The Rhetorical Analysis of “Can This Campus Be Bought?”
Jennifer Croissant presents the article, “Can This Campus Be Bought? ” in a persuasive way, discussing how the image of a university is affected due to the relationships with large corporations.
Croissant provides multiple examples as well as standpoints allowing audiences to view a problem from different perspectives. She points out the reason the corporations are willing to donate money to universities; yet, it is in a form of commercialization on campuses.They are interested in gaining power over the educational institutions, in regards to their popularity and advertisements. On the contrary, the institutions lose the core values, freedom, virtue, and autonomy; strictly speaking, their tendency of being independent has been declined. According to Croissant, this leaves bad images for the schools and they will lose the public and community’s trust and credibility on a large scale.
Although she is not against being associated with the commercial activities to stay connected with the outside world, she justifies that there should be a limit in order to prevent the school’s pride, images and capabilities of making decisions. I, as a reader, have a neutral thought in despite of seeing Croissant’s arguments very convincing and helpful because corporate sponsorships also have a big impact in students’ academic lives. Croissant’s article was a wake-up call to students and faculty members to become more aware of the influence of private sectors.She names the University of Arizona “Nike-Pepi U” due to its connections with Pepsi and Nike and states that “because of our increasing involvement with commercial activities, we need to make sure that the university does not betray its educational values and objectives. ” It is vital not to lose the school’s core values, mission and freedom where students invest their money and time to gain knowledge and pursue their career goals in the future.
Once the school loses its value, it will be like a chair with a broken leg that cannot stand on its own and always looking out for the support, becoming a puppet school of these corporations. Croissant also strongly supports her argument with, “For many students, to be a citizen is to be a consumer, and nothing more. Freedom means freedom to purchase. ” If students were to have freedom to purchase, they should have more choices and also select the corporations that their schools are partnered with.Even though it seems tolerable for large companies to see students as consumers from whom their money flows, they should, at least, be able to make their own decisions.
Another strong piece of evidence of the media control over schools was when a student was sent home because he/she wore a Coca-Cola t-shirt during “Pepsi Day. ” That is totally an unacceptable act in any school where a student has to miss a day of learning or lose a day of knowledge over a branded shirt. On the other hand, the corporate sponsorships of these companies is also a way to ease the burden of college expenses on students.For instance, if the University of Oregon did not have Nike’s corporate sponsorship, the school would not be able to recruit any major athletes into the athletic programs since the students would have to pay a copious amount of money to attend there. Thus, I, as a reader, remain neutral since both arguments have their own strong and weak points.
Just like Croissant mentions in her article, the schools should set a limit to corporate sponsors from giving too much access or control to their educational environment. Many examples are provided explicitly as supporting statements of Croissant’s arguments in her article.She even gives, “the example of the relationship between the Swiss-based Corporation Novartis and the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley,” which counters her main argument. The grant makes an expanded research program possible; hence, the sponsorship is important for institutions. The construction of every argument is always strongly backed up by using pathos and logos to engage with the audience’s emotion and allow the audience to think more analytically whose are mostly college students and other institutional members.
She mainly focuses on the issues that are happening among the universities and tries to raise the awareness of this matter. While the academic philanthropies becomes more accessible to the educational institutions, they become more dependent and create bad images for themselves; however, without these corporate sponsorships, the institutions would also face difficulties in many aspects such as recruiting an athletic program and other extra curriculum activities due to the budget issues.Institutions and corporate sponsors are, therefore, dependent on one another in a way of gaining access to the outside world and seeking a path for economic purposes. Therefore, the campus can be bought by rich institutions if they do not have limitations on their corporate sponsors.
