Cutting costs means cutting dreams if USC-Lancaster closes

By Andrew Dys - adys@heraldonline.com

LANCASTER -- Maybe here's what Gov. Mark Sanford really wants to do: Stop the poor from dreaming.

Last week, Sanford offered a solution in these terrible economic times: Close the University of South Carolina-Lancaster. All USC-Lancaster does is give regular people --better than a thousand of them every semester -- a shot. A chance.

All converge on a city, Lancaster, with deserted mills. Those students stream in from York County, Lancaster County and Chester County.

Sanford's budget-cut proposal includes closing USC-Lancaster

The campus is a feeder two-year school to the larger USC main campus or any other four-year school. Sanford, not sated with Lancaster, also wants another satellite two-year USC campus downstate in Allendale County and another to the west in nearby Union closed.

All three schools are in places where the college is one of the few chances to escape poverty and joblessness after the rich took the mill jobs overseas.

No place has taken a worse hit in the past few years than Lancaster County. Unemployment there, as in Allendale and Union, is among the worst in the state. Locking the schoolhouse doors wouldn't be a body blow: Closing USC-Lancaster would be a knockout punch.

"The community can't bear to lose this school," Lancaster lawyer Phil Wright said. "There is nothing else to replace it. Lancaster has lost far too much already. Too much public energy has been put into it. Hundreds of people just won't be able to go to school."

Two-year colleges such as USC-Lanca- ster offer access for students and are crucial to kick-starting the economy of this area, said Dennis Merrell, former president of York Technical College.

Merrell, who built York Tech into a juggernaut that trains students and gives business a qualified work force, whose school has helped York County attract so many businesses, said closing USC-Lancaster "sure doesn't seem like a smart move."

Sanford's goal is to improve the efficiency of the state's public colleges. USC-Lancaster is within driving distance of other schools, the governor said.

Improving efficiency is a noble goal, Merrell said, and worth pursuing.

But you don't do that by taking away the local educational opportunities that students have, Merrell said, while at the same time hoping the economy rebounds and prospers.

"In hard times, you don't eat the seed corn," Merrell said. "In this economy, you don't take away access to the education that can turn the economy around."

Merrell started as a welder and pipefitter and took college classes. He ended up a college president. He knows more than a little bit about what these smaller, less-glamorous schools give.

Hope.

Any time dollars get tight, ideas similar to Sanford's creep back in.

Merrell has a brief translation of what Sanford is telling those who dream of attending this affordable, nearby college:

"I got mine. Let's pull up the ladder."

Kathy Faris, principal of Indian Land High School in northern Lancaster County's panhandle, just east of Fort Mill, sends at least a dozen graduates to USC-Lancaster every year. Her high school is just one within a half-hour drive of USC-Lancaster.

One of those students set to graduate in May popped into Faris' office Tuesday for lunch, asking about college. She told Faris she had heard USC-Lancaster was closing.

The girl thought she had no chance at college, at dreams.

"For a lot of students," Faris said, "living at home, saving money while getting the basic course work done is the only college choice."

Darn those working-class kids, daring to dream.