Kudos to MCC supporters

Monday, November 18, 2002
Mike Hendricks

You were asked to come and you did. Between 150 and 200 supporters of McCook Community College turned out for the MPCCA Board of Governors meeting held at True Hall on the MCC campus Wednesday night. Those speaking in behalf of reinstating the time-honored name of this historic institution did so eloquently and convincingly. The speakers along with all the other supporters were rewarded later in the meeting when the Board voted unanimously to "rename" our proud college, "McCook Community College."

It appeared those who were in favor of returning our original name had won a huge victory. In fact, just a few weeks ago it appeared highly improbable, if not impossible, that we would ever be McCook Community College again. Well, we are. But the battle still isn't over ...

Two different memos were distributed publicly and privately by the MPCCA Administration. In the first memo, McCook College and North Platte College were in big, bold type and Mid Plains Community College was in smaller, lower case type. In the second memo, the reverse was true. The faculty and staff received a press release yesterday announcing the vote. In the press release, the latter font style was used instead of the former. As the Board was preparing to vote Wednesday night, I asked a question concerning font size. The Board Chair responded by saying that would be decided by a committee yet to be assembled.

The font size is crucial. In fact, if McCook Community College appears in small, lower case letters while Mid Plains Community College appears in large, bold letters, we may have won the battle of the name change but lost the war.

The reason is marketing. The community and the faculty and staff of MCC have heard repeatedly of the need to work as an area. What you typically don't hear is that we DO work as an area and have been for some time. We meet the requirements of the "area" concept and there is no reason to believe this won't be validated during our next focus visit from the North Central Accreditation Team. But, even though we operate as an area, we are still separate and distinctive.

North Platte Community College and McCook Community College are in competition, on a daily basis, for students, athletes, and money. Someone on the Board of Governors said during the meeting that actually the North Platte campus has to deal with a more drastic name change than McCook would have had to. This simply isn't so.

Even though the North Platte campus will now be officially designated as North Platte Community College, it is still a division of Mid Plains Community College. The latter term has always been synonymous with North Platte. Mid Plains IS North Platte. Mid Plains is IN North Platte. While our web site identifies us as McCook Community College, theirs identifies them as Mid Plains and their athletic teams carry the Mid Plains moniker.

If McCook Community College is listed in small letters, subordinate to Mid Plains Community College, it is my opinion that we will suffer greatly in terms of being able to recruit students, athletes, and attract charitable gifts.

Whether the administrators in North Platte like it or not, citizens of McCook and the surrounding area want their gifts to stay here in this community and at this college, not to be shipped north and applied to the operation of the entire area.

Others have voiced these concerns in previous editions of this paper. We're absolutely not dealing in semantics here.

We're dealing with the future of this school. It's a hollow and short-lived victory if we're able to reclaim our name, but lose our soul, our contributions, and our student body in the process.

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