Western Washington University (WWU) could have engendered better support from the community over the decades had they not squandered so much money and planning effort on creating a grand, extravagant campus, and instead put effort into improving education and housing for its students. Now this year, Western has a financial shortfall. As it is, we mostly feel sort of ‘ho-hum’ about Western. And the extortion that Jon Humphrey describes is just another example of how WWU has managed, once again, to not work with the community. But Western’s animosity toward their neighbors started decades ago. 

In the 1980s, Western’s Board of Trustees began hiring ambitious presidents and single-minded administrative directors. They dreamed of a pastoral, magnificent, and contiguous campus upon the hill. Their goal was to build an eight story administrative building and, we are pretty sure, they intended a football stadium and parking lot as well. Working with Bellingham city planning, they tried to convert 21st Street into a wide, stately, tree-lined avenue/entrance from Fairhaven Parkway into a campus-celebratory rotunda with flags and an imperial greeting center. They wanted to remove city streets from any part of the campus, including High Street.  

Unfortunately for them, they met resistance from adjacent neighborhoods who demanded Western explain their need for these monstrous new structures off their current campus. But Western, even working hand in glove with city planning, could not. The projects were unnecessary and there were actually better places for them than residential neighborhoods .

In the 1990s, Western quietly activated a plan to begin buying up 17 square blocks of the Happy Valley Neighborhood. They stealthily bought houses in Happy Valley, then allowed them to deteriorate in an effort to lower the prices of neighboring houses. Western red lined a huge part of the neibhborhood in secret. 

Eventually, the Happy Valley neighborhood was able to block the Planning Department’s efforts to rezone the neighborhood, which would have enabled Western’s expansion and building of their huge administration building. Instead, Western built two modest and reasonable two and three story office buildings behind Sehome Village. In 2024, they began selling off the Happy Valley properties as they realized their fantasy campus was not achievable.

The tragedy is that Western could have spent these past few decades fulfilling the vision of their talented campus planner Barney Goltz, and the architect he worked with, Bob Aegerter. In the 1960s and ‘70s they brought Western from a slapped together college into a beautiful campus including excellent new dormitories, acdemic buildings, gathering places for students, and a plan for the future.

Instead, Western soon after got busy with a new stragetic vision.  They spending millions of dollars and squandering administrative resources while they focused on imagining a showcase campus. For the last three decades, Western’s trustees have obstinately turned a blind eye to their prime objective of creating outstanding higher education and caring for their students. 

Western could have/should have focused on academic innovation and excellence. It could have looked to the welfare of students with improved and expanded housing. It should have broadened its faculty with more women professors and more outstanding and innovative teaching staff. Instead, talented professors were sidelined and forced to quit because they were too innovative. It has long been a sorry joke - based in reality - that being voted a favorite prof by students was the kiss of death and that the instructor would be gone within a year or two.

But the bad decisions didn’t stop there. Assets that had been gifted specifically to the student association were sold off by the administration - likely illegally, but no state agency will investigate. Western aggressively fought a cell roof top antenna even on a remote edge of the campus, forcing the surrounding neighborhoods to host towers which Western uses. Ironically, their new complex behind Sehome Village hosts a large cell tower.

All this time, Western could easily have been working with the surrounding neighborhoods to be part of the community. It could have supported more community activities, such as the youth symphony. It could have tried to invite the community in. I’m sure an apologist for Western could point to examples of such inclusion, but they were ever only half-hearted attempts and a small fraction of the integration we could have had with our university.

Meanwhile, Whatcom Community College, started in the 1970s in a rented building in downtown Bellingham, has become a focused higher education institution. It has always pursued what is best for its students, it has expanded, and now owns a modest but beautiful campus. It has worked with the community. Students love it, and the community is proud of it.

It is never too late to change. Now is the opportunity for Western to pull its head out of the fantasy dream and get practical. Extorting a higher fee from the youth symphony is not going to solve Western’s financial problems. Cutting salaries on top administrators, cutting unneeded administrative staff and cutting budgets for ceremonial events will make a difference. It is time, Western. Instead of making things worse for yourself, get a clue and focus on your primary mission: education and caring for your students. And maybe find it in your mission to give the youth symphony space at no yearly charge.