UI’s Q: Is “Open Space, Open Minds” Worth 900 G’s?

Pretend you had $900,000 to spend at the University of Idaho.
Maybe you’d give scholarships to 900 low-income Idaho students. Or you could fund the recently axed Community Programs for the next 20 years. Or revamp run-down residence halls. Or put air conditioning in buildings in which temperatures reach 100 degrees. Or boost pay for a few under-funded professors. Or fund cutting-edge research.
Of course, you could always do what the UI administration is doing, and spend $900,000 on an ad campaign. The “Open Space. Open Minds” campaign is the administration’s attempt to improve UI’s image by improving its “brand promise” (any student can smell the bureaucrat-speak in that one). The campaign is supposed to make UI look better to potential students and their parents and potential donors. But here’s the thing — why make the university look better when you could actually make it better? For the rest of the UI Argonaut editorial by Editor-In-Chief Tara Roberts, click here

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Question (from UI Argonaut): “Open Space. Open Minds” isn’t terrible for a slogan. But is it worth $900,000?