"Protest only served prof's cause"

It's official: Ayad Rahmani's "architorture" protest was a big flop. The only thing he succeeded in doing was igniting a debate on teaching methods, not community planning. Hopefully, we've seen the first and last of these arrogant spectacles.

This is Steve McClure's op-ed on behalf of the entire editorial staff that appeared in yesterday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Washington State University professor Ayad Rahmani's faux-protest along Bishop Boulevard played into all the less-desirable stereotypes of a town-gown controversy.

If that was his goal, he succeeded.

Anything beyond that, however, and his gathering students to protest the design of buildings and sidewalks in the developing area of southern Pullman was little more than a publicity stunt.

He argues students didn't have to participate in the March 27 protest, which took place during the regularly scheduled class period. Those who wanted to write a paper arguing their position could receive the same credit.

We find that a bit hollow since most students will choose the path of least resistance - in this case, joining a hundred classmates for a cup of coffee and a picket.

There are hundreds of ways for students at WSU to become engaged in their community. Dropping by a parking lot for a protest two months before graduation hardly ranks near the top of the list.

Those 100 students could have spent that same class hour working with practicing architects to discover how to incorporate the desired aesthetics into an architectural rendering that works for a paying client.

If Rahmani wanted to give his students a strong life lesson, he should send them to planning commission meetings for a sense of how architects and developers work through the process. That also might give those students an idea of the challenges people confront when it comes time to develop property.

A two-mile stretch of road doesn't suddenly convert into a vibrant business district with a wave of a wand - it takes money and usually happens over a period of years.

In other words, teach these students what it will be like when they're pitching their plans to the people who will be financing the construction of their creative vision.

The Rantings of an Arrogant and Contemptuous Jerk

Your blood will boil when you read what elitist WSU archictecture prof Ayad Rahmani wrote in an op-ed that appeared in the October 27, 2007 issue of WSU Today. Some quotes:

WSU’s claims to “world-class” status, while true, ultimately ring hollow because the reality finds no match with those statements. World-class ambitions cannot be met with low-class ideas. High-class faculty will refuse to live in scattered and inconsequential buildings. [And after all, it's only the "high-class" faculty that matter in this town. The rest of us are just low-class. Oh my God. -tf]

The new housing stock in Pullman sadly represents the worst of the effects of a market economy; it has neither respect for art or the environment — or for that matter the fact that within a short walk there is an architecture school with graduates who have gone on to change the world. [So what's stopping them for developing houses with respect for "art and the enivonment?"? Oh yeah, money. It's much easier to tell someone else how to spend theirs. - tf]

Rather than taking clues from cities such as Portland and Seattle — whose architects and developers have joined forces to create a denser and more community friendly environment [and that obsession with "density and community friendly environment" has added $200,000 to the average price of a Seattle home - tf] — Pullman developers have made more suburbs. These offensive McMansions, with garages looking onto the streets, use materials and planning that are highly wasteful and unsustainable. [You mean like wood, which is a renewable crop? Concrete? Seems to me there is a virtually infinite supply of sand and gravel. Vinyl, which can be recycled? What's wasteful and unsustainable? - tf]

Rather than building inward and promoting walking and bicycling, these suburbs force those who live in them to use their cars. And rather than building with materials that have a low-carbon footprint and reflect an inventive approach to scarcity, these same suburbs persist with a cookie-cutter mentality. [So why did Pullman just get nationally recognized as a "pedestrian-oriented" city? And where in the hell are we going to build "inward" in Pullman??????? College Hill?? Downtown?? There's no room left but at the periphery of town. But in any case, there is no "suburb" in town that is more than two miles from the WSU campus. What a joke to call that "sprawl." And that "cookie-cutter mentality" is otherwise known as "affordable family housing." How dare you insult my home as "cookie-cutter" when that is all I can afford, you snobby asshole. - tf]

The university also cannot rely on the town to resolve this problem; the town is too bogged down in trying to increase tax revenues to worry about the role of architecture in improving matters. The university must lead the way in not only improving its own grounds but in transforming the town. [Oh sure. The poor townies are so plebeian wanting to pay the bills for parks, police, fire and emergency services, schools, etc., etc. Let the highly-educated solons take over. I have read some elitist and snobby crap before, but this takes the cake. - tf]

Urban Sprawl or Urban Decay?

So if WSU Professor Ayad Rahmani and his "volunteer" student protesters think these new developments on Bishop Blvd. represent "architorture" and "urban sprawl":







Then what do they think about this urban decay along Pullman's most traveled and visible road, Grand Avenue?:









Perhaps rather than advancing an elitist, liberal fascist political agenda, a better extra credit project would be volunteering the students' expertise/labor to refurbish/demolish these dilipidated structures, the true archictectural "eyesores" in Pullman. How about a carwash or bake sale to raise money for the Grand Avenue Greenway project?

"WSU class protests Pullman sprawl"

How unbelievably repugnant. An elitist professor bribes students who are not even from Pullman to go out and protest supposed "sprawl." They don't even know what "sprawl" really is. If those students are unhappy with the economic development that helps pay for the police, fire, streets, water, sewer, bus service, etc. that they enjoy, then they are more than welcome to run for City Council and effect a change. Perhaps they could actually even show up at a City Council meeting or Planning Commission meeting. But Bishop Blvd. is being developed in accordance with the city's Comprehensive Plan as determined by our democratically-elected representatives.

The good professor and his students are also more than welcome to purchase a lot on Bishop and build their own "sustainable" structure if they choose. Until then, they should just shut up and stop meddling in things they nothing about. These kinds if things only exacerbate tensions between the university and the town and build resentment towards students and professors.

