SDSU’s poor step-child

Last week, San Diego State University announced with great fanfare the groundbreaking for what will be a new park on its Mission Valley campus. It will be new 80-acre recreation area that will include a 34-acre river park on the banks of the San Diego River. The entire project will be located within a new 166acre campus that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, which will come from various private and university funds.

According to university authorities, the new park will have various amenities for all members of the community, while the campus will even have a new stadium that will serve to host various sporting professional and artistic events. It will be accessible through the San Diego Trolley Green Line.

The new park will fulfill the use the Kumeyaay tribe has given to the site for generations. The architectural features highlight the history and condition of the tribal land, the university said.

SDSU President Adela de la Torre highlighted that the university is building a huge concrete parking lot around the new stadium a new use by turning it into an open space, which can be used by pedestrians, cyclists and basketball fans, among others. The park will have fitness areas, playground areas and even spots to teach classes outdoors. The project has even been praised by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who called the project a wonderful opportunity to reclaim parking spaces and give them back to the community.

As good and wonderful as university authorities make the project sound, for those who work, study or work at the SDSU-Imperial Valley, it represents a real slap in the face since no new investment has been seen in several years. Although the university has built a new campus in Imperial County’s north end, in Calexico there has not been any comparable investments to serve the community.

For years, members of the community in general and the university community in particular have studied making the local campus independent and establishing a new institution to provide better service to local students.

SDSU-IV has reported that it plans to offer new programs to expand its academic offerings at the local level with the idea of increasing the number of students enrolled. However, those courses will be available at San Diego County campuses, so students will need to use a new shuttle service to make it to the classroom.

It serves SDSU’s best interests to retain control of the Imperial Valley campus created a little over six decades ago. It injects a large concentration of Latino students into its system-wide numbers to reflect an idea of inclusion and work in favor of minorities.

Unless by minorities, you are referring to tenured and tenure-track professors who are said to wield power disproportionate to their numbers over the campus. Apparently they even managed to strip the lecture faculty who handle the bulk of the teaching duties in Calexico of faculty voting privileges.

Candid conversations about SDSU-iV frequently reflect a perception that it is seen as the poor step-child of the San Diego campus. The massive investment in the Mission Valley campus does nothing to alter that perception.

The worst thing is that no authority in the Imperial Valley has had enough courage to address the issue and demand better for our students.