Dear Editor,
The conflict between Webster University and the city council saddens and confuses me. I have a hard time understanding why four councilpersons rejected the unanimous recommendation of the city plan commission and the mayor, unless it was out of the fear that hordes of marauding Gorlocks would be roaming through Webster Park and Eden Seminary.
Web U.’s mascot IS rather frightening with its face like an angry lion and its horns like a bull, unlike the WGHS Statesmen and Nerinx H.S. Markers which have safely roamed through The Park for decades, and the Catalina/Pasadena/California neighborhood just to the South of The U. has been able to peacefully coexist with Gorlocks, so why not The Park?
Maybe if The U. could soften its mascot’s image to look more like the rather benign St. Louis University Billiken one councilperson could switch his/her vote, and harmony would be restored.
What I’d most like to see is council approval of the U’s plan, thus avoiding the potentially very expensive lawsuit that has already been filed, and with the thousands of dollars of legal fees saved and millions of dollars of damages avoided, the city could purchase all the green space where Art and Air is now held every year, preserving it forever as the City’s “Eden Park.”
With such an expression of good will I’m sure the U. and the Seminary would be more than willing to actually donate the land, saving the city (and us taxpayers) even more.
In the famous painting “Peaceable Kingdom,” the ox and the lion lay down with the lamb. Let’s see if we can’t snuggle up to the Gorlock before it is too late.
-Ron Zager
