Staff Editorial: A happy ending for a bad debate

A little less than a year since university President Dan Mote looked upon plans to send the Purple Line down Campus Drive, he vowed not give up on his fight against it. Now, it appears that's exactly where the project is headed.

Speaking to an urban studies planning class Thursday, Vice President for Administrative Affairs Doug Duncan said the university would be willing to back a Campus Drive route as long as the Maryland Transit Administration guarantees it would be safe for pedestrians and won't disrupt research. The MTA has already adjusted their designs to accommodate pedestrians, and has started electromagnetism, vibrations and noise tests to study the impact light rail would have on scientific studies.

What's surprising is that while administrators seemed ignorant when they proposed underground alignments and an impractical route down Stadium Drive, the plans they're ultimately considering look better than anything the students who fought so hard for a Campus Drive route could have imagined. The "open plaza" design Duncan unveiled Thursday would allow pedestrians to cross the street at any place along the tracks, rather than at designated points. The design also does away with fences and, as its name suggests, appears to lend to a more open atmosphere.

Ultimately, the plans worked, but we're still disappointed with how administrators settled on them. The debate they led on the issue was confusing, and their attitude was often stubborn. Administrators were slow to publicly discuss their ideas and slower to react to student criticisms. Last summer, administrators dragged their feet to a letter from students asking basic questions about the university's stance on the Purple Line. Last winter, when then-Graduate Student Government President Laura Moore asked for a meeting with Mote to discuss Purple Line plans, she was denied. At many times it seemed as if administrators were guided by something other than students' best interests, considering it's been clear for a while that a Campus Drive route would be the fastest, cheapest and most convenient of any of the MTA's proposed alignments.

In this case, the attitude has had few negative impacts. The proposed route is encouraging and any delays administrators' squabbling may have caused have been rendered meaningless by funding cuts at the state level that will delay construction. But that doesn't change the fact that the debate on the Purple Line divided the campus last year. We hope all leaders at the university - administrators and students - reflect on their debates and move toward more constructive conversations in the future. Not every misguided debate is going to turn out this good.