Old Dominion University - Troubador Yearbook (Norfolk, VA)

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Mayor Itoy B. Martin Old Dominion wouldn’t be what it is today if it hadn’t been for the city of Norfolk.” The role of an urton university, primarily. Is to give the educational services and fill the needs of the young people in the immediate area . . . Old Dominion's come a long way ... It has always been a very good school and today I think It Is recognized academically as having come ahead tremendously. If we can continue to encourage the state to put funds into it, there's no limit to what Old Dominion can mean, not only to Tidewater Virginia, but to the entire Commonwealth. . . Of course, Old Dominion wouldn't be what it Is today if if hadn’t been for the city of Norfolk. For years Norfolk would buy land for Old Dominion expansion and hold it until the state legislature would break loose with a few dollars to pay for the land. The city and the taxpayers of Norfolk have put untold thousands of dollars into Old Dominion and lost interest on money that the state has never recoupered. This was done because we felt that the university would mean so much to Norfolk and to all of Tidewater. The state appreciates Old Dominion more, but the demands for higher education by all of the universities and colleges that are supported by the state are greater; and for Old Dominion to get its share It is going to have to continue to fight for it. Per student allocation by the state to Old Dominion is so much smaller than, for example, from where I graduated, University of Virginia, that It is ridiculous. Especially when you see what Old Dominion is doing. . . So, I don’t think the state of Virginia is really being fair in its allocation of funds to Old Dominion. When Old Dominion was put in that location, no one could conceive that Norfolk and all of Tidewater would be what it is today. I don’t think it would ever have been considered to put it right there in the middle of an already pretty densely populated area without any real room for growth as far as a campus is concerned. . . But I think we’ve been fortunate in being able to, through the city’s participation and through redevelopment programs, acquire the land and expand the campus the way we have. . . From a traffic point of view, it certainly would have been more desirable to have Old Dominion more towards the center of the city rather than right on the western fringe of it, but we can’t have everything, and basically you’ve got a good facility there. . . The biggest problem I’ve heard from people out there as far as traffic is concerned is the lack of parking. And this is not a city problem; it’s one that belongs to the university, which I understand is providing more spaces now.

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Our problem is not so much the number of dollars it costs us to acquire land as It is the question of the displacement of people which is a second urban problem which affects Old Dominion. We are trying to work with the city now and to work hopefully in conjunction with city agencies that will let this problem be as easy as possible. We know, for example, that the area we’re due to move into, which is Lambert’s Point, is going to give people who live there a lot of problems. They’ve got to move...Certainly a problem that any urban campus has got to be concerned with is traffic: Traffic pattern, traffic Jams, and all that goes with it. And here Old Dominion is less fortunate than many urban institutions because many of them are built pretty much alongside a freeway, and we’re not...This is a problem that I don’t know fully the answer to. We already have problems and as the institution grows we’re going to have more problems in terms of simply getting here. Once you’re here you’ve got the problem of what you do with the cars. It’s obvious we’ve got a parking problem. We are trying to solve through a system of trying systematically to apply parking fees, which we are collecting, to the parking problem itself m terms of not only taking the lots we’ve got and making them permanent lots, but hopefully acquiring more property as we can get the funds to do this. Up to this point it’s been done on a pretty haphazard basis. The state appropriates money and we bought a lot and we made a parking lot out of it. But the state has dropped us now as a responsibility and pretty much put it on the institution. So we’re trying through setting up a parking fund and using it to maintain and to expand parking facilities and more or less keep up with our needs. Right now we have about half the number of spaces we need and until we get caught up we’re going to be in trouble on some kind of reasonable ratio basis. In terms of new programs, when Old Dominion was given the Vought campus, it was handed a priority in engineering, so that the Ph.D. program in Oceanography is almost equally as important, and hopefully we will have such a program in operation within a very few years. As a matter of fact, we intend tp ask the State Council to approve such a program, hopefully, sometime this year. Over and beyond this there is the broad context of urban studies. We are trying to find out now exactly what kinds of programs we set up. We’ll certainly have some programs in urban studies. What I’d like to see is a basic undergraduate program with a group of courses and with specialties which radiate from these. So a student, for example, could major in sociology, but he would be able to major in urban studies so therefore he would come out essentially in urban sociology. I»d like to see us, in education, move much mo.-e specifically in the direction of urban education than has been true here in the past. Beyond this I think I’d like to see us place some emphasis on the social sciences particularly which, I think are very critical in any program that has an urban emphasis to it. I’d like to see us start a Masters program in Sociology and in Political Science within the relatively near future. Mathematics we’ll go to Masters level work on, because this is needed in conjunction with the engineering program which we’ve already gotten approved.

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The university can give to the community a number of things. Primarily it has given to the city of Norfolk a very valuable industry. . . It's really pumped a lot of new dollars into Tidewater. Secondly, the atmosphere of an academici community brings a type of intellect that is desirable in many cases. In some cases it brings an undesirable who is more interested in stirring up controversies than in finding solutions to problems, but you'll find that in any college. Those type of people seem to migrate to the academic world, but the bringing together of nine to ten thousand young people into our community is good for the community life. It gives an approach to a community that is desirable. Beyond that, you have established certain things that have been beneficial to the city—the police academy, for example. . .The community can give to the university support both through finincial assistance and through the moral support in the halls of the legislature . . . It's a two way street: I don't think you can expect the college to do everything for the community or vice versa . . We've got to work together. The university's biggest problem isthesame as facing the city of Norfolk: money. If you had the funds that have been requested by President Bugg for the expansion of your facilities and the increasing of your faculty and the raising of your faculty salaries, your major problems would be gone. The same is true for the city of Norfolk: If we had the dollars, we could do so many of the things that are necessary. Money is the primary problem, but after you get the money, you've still got the human element to work with . . . After you get the dollars, then the concern comes to a mutual understanding between the faculty, the administration, and the student body. One thing I wish Old Dominion would do, and I am confident I’ll never live longenough to see it, is get a football team that would be a winner.