I encourage you to register your disapproval of this agenda-advancing cheap stunt to Professor Rahmani at: arahmani@wsu.edu and WSU President Elson Floyd at floyde@wsu.edu. Let's clog their inboxes with our indignation at our town being used as some social engineering laboratory.

From Dnews.com:

A group of more than 100 Washington State University students protested building sprawl on Bishop Boulevard Thursday morning.

Enrolled in an Architecture 202 class taught by Ayad Rahmani, the students carried signs proclaiming “Stop Architorture in Pullman” and “The Show Starts on the Sidewalk.” The group’s purpose was to promote sustainable structures and growth, not haphazardly constructed strip malls and big box stores.

“There’s no cohesion,” said 21-year old WSU student Angela Congdon. “Everything is random.”

Participation in the protest was optional for the roughly 200 students enrolled in the class. Extra credit was given to students who protested, as well as those who didn’t — as long as they justified their position in writing.

Fat Bottomed Profs You Make the Rockin' World Go Round

In today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Chuck "Mr. Civil Discourse" Pezeshki wrote:

Much is made of the fracture between town and gown in Pullman...Part of the reason that Pullman has a problem with separation between the community and the university is because topographically, Pullman is separate from the university.

Wrong again, Chuck. The town-gown fracture in Pullman is created when tenured WSU professors make comments like this, not by four hills:

I've pretty much lost sympathy for most of the working people on the Palouse.

I've never seen a more dysfunctional, irrational culture in a 1st World country than what's on the Palouse. Keep voting against your interests, and alienating your intellectual and real allies.

I believe that a good part of this is because most people in the region are wildly ignorant about who actually butters their bread.

The universities provide for the living, and also agricultural community support, for all of Latah and Whitman County.

Alex McGregor, president of The McGregor Company, had a few thoughts on Chuck's divisive and arrogant comments in a column in the Daily News back in December 2003:

Ag and WSU: Whitman County cornerstones

A Daily News Town Crier columnist, Chuck Pezeshki, called State Sen. Larry Sheahan "a liar" or a "dumb rube," largely because he has worked to strengthen the agricultural economy (Opinion, Nov. 19). Higher education "is our economic driver," Pezeshki said, while agriculture is "a minor player" in the county and state economy, with "poverty level" wages and "nonexistent sharecropper jobs."

Say what?

Family farms in Whitman County grow more wheat than do their counterparts in any county in the United States, and they've been doing so since 1910.

Growers in this area are leaders nationally in dry pea and lentil production.

Here's what the Washington Agricultural Statistics Service reports about their trade: Agriculture is the state's largest employer, offering jobs for 170,000 people, and it is the second largest industry after aerospace.

The $5.5 billion of raw agricultural commodities produced annually contribute, when processed, transported, and marketed, $29 billion, or 13 percent, to the Washington economy. Hardly a "minor industry."

Pezeshki claims only a small percentage of Whitman County jobs are agricultural. He ignores many whose livelihoods involve serving farm families -- those employed by grain companies, implement dealers, fertilizer firms, insurance agencies, trucking businesses, automotive dealers and so on.

As a land grant university, Washington State University employs many in its College of Agriculture, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences whose professions are closely related to crop production. "Nonexistent" jobs? Try telling that to the more than 300 dedicated people of my family's Whitman County-based business, who have devoted their careers to serving farm families here and in nearby counties. There are many other firms whose success depends upon agriculture. "A minor player?" Get real.

The people of Whitman County agriculture have worked closely with dedicated university scientists for generations. Working together, we've made big strides forward -- yields have more than doubled, water-borne soil erosion has declined 75 percent and dust has been reduced six-fold.

Growers, and the businesses serving them, have won awards for their environmental achievements at the state, regional, and national level including recognition from the current governor for their progress in pollution prevention. As Donald Meinig puts it, in his historical study of our region: "the collaboration of scientist and farmer is now so close that one can glimpse the ideal of the future when every field is a test plot, every farm a laboratory, and every farmer a scientist."

Agriculture is a big business in terms of its regional importance but a special one, too -- no other trade is so dramatically a family enterprise, dependent upon sustained wise stewardship of natural resources, as is farming.

Let's give thanks this holiday season for our remarkable "salt of the earth" farm family neighbors and the bountiful foodstuffs they produce rather than, as my daughter Emily would put it, "dissing" them.

Working together, growers, university researchers, local business people and neighbors can achieve much in the future, as we have in the past. As Nobel Prize winning plant breeder Norman Borlaug puts it, if we allow misconceptions, not science and good judgment, to dictate the future of agriculture we as Americans will be guilty of "displaying a diminished gene frequency for common sense."

I remember personally -- as do many agricultural people -- working hard over the years urging legislators beyond the Palouse to join our local representatives in supporting funding for WSU. The building now under construction between Martin Stadium and Johnson Hall -- Plant BioSciences I -- is the first of six buildings planned as a plant science and biotechnology center, likely to be the finest such facility in the western states.

It speaks volumes about what our elected officials see as the importance of agriculture and of WSU in the days ahead. It is strong evidence the close working relationship between farm families and our land grant university -- begun at the end of the 19th century when it was called Washington Agricultural College -- is not only part of our shared heritage, but of our future, too.

I hope we can move beyond needlessly provocative rhetoric. Both agriculture and WSU are important to our economy and our future. We cannot succeed long-term without each other. All of us -- university, business, and farm families -- need to work together to keep the economy of the Palouse strong. It's a big task but, pulling together, we can do it.

Exactly. The recognition of the value of all players in the local economy will help bridge the town-gown divide in Pullman, not trams, bicycles built for four, $40 Schwinns, or stilts.