City, colleges talk plans
The City of Lynchburg and local college presidents met Friday, Nov. 12 for the city’s first Town and Gown meeting. Mayor Joan Foster called the gathering of individuals in response to concerns voiced by Liberty University and its students last spring.
Law School Dean Mat Staver represented Liberty University because Chancellor Falwell was attending Liberty’s bi-annual Board of Trustees meeting on campus.
“Basically, they just wanted to hear from the colleges on what each is doing and see if there is a way that the city can work with the colleges,” Law School Dean Mat Staver said. “So it was a very cordial meeting — fairly informal.”
The Town and Gown meeting enabled college presidents and city officials to gather to talk about the future plans for each school.
“I told them about some of the great things that are happening at Liberty,” Staver said. “We take for granted all the things that are going on here because we get informed, but they did not know about the extent of our renovations.”
Before the meeting officially broke, Staver suggested that the colleges and city band together in an effort to persuade Delta Airlines to not pull out of Lynchburg. Staver’s suggestion was impromptu as there was no agenda or action plan. It was basically a preliminary discussion about what each college was doing.
“We left with an action point, and that is with regards to Delta,” Staver said.” “The city is going to draft a letter and all of the college presidents will be signing onto to that letter to urge Delta to reconsider staying in Lynchburg and not move out because that will hurt all of the colleges and everyone in the community.”
Although the meeting was relaxed, the consensus was the each of the colleges would like to continue the meetings.
“We left the meeting with the idea that we would continue to meet. We would have meetings like this hosted at different schools from time to time,” Staver said. “I think it was good that we could hear about what each other is doing, and that way we can cooperate together, work with the city and help our community.”