. They have done something to bring honor and recognition to our university, and it is because of our university that they have been able to reach these heights. We have buildings named after senators, governors, distinguished philanthropists and businessmen, all of whom are important figures in the histories of our university, our state and our nation.
In fifty years, the stories we tell about our time at Ole Miss will be about us, the students and faculty of this institution. They'll be about amazing professors, great friends and Saturdays in the Grove. They definitely won't be about how great it was that FedEx gave us some money. This recent move is nothing more than FedEx's way of making sure their money talks loud enough.
