Letter To The Editor

‘CLS splendid, but don’t let it obscure other lights’

To the editor:

“And God said, Let there be light and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”

Were I to suspend my disbelief long enough, I might think that these verses from Genesis referred to the Canadian Light Source.  I might then believe that, as the last Research Column claimed, the University of Saskatchewan was “the envy of universities across the country” because the CLS had been featured in a four-page spread in Maclean’s.  Once again, the CLS and the Maclean’s rankings inextricably bound in breathless enthusiasm!

The Synchrotron, as others have noted, has become a place of holy pilgrimage on this campus.  Visitors venerate and worship at the shrine; they must see the Light.

The paradox of light, of course, is that it illuminates, but it can also blind. 

What is the CLS illuminating?  Some would say that is revealing a skewed sense of priorities on campus, a seeming desire to seduce corporate partners, to emphasize only one kind of research, to ignore achievements in other areas of excellence: teaching, learning, service, other research accomplishments (especially in the Arts and Humanities). While the CLS flourishes, other units on campus seem to be starving in obscurity: some buildings are crumbling, and some departments stumble under the strain of underfunding and understaffing.

Were I unfamiliar with this university, I would truly be dazzled into believing that the CLS is the apogee of achievement on campus. I would be blind to the radiance to be found elsewhere. For example, I would be unaware of the fact that The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre opened 18 months ago to celebrate and encourage good teaching—another, more reliable and less expensive, source of light on campus.

The CLS is a splendid resource, which will undoubtedly attract researchers, teachers, partners, and students to the University of Saskatchewan. We who are being force-fed this “light” diet do not deny that.

But let this one building not eclipse the excellence that abounds elsewhere.  In the shadows of the CLS, moments of brilliance are illuminating classrooms, labs, libraries and study halls throughout the University of Saskatchewan. These are candles, no doubt. Modest but cumulative, their brightness is not dimmed by lighting other candles.  It is our duty to ensure that they are not extinguished.

Eileen Herteis
The Gwenna Moss
Teaching & Learning Centre