Passionate opinions valued with NWC name proposal
The Northwest College Board of Trustees will be discussing the possibility of changing the name to Yellowstone College at the Oct. 14 meeting.
One thing the trustees will be looking at as they discuss is the bevy of public comments received on the potential name change. So, if you haven’t yet made a comment and have an opinion, take time to make your voice heard.
Visit nwc.edu/feedback and share your opinion. Whether for or against, or somewhere in between, the trustees want to hear what the community has to say. The comments will certainly have an impact on whether or not they decide to move forward on the proposal.
I, for one, have enjoyed reading the well over 200 comments our story received on Facebook and the letters regarding the proposal we have received, as well as the comments that have been submitted to the college. There is a lot of passion on display, which is great to see — people care about our local college.
Having sat through the September meeting where the name change was first proposed (and able to recall hearing of previous discussions in 2020-2021) I can understand both sides of the argument and can look to my own history to empathize.
I’ve been involved with two institutions that have had a big impact on my life that have changed names either during or after my involvement — my alma mater and my first newspaper.
In regards to the former, after bouncing around at two other colleges, I landed at Metropolitan State College of Denver in 2007 to study journalism. My first two years at the school were great for my future career prospects but bad for my academics, as I would regularly blow off a class such as beginning reporting to go out and do some reporting for the college newspaper, or pick up a freelance sports writing assignment for a nearby suburban paper.
Still, I enjoyed my time at Metro State, as a Roadrunner, even though I left without a degree to pursue my career across the country.
Seven years later, when my wife and I decided it was time to bring our two boys back West to be near family and our hometowns, I returned to the same campus to finish my degree, but not exactly the same college. It was a change more like the one made in 1989, when Northwest Community College dropped “community.” So, while the vast majority of my time was spent at MSCD, I graduated with a degree from Metropolitan State University of Denver. To me, no big deal, but again, a change more on the level of NWCC to NWC.
The irony of the situation was that, soon after I left Georgia and the weekly newspaper where I had spent most of my time in that part of the country, that newspaper was bought by our competitor paper in the little county, then folded into the competitor paper with the resulting name change to the Barrow News Journal, ending more than 100 years of the Barrow County News.
That change hurt. However, a lot of that hurt had less to do with the name (after all, the same paper was once called the Winder News) and more to do with the office I worked and grew in being abandoned and eventually razed, the co-workers I shared my life with scattering to other jobs, and even the archives of my work there being much harder to access.
The way I see it, financial considerations aside (and I do have some opinions in that regard), the proposed Yellowstone College change is somewhere between my two experiences, and thus something that, were I a Trapper alum, I think I’d have a hard time grappling with where I’d stand personally on the issue. Because, while the name would be a big change, it would still be the same, wonderful campus with its soon to open new student center and ever expanding array of offerings for students and the community.
As Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name?”