Our view: Midwestern State University, a proud member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts College, is quickly losing touch with what qualifies us to be a COPLAC school. 

Between the presidential search and the establishment of a university master plan, MSU is at a critical point in its history in which we must decide the school’s identity. The problem, however, is that it’s hard to choose an identity when we’re in the middle of identity crisis.

Our mission statement declares the university “a leading public liberal arts university” committed to “education in the liberal arts and the professions.” Yet gaining funding for a new health science building is our first priority going into next year’s legislative session, and we just created the Dillard Center for Energy Management—neither of which advance our liberal arts mission.

One of the requirements for our next president according to the official prospectus is “a commitment to the mission of a Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) university,” so maintaining our status as a liberal arts school is clearly important to us, yet our administrators’ actions say otherwise.

That being the case, it’s time we end the masquerade and rename ourselves Midwestern Tech University.