Dear Editor:

I think hat I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.
In fact, unless the billboards fall I may never see a tree at all.
-Ogden Nash

The words of the poet Ogden Nash in 1950s were not meant as a joke. During that era the natural beauty of the American landscape was being eroded by the ugliness of signs along the roadways. In the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson, our country’s First Lady, led a vigorous nationwide campaign to rid the highways of a major blight of her time: Billboarding. To her great credit, Lady Bird Johnsons took sentiments such as Ogden Nash’s to heart and succeeded in stopping the proliferation of billboards.

In our era, we see pollution in various forms. We have air pollution, water pollution and visual pollution. Billboards are an example of visual pollution. Regrettably, they are making a widespread comeback. They obscure the natural beauty of the landscape and, in themselves, they do nothing but serve crass commercial concerns and add ugliness to the environment. Anyone wishing to experience the deleterious visual effects of billboarding needs only to drive Highway 22 between St. Peter and Kasota. The ugliness of the billboards there detracts from the wonderful a aesthetic value of the Minnesota River valley.

Now The Gustavian Weekly tells us that Gustavus’s leaders have chosen to use billboards as a marketing ploy. This seems sadly out of place for a college that values aesthetics, professes a devotion to environmental concerns and sponsors an Environmental Studies program for students. In my mind, this is an ill-chosen action. Surely these are most aesthetic and well-thought-out ways of bringing the college to the public’s attention.

As an individual who taught at Gustavus for 36 years and who has much invested in the institution, I feel ashamed to see that we are choosing to help turn the clock back to environmentally unfriendly practices of the mid-1900s. Putting the college’s name on billborards is a disgrace to the institution. It’s crass and unfitting for a college that takes pride in promoting environmental issues.

Roger McKnight
Professor Emeritus