Today, in my capstone course for criminology, my professor separated us into groups to talk about social disintegration in different parts of Indiana and the country. My group just happened to get Terre Haute as our area of interest. It was sad to me, because the first thing we all said was everything has or is disintegrating in Terre Haute. It was hard to pinpoint one thing, but we did end up talking about how popular the town was back in the 20's to 40's. We discussed that many things could have caused Terre Haute's downfall. Some of the things that may have been responsible for the disintegration was Interstate 70, bad leadership (the mayor and university administration), and corruption. The big question really is why and how could a city on its way to the top suddenly be sunk?
Just as the city is going under, so is its biggest university. Although, the latest edition of the Indiana Statesman claims that enrollment is rising, the university has to claim prison enrollment to reach the student population of 10, 500. My criminology professor pointed out that the article is a joke, because when he attended school here, the student enrollment was 15,000 and rising. So, what happened? For the answer, I am going to go to the Broken Window theory by James Q. Wilson. The concept behind the Broken Window theory is that if there is one broken window that does not get repaired, soon another broken window will happen, etc. This is basically saying that when people do not have enough pride in an object or place and allow for it to start to waste away with no repair, it will continue to get worse and worse. This is precisely what has happened in Terre Haute, Indiana, as things started to disintegrate, not enough people cared enough to do anything about it, so it has continued at an uncontrollable speed. Now, most people want to leave this place, at least all of the smart people as my criminology professor put it. In my class, the professor asked everyone who wanted to get the hell out of dodge to raise their hands, and the majority of the class did raise their hands. This is the problem here. In order for Terre Haute to be great again, great people are going to need a reason to stay, but until then we'll all continue to run away from the rundown place Terre Haute has become.
Just as the city is going under, so is its biggest university. Although, the latest edition of the Indiana Statesman claims that enrollment is rising, the university has to claim prison enrollment to reach the student population of 10, 500. My criminology professor pointed out that the article is a joke, because when he attended school here, the student enrollment was 15,000 and rising. So, what happened? For the answer, I am going to go to the Broken Window theory by James Q. Wilson. The concept behind the Broken Window theory is that if there is one broken window that does not get repaired, soon another broken window will happen, etc. This is basically saying that when people do not have enough pride in an object or place and allow for it to start to waste away with no repair, it will continue to get worse and worse. This is precisely what has happened in Terre Haute, Indiana, as things started to disintegrate, not enough people cared enough to do anything about it, so it has continued at an uncontrollable speed. Now, most people want to leave this place, at least all of the smart people as my criminology professor put it. In my class, the professor asked everyone who wanted to get the hell out of dodge to raise their hands, and the majority of the class did raise their hands. This is the problem here. In order for Terre Haute to be great again, great people are going to need a reason to stay, but until then we'll all continue to run away from the rundown place Terre Haute has become.
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