WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Betty Nelson got straight to the point, even as she spoke in the measured tone she was known for during her years as dean of students at Purdue University.
“Underwhelming?” she asked.
Nelson, retired from the university since 1995, said she’d come back from the corner of State and Grant streets at the edge of campus, across from University Bookstore and near the paths leading to various entrances to the Purdue Memorial Union.
A few days earlier, she’d read about Purdue’s plans for a $2 million gateway, made of brick, limestone and black metal, part of a campus master plan the university planned to unveil this week. And she went to see the sign planted in the Memorial Union yard, touting, “Coming Spring 2019,” and offering a contact for sponsorship opportunities for a gateway that would be a step toward shoring up what one Purdue facilities official had described to the J&C as “a little underwhelming.”
Nelson said she needed to make sure a bronze plaque was still attached to the L-shaped brick-and-limestone landmark, set at a 90-degree angle so the university’s name, set over “Founded 1869,” were visible on both streets at one of Purdue’s busiest corners.
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It was: “In honor of M. Beverley Stone, dean of students emerita, for her 24 years of loving concern for her students and for her exemplary leadership to Panhellenic, the sororities and the university.” The dedication, marking a donation by the Purdue Panhellenic Association: October 1984.
“I’m not sure I understand what the university is doing,” Nelson said. “I’m not sure the university understands what it is doing. … Those students’ tribute to Dean Stone all those years ago is not what I’d call underwhelming.”
On Friday afternoon, Purdue is expected to roll out its Giant Leaps Master Plan, two years in the works and meant to guide the way the West Lafayette campus looks and feels for the next 50 years. The plan is expected to take into account what’s changed on campus – particularly the $120 million State Street and the addition of the Wilmeth Active Learning Center – since the last one was published in 2009.
Purdue officials have been tight lipped about what will be in the plan, developed by Baltimore architecture firm Ayers Saint Gross and timed for Purdue’s 150th anniversary year in 2019.
But given that a sign is up, calling for donors, details about the new gateway at State and Grant streets – the first of several anticipated on campus’ edges in the master plan – spilled last week.
According to Michael Gulich, director of campus master planning and sustainability, the yet-named gateway is meant to be a more dramatic entrance, framing the Purdue Memorial Union between six pillars of brick and limestone, with an arch that won’t be as wide as the “Gateway to the Future” archway near Stadium Avenue, but will be reminiscent of it. The new gateway also will include a brick plaza, centered by the Purdue seal, intended to expand the room to move at that corner.
Gulich said the new gateway will replace the marker that includes the plaque bearing Stone’s name.
“We recognize the importance of Beverley Stone’s legacy, which is honored by the existing gateway monument at State and Grant streets, and her contributions to Purdue University and its students,” Gulich said this week. “We are currently evaluating opportunities to relocate the existing honorary plaque. In the meantime, the existing plaque will be removed and saved for future re-dedication.”
The existing marker at State and Grant streets, among the popular spots for pictures during graduation or campus tours by prospective students, actually is one of three dedicated to a succession of three women who were deans of students at Purdue.
Stone retired in 1980. She started at Purdue in 1956, working in the Office of the Dean of Women, advising student organizations, including Purdue Student Government and the Purdue Panhellenic Association. In 1968, she replaced Helen Schleman, a legendary figure at Purdue, who had been dean of women since 1947. When the jobs of the dean of men and dean of women were folded into one position in 1974, Stone became the first woman in the Big Ten to be dean of students.
According to an account in “The Deans’ Bible: Five Purdue Women and Their Quest for Equality,” a 2014 book by Lafayette author Angie Klink, the members of the Purdue Panhellenic Association spent five years raising money, largely through its annual plant sale on campus, to donate the marker as a surprise to Stone four years after her retirement.
Other markers followed, in honor of Stone’s successors. Members of the Mortar Board raised money for a 47-ton, 70-foot concrete marker on the northern edge of campus, along Northwestern Avenue, for Barbara Cook, dean of students from 1980 to 1987. Purdue dedicated a marker honoring Nelson, dean of students from 1987 to 1995, in 1996 near Knoy Hall, at the corner of Grant and Northwestern Avenue. The Barbara Cook Chapter of Mortar Board, a senior honor society, was central to that fundraising effort, too.
That day, according to an account in “The Deans’ Bible,” Cook reflected on the placement of the three markers, all bearing the same inscription: “Purdue University, Founded 1869.”
“Bev and I always say to one another that we are symbolically hugging the campus one end to the other,” Cook said. “Now that Bev and I are getting somewhat feeble, we welcome the addition of a vital, ‘young’ retiree to help us support the campus middle. As ol’ Purdue continues to grow, more hugs will surely be needed.”
Cook died in 2013. Stone died in 2003. Both women also are memorialized by “When Dreams Dance,” a sculpture erected in 2004 between Schleman and Hovde halls and donated by three class of 1968 alums who recalled the deans’ penchant for displaying “what it meant to be strong, assertive, wonderful, smart professional women,” according to a university release from the dedication.
“I’m just so student-oriented that it seems unconscionable to me to be ready to take down something that students created without any consultation with them,” Nelson said this week. “It doesn’t seem appropriate to me.”
She said she’d be watching what Purdue proposes to do at State and Grant – and what the master plan offers about the other markers, underwhelming or otherwise.
“There are a lot of fine places on campus,” Nelson said. “But there are a lot of places where they could be placed that would be absurd, be inconspicuous and make no statement at all about the folks for whom the student organizations were trying to honor. … I’m not sure I get this at all.”
Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.
