Transcript

[K. Elliott] Tonight we will celebrate forty years of achievement through learning and teaching, research and scholarly activity, and civic engagement at IUPUI.

[M. McRobbie] Today as we enthusiastically celebrate the 40th anniversary of IUPUI, we also celebrate the much longed history of partnership that both Indiana University and Purdue University have shared with this great city and with the citizens of this great state.

That partnership dates back to at least 1891 when a number of college graduates living here requested a course in economics. Since then IU and Purdue have worked vigorously over many decades to expand educational opportunity and to maximize the educational resources that we provide together.

Today we can measure our progress by looking at this campus's tremendous history of civic engagement. Last year alone IUPUI students contributed over 40,000 hours of volunteer service to this community.

[F. Córdova] This is just amazing what you've done here, and I just can't wait to see what's going to happen next. Tonight we celebrate IUPUI as one of our nation's great urban, research universities. One that has contributed to the emergence of Indianapolis as the center of learning and progress. IUPUI, what a remarkable interdisciplinary and interconnected institution with those great initials in its name: IU and PU. I'm just, an "I."

[C. Bantz] This campus is, as you hear over and over, unique in a sense that I certainly didn't fully understand six years ago. It took a couple of questions to sort of drive that home where someone says to you all of the time when you first come here, "What is IUPUI?"

I want you to know the good news is people ask that less than they did six years ago. Lots of you are to thank and others have helped a little bit, and others around... Ron deserves a hand...

[applause]

But it's actually an easy answer because it is, as you keep hearing, a partnership of three partners: the two great universities and the city of Indianapolis. That sense of partnership has dominated this campus throughout its history. We partner across our schools. We partner with our community. We partner with the two great universities. Even though it's not easy, it gets done.

Senator Lugar, then Mayor Lugar, had the courage to know he had a chance to make a change, and uni-government was of course, one of them. The other was we needed a university here, and that's not to diminish the quality schools that we had here, some of them for a very long time, it was to say that there are no great cities without a great university.

[Sen. Lugar] I worked carefully with the Indiana General Assembley, with Governor Edward Whitcomb to extend the boundaries of Indianapolis to include most of Marion County and to provide common essential services.

This was the concept called uni-gov. Uni-gov streamlined into the mayor's office. At least 45 different boards, authorities, and departments administering the civil services from parks to transportation to almost everything that we had in the city at that point helped us to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, to make local government more accessible, more accountable. While there were some exceptions, the pot-stove mentality of local government came to an end.

Finally, there was a feeling that responsible, public servants were in charge who could make the necessary changes to establish a vibrant city. Uni-gov also stimulated dramatic new real estate investment, which expanded the tax base and allowed for a reallocation of sources in ares of critical need. When the law took effect in 1970, Indianapolis's population grew from 476,000 persons to 793,000. Indianapolis evolved from the nation's 26th largest city to the 9th city overnight.

Most importantly, this period in time identified new leaders in our community. Hundred of individuals demonstrated a social sense of coming together to address the quality of life in the city streets. It is within this context that I and many in this room advocated a major public university for the city of Indianapolis.

I argued that having a major, public university was a key factor in demonstrating the strength of our city. At the time all of the leaders of Indianapolis industries such as Lilly, RCA, Allison's, Carbide Dow, and many more appointed the need for these facilities to train personnel and to have Indianapolis at the center of these studies.

Indiana University and Purdue University provided a number of their extension schools at that time in Indianapolis, and these were important institutions, but I and many others believed it was important to have an institution that was a unique, special entity full of its own regional needs, rather than simply extensions of Indiana or Purdue. Those in charge had to be able to deal with complex, urban-development problems and a series of critical relationships with local and state governments, citizens' groups, and business and industry leaders.

To that end I supported legislation to create a public university in Indianapolis. By the next month Indiana University President Joseph Sudden, and Purdue University President Frederick Hovde worked together to support a joint effort in order to create the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. This was unprecedented, historic collaboration toward urban renewal.

I remember as the chancellor has pointed out already this evening, that Herman Wells, then chancellor of IU, invited me to come out to dedicate the first academic ground in the middle of a seemingly barren field on a rainy day. Herman, who was always stalwart and never wanted to be deterred by mere raindrops, pressed on through the ceremony with enthusiasm.

This was a very moving moment for all who were involved. Chancellor Wells later said and I quote, "Democracy and education implies equal opportunity for all who are capable of learning. We must find ways to keep open the door of educational opportunity to all who have the ability and the desire to enter that door now and in the 21st Century," end of quote.

This statement embodies the impact that IUPUI has had on central Indiana and has been a critical resource for higher education for citizens of all ages, all incomes, and backgrounds. It's expanded countless opportunities for our citizens. Through the leadership of Chancellor Maynard Hine and Joseph Taylor that I remember so well, and the support of the parent universities, IUPUI grew dramatically.

Now there are 22 schools and academic units on the IUPUI campus, more than 200 academic programs that offer degrees, more than 30,000 current students.

[C. Bantz] The Chancellor's Medal has been given in the past over the years, but it was one of the things that we had not given in my time here, and so we begin to discuss both whether we should begin that tradition again. And if so, who we would give it to.

And it seemed fitting in the truly best sense that the first person that I would be privileged to give the medal to is Senator Richard Lugar as we think of him some nights mayor of the city of Indianapolis. Senator Lugar, thank you.

[M. Evans] History binds us together in ways we can never anticipate. Today's history is not just IUPUI's history; it is also mine. And with history propelling me along, I am honored to bring to this moment a praise song for the impressive structure that can be seen as anchoring the campus inviting as it does all who will to come, to learn, to be empowered. I refer of course, to our remarkable, world-class library.

The end for a new library. It came to pass that man and woman rose from their crouching, stood up on their legs, and walked. In time, stile and brush in hand, they scribed on scroll and papyri a legacy of circumstance, of deeds, of dreams, and dance.

And soon the wise one said we need a shelter where children can come to bathe in light, surrounded by wisdom, their minds challenged, their spirits renewed. Whereon the women and the men created such a haven. And the darkness glowed for in it they stored sunlight and water, pastures and plains, snow crowned mountains, raging storms and circling galaxies. And the people of Alexandria of Carthage, then of Rome of Paris, of New York and the heartland of America, each in their own time stood around it and marveled.

For through the luminescence shone the records of their living, their loving, their poetry, their anguish, their joy, their song. We reference libraries for they hold the past, contain the blueprints for our future. The impotence to our present possibility, a beleaguered society when that society is chaotic, must rush first to defend its children and then to secure its libraries.

Their comes a time when need is met, a haven prepared, a library built. When the people gather to reverence and revisit for libraries are fortress and wooded stream, challenge and surcease, repositories of revolution and of respite, staunch enduring. In them we find the people substance, their spirit their ability, their brilliances and delusions, their visions, and their truths.

In the end it is the people empowered who prevail, who are their own enlightenment, who secure inclusion, who are their own beneficent result.

Thank you.