Disappeared News

The headlines the past couple of days have been around whether UH can keep coach June Jones or whether he will fly the coop.

Ignored, except by Ian Lind, is the perhaps more important story that the coop is crumbling while we focus only on June Jones. Today he asks if we can (should?) afford a top tier football program. A snippet:

Take the beautiful renovation job that was done on Hawaii Hall, one of the original buildings on the Manoa campus. Now that the building’s like new, the academic programs were moved out and replaced by administrative offices, while across Varney Circle one building has been emptied after being allowed to totally deteriorate and the library seems to be in chronic crisis. Hawaii Hall now stands in the center of campus much like Baghdad’s Green Zone, a comfortable administrative enclave in the midst of widespread campus problems.

Ian mentions that the library is always in crisis. A university can be measured by the quality of its research libraries. UH is sliding academically and physically, even as we ignore everything but its football team.