Star Gebser Tower Tarot
July 27, 1998
Rosa A. Eberly
Editorial; Pg. A9; Austin American-Statesman
University of Texas President Larry Faulkner's recently reported sympathies with students who want the UT Tower observation deck reopened to the public prompt me to reflect on what I have learned about the tower and its various meanings during two semesters of teaching a course -- The UT Tower and Public Memory -- in the university's Division of Rhetoric and Composition.
While students in both sections of the course began their respective semesters saying they were all for re-opening the observation deck of the tower, 15 weeks of studying the Tower as synecdoche for the university -- and 15 weeks of learning about the many and complex issues involved in any kind of re-opening -- nearly unanimously persuaded students that the observation deck would most likely never again be open to the public.
The most recent proposal, drafted by UT students Robert Blecker, David Henderson and Paul Massengill, and revised last spring by Heidi Baker, Duane Pozza and Martha Shelton for a Management Information Systems class, addresses many of the pragmatic issues involved in any re-opening. But the proposal and Faulkner's public response to it serve an even more important purpose. After more than 30 years of institutional repression and silence, UT has been presented with an opportunity to come to terms publicly with one of the most troubling incidents in its history.
If they choose to deliberate whether and how to reopen the Tower, students in the Tower course consistently are faced with a central question: Why would it ever be in the university's interest to reopen the observation deck? More important than whether the observation deck is reopened, the university can show through the openness with which it handles the question that it has, at least institutionally, begun to heal and move beyond the violent effects of Charles Whitman's actions in 1966 and the enduring pain of those who witnessed or were otherwise affected by the several suicides there.
Why do I claim that the university has repressed rather than dealt with institutional and public memories of the tragic events surrounding the tower?
Whitman's place in the canon of cultural heroes comes to mind first. Because the university has not actively and openly taken part in how the Tower functions as a cultural symbol, Whitman has come to be seen by many as a "cool and cruel" cultural hero. A "Charles Whitman Fan Club" Web site was named "Cruel Site of the Day" in 1996. Whitman's face and an image of the Tower can be found on T-shirts with the maxim, "Be true to your school." Current undergraduate students, most of whom experienced the Challenger explosion as their introduction to public tragedy and commemoration, deliberate whether and how to memorialize the victims of the shootings. But many worry that any public memorial in reference to the Tower would end up being a shrine to Whitman.
The university's bureaucracy, too, has helped give the appearance that the university has not come to terms with the 1966 events. When students in the course tried to gain access to the observation deck for papers they were writing, they were met with a one-sentence written denial or by changes in procedures that de facto made students taking the Tower course the only UT students not potentially qualified to access the observation deck.
The Tower needs to be more open about who has access to the observation deck and on what grounds; in that sense, how the university and system decide whether or not to reopen the observation deck could serve, again, as synecdoche for university and system operations, in general.
Another example of how repression and bureaucracy coincide to send mixed and sometimes embarrassing messages about the Tower is text that has since been removed from the university's admissions home page. During the first semester I taught the course, Stephanie MacDowell, a student in the class, found this text under a picture of the Tower on the admissions Web site: "This is the jumping off point for information about applying to The University of Texas." When I noticed a few months later that the text had been changed, I queried the Webmaster at admissions, but received no reply.
So I write in support of President Faulkner's choice to make the question of whether to reopen the observation deck of the Tower a public rather than just a bureaucratic issue. If the university and system are open about how the question is decided and if they offer up their reasons for public scrutiny, UT will show itself as not above but as part of the city, county and state in which it plays such a central and powerful role.
Rosa A. Eberly is an assistant professor in UT's Division of Rhetoric and Composition and the English Department.
Copyright 1998 The Austin American-Statesman
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