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The University of Oklahoma’s independent student voice since 1916 T U E S D A Y , N O V E M B E R 1 8 , 2 0 14
DANA BRANHAM, CHRIS MICHIE AND YA JIN/THE DAILY
Top right: OU President David Boren wears a big smile at his surprise party Friday. Above: OU President David Boren and First Lady Molly Shi Boren are honored at the OU Regents meeting for their 20 years of service to the university. Left: First Lady Molly Shi Boren poses for The Daily in Boyd House’s garden.
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t was a very freakish storm because the ground wasn’t frozen — the ice was all up in the air. You couldn’t drive anywhere because trees were all over the roads, reaching into the sidewalks and lawns. That was how OU First Lady Molly Shi Boren began the story about her most gratifying day at OU — the day over 1,000 students came together to help restore campus after an ice storm that ruined over 1,600 full-size trees in 2007. “It looked like a war zone,” said Allen King, director of OU Landscaping and Grounds. Monday marked OU President David Boren and First Lady Molly Shi Boren’s 20th year on campus. Their tenure began in 1994 after David Boren resigned two years early from the U.S. Senate to take the job at OU. In those 20 years, Molly Shi Boren said the dreary Saturday students spent volunteering putting campus back together was the best day. King said he estimated around $1.7 million in damages. “It would’ve taken our people a year to clear out all the trees,” Molly Shi Boren said. She said OU officials sent a letter to donors and alumni to raise money to replace the trees, and students were invited to come back the Saturday before spring semester started to help clean up. Molly Shi Boren said when she asked Clarke Stroud, vice president of Student Affairs and dean of students, how many students to expect, he said about 250. That morning, when she arrived at Oklahoma Memorial Union, around 1,000 students turned up to help that day. The volunteers did the equivalent of $150,000 worth of work, Molly Shi Boren said.
WEATHER Sunny today with a high of 50, low of 34. Follow @AndrewGortonWX on Twitter for weather updates.
“They cared about their campus. They felt it was their community. They didn’t have to come — it was purely voluntary — but they chose to come,” she said. It’s this response, this sense of responsibility for one’s community, that Molly Shi and David Boren stressed as one of the things they are most proud of in their two decades at OU. “If you’re going to create a community, you have to have been part of a community,” David Boren said. The university is an example of what real community looks like, he said. “We demonstrate to the world that we can be a real community. We can debate with each other and still respect each other,” David Boren said. He stressed how diversity is imperative to making a community stronger, which is one of the reasons he implemented programs like OU Cousins, which matches over 1,000 American students with international students.
Kyle Harper, interim senior vice president and provost, attended OU as a student, and he said he’s seen a change in OU culture in the last 20 years. He said the Borens have globalized OU by expanding programs like Education Abroad and creating the College of International Studies in 2011.
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