Recordpub.com - Town-gown discussion Breakfast focuses on student, city links

By Matt Fredmonsky
Record-Courier staff writer
Kent business, community and educational leaders woke up early Thursday to hear Record-Courier Publisher David Dix discuss a relatively new topic for the twice-yearly Bowman Breakfast " town-gown relations.
Dix catalogued a brief history of the connections between Kent State University and city and called for further involvement from leaders on both sides in re-establishing a sense of community, in part, through physical links between the downtown and campus.
"The thinking of urban planners has changed a lot over the last 40 years," Dix said. "They realize that a sense of community creates synergy, but that a sense of community depends upon spaces that are pedestrian-accessible, interesting once you're in them, and bring people together."
The breakfast is sponsored by KSU and the Kent Area Chamber of Commerce. Each entity is responsible for choosing one of the two speakers, with the stipulation that topics broached are of interest to both university faculty and business professionals.
The lecture series " a community tradition since 1963 " is named in honor of the late George A. Bowman, a former Kent State University president who encouraged the development of a forum for sharing ideas between the university and community.
With more than 3,000 employees contributing to one-third of the city's total income tax collected, KSU is the proverbial 300-pound gorilla of Kent, Dix said.
"Were there no Kent State, the city of Kent would be a shadow of itself," he said. "And, as heavy manufacturing continues to leave town, the university looms ever larger as Kent's economic future."
The newspaper publisher said he spent several weeks interviewing business, city and university leaders to assemble a picture of the town-gown relationship from their points of view. He promised the interview subjects anonymity, though a few sources allowed Dix to identify them.
"I found the town-gown relationship involves several categories," Dix said. "Overall, community leaders I interviewed have a very positive feeling about Kent State. How many communities would die to bring in a business that is a stable employer of 3,000 people, most of them highly educated or highly skilled."
But the city is divided, Dix said, physically by Haymaker Parkway and in that KSU could encourage community growth by offering incentives to faculty members who make their home in the city.
And students, one university leader told Dix, do not feel welcome in Kent.
Events that spurred the disconnect, Dix said, included moving the center of campus away from downtown; state-fostered competition in the form of universities in Youngstown, Akron and Canton; and when KSU's upper management began living in outside the Kent area.
Dix shared an anecdote about Bowman, which depicted him as a man who participated in the life of the community during his 19-year tenure from 1944 to 1963 " the longest of any KSU president.
"Bowman ... on a sunny day, might walk from his office on Hilltop Drive to his home on campus, or into the downtown to buy a copy of the New York Times at Thompson's or Donaghy Drug," Dix said. "George Bowman walking into town was quite a sight. The man had the dignified bearing of a New England school master.
"I'm told he used to stop in every now and then at the Smoke Shop and talk to Virgil Roberts, who had the skinny on everybody in town," Dix said. "That type of relationship ended with Glenn Olds (KSU president from 1971 to 1977).
"Tradition has it that Kent State's president lives in Kent," Dix said. "And, to President Lefton's credit, that tradition has been upheld. The effect of the senior vice presidents leaving town in the evening was that the Kent community ceased to be their community."
Recent speeches at the breakfast " with the exception of KSU President Lester A. Lefton's November 2006 remarks " including oratories by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, The Davey Tree Expert Co. CEO Doug Cowan and KSU Vice President of Regional Development Patricia Book, had drifted toward topics less about the overall town-gown affiliation and centered more on individual aspects of the relationship and even globalization.
Dix highlighted many of the successful town-gown endeavors through athletic, artistic and cultural events. But throughout the speech Dix emphasized a need for more local-level involvement from both town and gown players.